the gentrification of the club
and why you can't even get in
There’s a certain kind of rage that you get when you see a white girl pass you in line to get into the club.
You knew it that was going to happen, but, when you’re freezing, it’s pretty crash-out inducing.
On a fateful night in the most teeming club scene in the country, I too was passed by blonde and blue (with a green-tint on the outside and speckles of gray, obviously, like a glazed ceramic). Eventually we got in, after I told the bouncer that I knew a girl named “Maddie” inside. We crossed the golden gates into hell and had a great time, but that’s besides the point.
The history of nightclubs, like the history of everything, lives in the spines of Black and Queer people. Once refuges from harm and reality, they now blatantly reckon with the very wounds they once bandaged. Exclusionary and unanswerable, ambiguous and sordid, the club scene in most Big Cities hides its smoking gun behind a transparent sheath with no one to question its innocence.
Time is precious, so I think it’s worth knowing how our hours of 10 to 2 AM came to be.
clubs were always a little racist
Good things always start when someone tells you “no”, and club culture wasn’t any different. Started during the Prohibition Era and in Drag Balls (we will get to that soon), nightclubs emerged from a nationwide protest against alcohol bans, the rise of jazz, and a yearning to feel safe in the 1920s.
Originally conceived for Black patrons, “Black and Tan” clubs attracted both White and Black communities (we know how this story goes) as spaces for “cultural exchange” between races in a period we know as the Harlem Renaissance. Overpriced and sensationalized in recent times, these used to be the first “speakeasies” and created safe spaces for Black listeners to enjoy a night out without fear of racist confrontation.
Basement floors, back rooms, and other ill-kept secret locations housed new ethnic immigrants who could practice their traditions in “public” now. Detroit, Harlem, Chicago, and Cincinnati were the first to participate in the making of these establishments.
So, next time you open a laundromat door in Chicago or a hidden bookshelf into a “secret bar” in New York, know that you are woven into the modern legacy of these spaces that once were havens from the world.
Perhaps the most interesting part of these spaces was the jazz.
Clubs catapulted musicians like Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Waters and became creative hubs for jazz innovation. The ensemble jazz you see today (where they perform in groups) originated from “Black and Tan” clubs. Oftentimes, white musicians came to Black sections of town to listen to jazz and learn from Black musicians.
In 1912, prize fighter and heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson opened the Café de Champion in the Bronzeville district of Chicago. One of the first opulent buildings catered to Black people, it boasted electric fans to cool the interior and was one of the first in the city to do so. The Chicago Tribune announced that only 17/120,000 “colored population” did not attend the opening night party.
New York was not far behind. In a worn basement in 2 Sheridan Square, Barney Josephson opened Café Society in 1938. It was supposedly a place where white customers and Black customers were treated equal. This place was really iconic because it launched the careers of notable jazz performers Billie Holiday, Ruth Brown, and Hazel Scott.
You won’t go anywhere in these Big City jazz scenes without a poster of one of these icons at the entrance.
where it went wrong
Good things turn bad when money creeps.
Once cultural institutions, clubs became financial organizations owned by white owners who exploited Black musicians and treated Black patrons to the door.
The Cotton Club (yeah this was crazy) sold to Owney (own-ey is also crazy) Madden in 1923 and took a turn for the worst. Once called Club Deluxe, he changed the name to “Cotton Club” and restricted clients to only white customers, service staff and almost all entertainers being Black.
Not only did this man change the power structure of the club, but he added some insane posters on the premises too. Racist imagery of Black people as “darkies” in the plantation South and a menu including naked Black men and women dancing around a jungle drum were reminders of a sinister notion. You don’t belong here, they said.
The resilience of the white man showed when race riots couldn’t even stop Cotton Club closure. In 1935 they tried to shut the club down, but in 1936 there was a new location on Broadway and 48th.
Of course, white people fought over ownership of Black people (Jim Crow lives!), particularly musicians and when they would be able to “let them” perform at their clubs. Famous gangster Al Capone was one of the men in the ring, boxing for spots for Louis Armstrong and the like.
Did I forget to mention, the Ku Klux Klan started targeting these clubs? The floor was indeed lava.
But how did this turn into modern clubs today?
where the disco started
First, on drag.
Drag balls were the Mecca of spaces for LGBTQ+ people in the 1880s. William Dorsey Swann, the first drag queen, hosted secret balls in D.C. under the House of Swann. They were a formerly enslaved person who saw to it that the balls continued despite police raids left and right and left again.
If you’ve ever been “mothering”, you should know that the phrase “mother” started in these balls. Family terms denoted rank within ball participants, and “mother” was one of the highest ones reserved for an older person mentoring younger “children”.
Young people in the YMCA heard about these dances in whispers and murmurs. They showed up in cashmere dresses and a spirit unshaken by the grave danger they put themselves in to be there.
The News saw to it that these Balls were scorned. Psychiatrists at the time even weighed in and described Swann’s group as an “organization of colored erotopaths” and a “lecherous gang of sexual perverts”. Like damn, is that all??
Balls evolved to Ballrooms when racism plagues “integrated” drag spaces (who saw this coming…) in the 60s. Black, Latino(a) attendees could “walk” in various categories for cash prizes and trophies. Each participant belonged to a “house”, which evolved to be chosen families that each had “mothers” and “fathers” and operated like a family unit. They often had communal living spaces to shield LGBTQ+ people from oppression and provide belonging and affirmation in their identities.
Ballroom was counterculture. It was a necessity more than anything - resistance was merely an ingredient of that need.
It was a transformative ecosystem that provided sustaining and meaningful embodied experiences for its constituents. From the sonic realm to the corporeal, these spaces were hand-crafted to affirm and protect Queer identity.
Not only were they clubs, they were institutions that supported and started movements. Many attribute the Stonewall Uprising as the start to LGBTQ+ movement, but Swann started it more than 80 years prior! Even the movement to advocate for HIV/AIDs testing and acknowledgement started in these Ballrooms, with support from the very community that the public cast aside.
It is important to acknowledge the intersectionality of the Ballroom, both in its socio-economic circumstances and racial dichotomies. The experiences of Black and Latina Trans women grace us in every day life, spawned from the need to resist language: the most constrictive oppression of them all.
Here’s a brief cultural dictionary of where you got some of your favorite words today:
Real:
came from the “realness” category in Ballroom competitions where contestants had to convincingly portray (typically) heterosexuality as a survival mechanism for mainstream society, they were expected to dress and act in a way that made them “pass” as straight
Queen:
person with honor and leadership in the community
Full Beat:
a full face of makeup applied to perform at Ballrooms
Kiki:
youth ballrooms where young LGBTQ+ people could gather without increasing need for competition
Vogueing/Throwing Shade:
freestyle dance born from House music and Harlem Queer clubs that presents gender as an extravagant performance and is an active form of resistance through dance
Throwing shade was subtle insults directed at each other to impress the audience and judges
Ballrooms gave way to the disco you see today - the original dancing queens.
a haven now for gentrifiers
Did you know that Black and Brown Queer communities couldn’t DANCE in certain establishments before a year ago? For 91 years mind you.
Cabaret Law put dancing restrictions on historical Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ neighborhoods - the zoning remnants of this just got repealed in 2024 after years of strife against it. Zoning laws protected white neighborhoods from experiencing the same result of course.
Discriminating against customers in a club could not be done in any other company, but clubs inherently are exempt from this rule because they are “public accommodations” according to Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Courts have routinely rejected arguments of exclusion in this context because of the fact that they are public spaces.
But what are the more subtle ways the club selects its patrons?
dress code
Ambiguity and dress code are weaponry. Reuben A. Buford May, a sociology professor, has observed firsthand how Black patrons get charged more, while white patrons often waltz in for free. It’s not about profit, it’s about discrimination—especially when dress codes come into play.
The term “velvet rope racism” explains how clubs love the iconography of rap music and hip hop but ban its signature clothing. Owners contend that dress codes are a matter of public safety, citing fights at other nightclubs or police suggestions that the rules keep order. Clubs that pump out hip hop music but ban its signature clothing—gold chains and fresh kicks—end up using these rules to send a message: we don’t want you here.
drinks and music
Also, who allowed for drinks to get this expensive? And the music to get this bad? White women at DJ booths have got to stop!
When gentrifiers move in to neighborhoods, the club starts to show its true colors. Is this a community space or built for profit?
Lots of clubs are still caterers to the cis-gender white man. The math is easy.
8 women = 1 white man buying 8 drinks = what happened at that fateful “Maddie” night at the club
This number is dwindling since everything is getting more expensive these days - all the more reason to bend the rules to let more white men in the club amirite?
That’s a corporation, babes.
Music is a whole other story.
The gentrification of the club exacerbates in the booth. The beat in the ballroom scene, particularly exemplified by the iconic track "The Ha Dance" by Masters at Work, creates a distinct Black queer frequency that challenges traditional musical forms. This beat, born from the cultural hybridity of Black and Brown communities, mixes and remixes existing sounds to forge new possibilities for expression, offering a space where members can explore their desires and create unique sonic experiences.
The more white people in the club, the less hybridity we experience and the less welcoming these spaces become for Black and Brown Queer communities. It is a subtle exclusion, but is the most conniving kind.
This has forced Black and Brown communities to participate in more temporary spaces like raves- places where they can be themselves and leave in secrecy. The nod to speakeasies and places of hiding is uncanny, and should be something to think about when you’re requesting “Sweet Caroline”.
i’m scared now
But what is the most frightening is actually that nightclubs could be vehicles of gentrification themselves. Nightlife is now a tool to revitalize white community and increase wealth in an area.
How unbelievably sad considering how they started.
As Laam Hae explains, it’s a strategic way to "revalorize" neighborhoods for wealthier crowds, often under the guise of safety and order. The result? Spaces that were once queer and Black havens now cater exclusively to those who can afford the steep cover charges and conform to ambiguous dress codes, which are often just coded ways to keep certain people out.
The East Village, Bushwick, Chicago, and other notoriously Queer spaces have been etched out of the Queer going-out agenda. Some clubs even exploit LGBTQ+ symbols and patrons to project liberal agendas. Nothing a white woman loves more than a white gay man!
The club, however, can only handle the interests of one patron and that will always and forever be a man named Chase.
so I shouldn’t go out?
No, go out. Please do. Having fun is important, necessary, and good in trying times. But support your community so it doesn’t get gentrified.
It’s bigger than the club.
The fight against gentrification as a whole means stepping out of the DJ booth. It means supporting affordable housing institutions and tenant rights organizations, and unions that empower workers. It is fighting for rent control and livable wages to improve access to opportunity for marginalized communities. It is fighting for the education of children and public schools so there is a pipeline to cultural reform and ownership. It is backing small businesses until they become profitable and sustainable.
It is saying “this is wrong” at a city council meeting.
We need to make the population more resilient and sufficient, at least for the short term goals we want to achieve.
I later saw this review of the club I was talking about earlier.
The bathroom was too crowded for my liking anyway.
jokes aside the article is fire, review at the end eats too
ah yes, the city of chicago - famously queer space