NYC NOW - What's Next for New York City Nightlife?

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

New York City is the city that never sleeps, and its nightlife shapes the city’s culture, economy, and politics. In this episode, we speak with Ariel Palitz, the city’s first director of the Office of Nightlife, about building the office, the systemic challenges nightlife faces, and what the city can do to build more creative and inclusive spaces for life at night.

New York City really is the city that never sleeps. From the birth of hip-hop in the Bronx to jazz clubs in Harlem and warehouse parties in Brooklyn, nightlife has shaped New York's music, culture, and politics for generations. That's why the city has an office of nightlife and a person whose job it is to look out for the city after dark. The office was created under former mayor, Bill de Blasio, with its first director appointed in 2018. That first Nightlife mayor was Ariel Pallets. She served as the city's senior executive director of Night Live from 2018 to 2023. As the city enters a new political era, we wanted to check in with her about what's happening in New York Nightlife

right now and what the next chapter could look like for the city that never sleeps. Ario, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. You know, I have my own ideas of what a nightlife mayor is supposed to be out there doing. Can you explain exactly what your job was? Sure. Creating an Office of Nightlife was really essential for New York City. It was already a movement, a global movement that was happening in places like Amsterdam and Berlin and London, where there was a dedicated representative for this critical hospitality industry that was not only being misrepresented, but many could say historically criminalized. A lot of people thought, oh, what do you go out every night? Is it just models and bottles? And we like to say the nightlife

mayor job is a day job, which surprises a lot of people. And actually owning a nightclub is a day job, too. A lot of what you do that happens at night first has to happen during the day. And so the office of nightlife itself is a full running. office. When I had it, it was only me plus two. Now it's been expanded. There's four to represent this huge industry in this big city. But it really is about identifying systemic issues, coming up with creative, non-enforcement solutions, developing policies about the nuts and bolts, about what it means to operate a venue, as well as what it means to interface with the city. You first came on during the Blasio's administration. I'm curious, why do you think that the city

needed its own nightlife department during that time? I mean, we've always needed one. Many people, when seeing all these offices of nightlife opening up around the world, the main question is not why is there an office of nightlife, but why not? We are the city that never sleeps. Yeah, more like what took so long. Exactly. Let's go back to 2018 when you've been. You've been a city. We've been in a city. We're first took on this job. You briefly talked about some of the systemic issues. Can you give us an idea of what they were during that time? Sure. I mean, we could go back all the way to the prohibitionary era, but if we want to stay modern, I mean the Giuliani era as well, where this industry and the people were overly enforced, unsupported, targeted within even the LGBTQ community,

within the 70s, it was illegal to sell alcohol to, you know, gay people in a gay bar. Most venues were underground. There was a very swift and excessive enforcement through a program called March, multi-agency support for hospitality. And there was no representation or respect for how hard this industry is. and the safe havens for the creative communities that it was creating. And it was time to reframe a framed industry, to reframe the people that go out in those venues

and to highlight how essential it is, again, not just nightlife, but life at night where people and the city comes to life and where people can find their chosen families and find safe haven. Right? And just creating the office of nightlife in and of itself, was a signal to the industry without me creating one policy or one initiative that a change was coming. Yeah. And a change came two years after the Office of Nightlife was developed, right? We were hit with the pandemic and it changed everything about the world. But tell me how the pandemic changed nightlife in

New York City. Well, if anyone had questioned, why is there an office of Nightlife? The pandemic answered it pretty quickly. COVID literally. directly hit social spaces where people gathered. We were sheltering in place and what other industry is more focused on the intention of gathering people. So the impact economically as well as just operationally had to cease. Are there parts of the nightlife ecosystem that you feel the pandemic changed for the better? I think gratitude for our space. are nightlife spaces. A lot of talk before the pandemic, New York is dead, nightlife isn't what it used to be. You know, there's no place to go. And the universe was like, well, let me show you what

it really means to have nowhere to go. Right. Right. And no place to be. And so I think there was a lot more gratitude for the industry, for New York nightlife in general, and also for how incredibly complicated and difficult it is to operate. It's a tough industry. Pre-pandemic, post-pandemic. It's still hard, right? It's hard to do. If it was easy, everybody would do it, as they say. You know, some people stress out just trying to get people to their own birthday party.

Right. Imagine having to do that seven nights a week. Chief. Stay tuned for more after the break. You know, before we started taping, we set the A word, affordability. Ah, yes. A lot of people would say that that's the word that got Mom Dani elected even. And it's something that DJs, artists, venue workers, and even people buying tickets are really feeling right now.

I'm wondering from your perspective, how is the affordability crisis reshaping New York City's nightlife? Those fixed costs for operators are only getting higher, rent, insurance, labor costs for workers as well. I think Mondami is certainly on to something to, focus on that and to make it a priority. You know, he's spoken a lot about child care and affordable housing. These are things that also deeply affect and would impact and improve nightlife as well. These are not just daytime issues and struggles. And so I think that's why when he says a different type of nightlife mayor, I think what he's saying is that, yes, This is, again, not just about night life, but life at night.

And how do we support those, whether it's people who work in nightclubs and restaurants, but in hospitals as well as overnight diners and, you know, taxi drivers? And what can we do to minimize those expenses so that we can protect our diversity, protect our workers who work at night, who are having those jobs in order to be able to maybe become a doctor later in life or to become an artist. Where does City Hall actually have the most power when it comes to affordability in nightlife? Well, in nightlife and in hospitality, we have what is called the tip credit that allows for hospitality venues to be able to pay a lower minimum wage if they are making that money back

in tips. And in New York, we know, especially, you know, in all types of venues, being able to make that tip money can far exceed the existing minimum wage. And so there has been talk about raising the minimum wage to $30 and doing away with the tip credit. But this could be really one of the fatal blows to the hospitality industry because it is a high touch industry. We need service. this is not something that can be automated. Right. I don't want to drink from AI. Exactly.

Do you miss being Nightlife Mayor? I don't. You know, in the sense that people ask me, do I miss owning a nightclub and would I do it again? I, you know, been there, done that, number one. I really enjoyed owning a club, but there's only so many ways to fill a Wednesday, right? I did it. I did it to the best of my ability. I'm so proud of what we accomplished.

My job is the first director of the office of nightlife was to create an infrastructure and a foundation for an office that can go on for many generations to come. And after five years under two mayors through a pandemic, I felt like I had truly accomplished what my job in that ecosystem or in that lineage was meant to be. You know, a year from now when, I don't know, you and I are. following the Mamdani administration, and he has a year under his belt, what would you hope was accomplished by the Office of Nightlife? Well, I think it's really important, you know, I'm very encouraged and optimistic about the Mamdami administration's understanding of the importance of maintaining the Office of Nightlife, but also growing the Office of Nightlife. What I would like to see is for this office to grow. And so in order to be able to really do the outreach that I think would be beneficial,

I think Mandami understands that nightlife is not a luxury. It's a necessity. So I would love to see the administration explore all the creative and fun ways that we can expand our nightlife footprint, our life at night footprint, create more affordability by having less regulation, less fines, more cure periods, easier streamlined processes of navigating through the industry, and respecting what it brings to the table. Social justice is at the forefront of what this office also deems as a responsibility and a priority. Nightlife is a social justice movement. We have had so much of the evolution in our culture, whether it be Stonewall or the Harlem Renaissance and understanding that in our spaces, bringing black and white people together to dance in one place was a political

movement, a political statement. And we are also at deep danger, as we know in this country, of all of those rights that we all fought so hard for to slip backward. And so I think that we really do need to continue to see nightlife spaces as places where we stand up for our rights, not only to party, but to simply exist. That's Ariel Pallets. She was the city's first nightlife mayor. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And thank you for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. This is where we go beyond the headlines, you know? If you have any thoughts on nightlife or, as Ariel puts it, life at night, send us an email at NYC now at WMYC.org.

I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.