| Event | The Loft |
| Date | February 15, 2026 |
| Location | Ukrainian National Home, Manhattan, NY |
| Attended | 5 PM – 2 AM |
| Performers | Douglas Sherman and Edowa Shimizu |
Invite Only
Because of its militant theorization of sound as a political force, I had pinned my hopes for escape velocity from our current timeline of crisis on the rave but, if I am being honest with myself, I am getting restless by the repetition: the same parties, the same people, the same drugs, none of which seem to cohere into anything more than the flat affect of Balenciaga sunglasses. This recurrent disappointment was on my mind—I was brooding—while cooking mushrooms and quinoa in my pajamas when J. called again. You should just really come, he said, it only happens, like, three times a year. Fine, I laughed, twist my arm. It was already late in the afternoon on Sunday, with three inches of snow forecasted, and I was planning on spending my evening eating the mushrooms and quinoa along with some baked tofu, flipping between Hasan Piker and Daily Dose of Internet before getting some much needed rest after a weekend of already being out. Being out meant Club Rat at QNCC on Friday night where I spent the entire night sitting down, bumping K, wondering why I wasn't dancing. Part of the reason was an expanding ache in my stomach brought on, perhaps, by the undercooked scrambled eggs I ate for dinner but, having been out almost every weekend since the beginning of the year, I sensed a confluence of other factors. We are living through dark times, repeats everyone to themselves and everyone else all the time. Nightlife, at the least in the niche microcosm of the tiny queer scene in Bushwick in which I orbit, mirrors this darkness but does not catharize it. The spaces are dark, the rooms are dens, the lighting gives Martin Scorsese circa 1976. The sound is often heavy and hard, which aligns with my preference for impact, but the sound systems often feel technically incorrect. I wear earplugs, not so much to prevent tinnitus, which I have already accumulated, but to protect myself from the aesthetics. Everyone, including me, is dissociating as a fugitive mechanism for refusing fascism. Some people, however, are falling down, down flights of stairs, breaking their limbs, crashing out, collapsing. Whatever happened to the joy in communing as a form of political resistance, I wondered, as I took another sniff of the artisanal nasal spray, before farting very loudly into the techno.
Joy at night, it turns out, does exist but you either need to be a member of the Loft or know one as they only admit 298 people to each party. The invitation to the Loft arrives as a form PRINTED ON PAPER with a long and warm message always accompanied with a photo of the Little Rascals and SENT VIA SNAIL MAIL. Members have to fill out the bottom of the form in pen, cut on the dotted line, and MAIL IT BACK with a CHECK. As was explained to me by a member, you have to act fast otherwise you miss out on a spot. I am, I should add, and particularly for any person associated with the Loft, still not a member. To become a member, an existing member (J., in my case) invites you to join them at a party and personally escorts you to the prom-like check-in table where you beg for membership—at least that’s what I did—only to be turned away with a sorry, our rolls are full, try again next time. J. has been a member for twelve years. A. and B.—a cishet married couple with four kids and who dabble in 4-MMC, 3-MMC, and Cialis—have been members for twenty years and it was at their generous invitation that I peeled off my pajamas, refrigerated my mushrooms and quinoa, and headed to the Ukrainian National Home. On arriving, I gave the name of someone whom I do not know to the door person who then crossed off that name from a piece of paper with a pen. In a world built by Resident Advisor, this manner of entry felt acutely nostalgic and welcoming. The Loft, and forgive me in advance for paraphrasing Wikipedia, is a gay party that David Mancuso started throwing somewhere between 1965-70 and it is still alive and thumping in 2026. There is sufficient mystique and lore about Mancuso and the party itself that to reduce that density to journalistic context for my night feels irresponsible. Feel free to do your own research. In its current iteration, when you enter the Ukrainian National Home, there is a well-lit area filled with dancers, food (fresh fruit and cake), large plastic water and lemonade dispensers, and merch tables. The age range is wide, from early twenties to possibly early nineties. Further into the building is a large ballroom packed to the rafters with multicolored balloons encircling the biggest disco ball I have ever seen. Downstairs, in the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant, is a pungent buffet, another smaller dance floor, and a free coat check. Everything is free and the party is BYOB.
On the large, overflowing dance floor in the main ballroom, people—we—conglomerated in a way I have never experienced in my lifetime of being out. The word throng comes to mind, defined us, as we moved, under kaleidoscopic lighting, each adhering to their own stylistic preferences: some seemed to have magically ambled onto the dancefloor directly from the parking lot of a Phish show; some, maybe never having ventured west of Washington Square Park, channelled their best indie sleaze; others summoned the flair you might expect at a funeral and/or a wedding; most wore the most comfortable—tee shirts, sweats, and sneakers. And as we danced, we danced together. We danced with our friends but also with strangers who then became our friends who then disappeared. We danced alone and sometimes in pairs. We danced facing the booth but also away from it. We did not dance to hook up although some people did. We did not dance to show off although there were actual dancers in our midst like the beautiful performer with The New York City Ballet, who made me swoon in asking for my number. We did not dance just with our feet—the proverbial techno stomp—but with a sincerity inherent in our bodies. And, sure, there were, as there are at every other party (even those with rules and stickers), punishers on their phones, shazamming songs, standing still in a beer stenched solidity, but they mostly clung to the edge of the floor for their safety. The legend of the Loft is rooted in the vast timescale of the song selection, which encompasses all manner of soul and disco to wide variations on house to the 2024 hit Water by Tyla, which I somehow knew but did not know, singing without thinking, Make me sweat/Make me hotter/Make me lose my breath/Make me water, which, as I write this, retrospectively feels like an anthem for the night. And nary an oontz of techno. There was also no mixing. Between each song, we clapped our hands, which is to say, we celebrated. The sound system is so well calibrated, I felt as if I was swimming inside expensive headphones. During what felt like a smooth-jazz-meets-a-beat moment, I began to reconsider my priorities. Why do I keep going out to get slapped by techno? Why are there no smooth jazz parties? Or, are there smooth jazz parties, and I just don't know about them? I do not drink and I made the decision to do too much MDMA, which, ultimately, proved a wise one. Apart from the maybe five or maybe thirty minutes when my face turned into a beefsteak tomato, and the dancefloor flipped upside down, and I blurted out to people I only know in professional daylight, I am too fucking high, and I kissed J., and, while pissing in a stall, howled at the wall and to no one in particular who is else on drugs?, the MDMA along with an occasional huff of K mixed with Oxytocin, brought me into proximity with the feeling of being held and handled. I was reduced to flesh, in a room of other fleshes that itself was one giant flesh, all operating in a sweaty tandem. For many of us—who are queer, who moved to get away to New York, for whom family can be a tricky scene—being held and handled can get complicated but the Loft felt like an intimate reunion—it was the anniversary party—that runs the gamut of time replete with Party City Valentine's Day decorations and a balloon drop, populated by people who I do not know but whom I instantly recognized as intimates. Ethnomusicologist Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta, in his superb book Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor, describes this feeling as liquidarity, a fluid solidarity that does not require the rote exchanging of signifiers we experience in more quotidian social interactions: gender, resume, ancestry, neighborhood, and so forth. Enveloped in this warm feeling, I felt the inverse of imposter syndrome—belonging. At one point, as I was peaking and therefore failing, my words disintegrating in my mouth, to articulate the nuances of my bisexuality to the increasingly handsome ballet dancer, I ended up standing next to two older artists, likely in their eighties. Maybe because I was on drugs or maybe because they were on drugs or maybe because I was hard of hearing or maybe because they were hard of hearing, our pleasantries became instantaneously yet pleasurable nonsense. This is how I want my time with my family to feel, I remember feeling, and by that I mean, relaxed.
As the party wound down and I came down, songs took on a weirder melodic feel. One particular track gave me the mouth feel of what it might taste like to live in Bikini Bottom. Another track took on the ambiance of Neil Young. Can we get something to eat after this? I asked J., I need an interstitial space between here and home. After the lights came up for the group photo, for those who last until the end, J. and I stumbled up 2nd Avenue to 14th Street in the fresh slippery snow and flagged an unlikely city bus to Coppelia, where the hardness of the world was immediately recalled to me. Immigrants were working the nightshift, serving loud, drunk Americans fighting, and couples weeping and arguing. Our table was wobbly and when a weary middle aged server bent low to fix it, the sense of wonder and justice I had experienced all evening was immediately eviscerated. J. and I got to talking over guac and chips and NA ginger spritzes, about how your dreams, even if you actually achieve them, can surprise you as a burden, how capitalism is an ugly bland machine churning everything into maximal profit for shareholders, how we are living and dying through dark times. I banged on the table to J., I need to be with other people outside of time. It was four in the morning. At the corner of 14th and 7th Avenue, and surprisingly sober after inhaling a Cuban sandwich and a piece of chocolate cake the size of a clutch, I felt what I wish for us to all feel at the end of the night or the break of day, leaving some party or club or warehouse, when much of the city, and all its nice nuclear families, is asleep; I felt luminous, vibrated by a dancefloor where exuberance was in the mix, where a person wearing a FUCK TRUMP tee-shirt from 2016 wandered through the crowd, handing out Hershey's Kisses as Stand on The Word by the Jourbert Singers played over and into us.