This Month’s Do’s And Don’t’s To Make Nightlife Less Shit
Last week, I went and saw my friend’s band play in Manhattan, New York.
I took some mushrooms and had some beers. It was good. I was among friends. I was happy. I pushed my way up to the front to be with people I love and dance to songs that I knew well. Arriving wedged at the front, I began to move and shake, and this infuriated the people around me. I was screamed at by a guy in a red beanie who was holding his girlfriend from behind, standing perfectly still, completely unaffected by the music. A moment later, I was hit in the chest by a different very large man who was also standing perfectly still, staring at my friends’ band on stage. Apparently dancing is no longer allowed at rock and roll concerts.
Last night, I went to a pub that my friend bartends at. It was slammed. Bursting at the seams. I ordered a beer and a shot because those are quick and easy drinks for a busy bartender to produce and I am not an asshole. The girl next to me ordered a margarita, a spicy margarita, an espresso martini, two beers with tequila, a beer with whiskey, and a martini ‘extra filthy’, because she and her friends are assholes.
It appears to me that there is very little understanding of nightlife etiquette these days. No reverence for the nature of the club, the show, the bar, the mingle, the hook up, the dance floor, the romp. I and my colleagues have concluded that this is because of a generation of kids who came of age during the Covid era and therefore have no idea how to handle their alcohol, a person pushing in next to them, or how to exist in a fun space at night. I don’t believe that this is their fault. They can’t be held responsible for a global pandemic. They are merely a symptom of the disease. An after effect. They are long Covid.
Though I am understanding, and though the bruise on my chest has healed, I am still very fucked off, and this is my personal crusade to end the tyranny of social ignorance. Here, then, are five of Naz’s do’s and don’t’s for being less of a piece of shit when out at night.
1. DO push and be pushed.
All is fair in love and a mosh pit. If you are at a show (a concert, a piss up - whatever) and people push in front of you, that is permitted. That is a rule. It is permitted. It is not a thing for you to get stuffy about or huff and puff, unless I guess if you’re at a Taylor Swift concert, but then, why would you be here in the first place? You surely don’t go to shows. Shouldn’t you be using your liking of TS to swindle girls on Hinge or defending her poisoning the planet on Twitter? People will push in front of you, and guess what? You can push in front of them. That, too, is permitted. At a show, no part of the floor is yours, and nothing is owed to you. In accepting this humility, you will have a better time. You will be able to let go of all of the anger and resentment that comes from thinking that you’ve been done a wrong turn and that the world revolves around you. If you do decide to push in, don’t do it angrily. Do it with a smile, with joy, apologetically, and with love. Not with your cell phone in the air, not with malice. Do it for the love of the music that you’re about to see.
2. DO dance if you want to, and let others do the same.
Concerts are for dancing. If you are one of those people who stands cross-armed like a fucking statue, you are a joyless cunt, and I hope you never come back. If you find yourself in a position where you are at a concert and are anti-dancing, you are simply wrong. If you want to dance, you should. The band wants you to, other people in the crowd will feel encouraged by you, and if someone else is strong enough to kick it off before you get a chance, respect that this is what it’s all about - dancing and appreciating the music that you love. Fuck the naysayers. Move with confidence. Like I told that enormous man who hit me: ‘you can kick my ass, but you’ll still be wrong.’
3. DON’T make the bar wait on your bullshit.
A fun rhyme for you: if the bar is busy, make your order easy. If you finally get the attention of a bartender and you order six different kinds of cocktail, you will never get their attention again. Trust me. I bartended. I will ignore you like my life depends on it, because no $4 tip is worth spending ten minutes making all of your frilly bullshit. Keep it strictly to beers, shots, ___ and soda’s, and canned or bottled items. If you must order a cocktail, make it a single kind of cocktail that all of your friends agree on, because it usually it takes the same amount of time to make one of those cocktails as it does to make four, and this way, your bartender is less likely to spit in your drink and steal your card information.
4. DON’T heckle the drug doers, fuckers, and shitters.
The club bathroom is a magical place where magical, disgusting, glorious things take place. From sex to oral sex, there is something about a bathroom stall at three thirty in the morning that just loosens people up. Whether they are having sex, doing drugs, or shitting, leave them the fuck alone. It isn’t your place to step in and either stop or encourage them, and if they’re shitting, they may have your pity, but not your heckling, because they are clearly having an extraordinarily bad experience of their own, they don’t need you chiming in. Nor is it ever acceptable to pull out your phone and take a flash photo of it (unless they tell you to and are into that sort of thing). Only limp-dick fuckers go, ‘whoaaaaaaa there’s someone ___ in there!’ for all of the bar and the bouncer to hear. One time my friends were doing drugs in the bathroom and this photographer came in and yelled ‘WOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING DRUGS?!” and took a flash photo. He is now shunned from every venue in New York City. Don’t spoil the fun. Keep it low-key. Pretend to have seen cocaine and tits before.
5. DO respect ‘the wall’.
‘The wall’ is what you hit when you’ve simply had enough; when it’s five or six in the morning, you’re doused in other people’s sweat, the drugs are wearing off, you’ve vomited the beer up twice, and you simply can’t fathom even a drop of whatever’s in the bottle that your mates are holding in front of you and chanting for you to chug. The wall must be respected, for beyond it lie only a wasteland of pissy sheets and concussive head-to-Uber-car-door collisions. If your friend is hitting their end in earnest, it’s time to cut them loose and put them in a car back to wherever they came from, because if you drag them beyond that point, they sure as shit will drag you the next time the tables are turned.