#if you want to see a space with a lot of diverse prolifers go the pro life page on Reddit

[griseldagimpel]

300 Works on AO3 Check In

I now have 300 works up on AO3. The only harassment from Antis I've received is a hate Ask from an Izzy-Anti and a nasty comment from an anon really upset that I included a pit bull in my fic.

I've also gotten dogpiled, rude comments, and my works reported for talking about racism, but those people don't typically identify as "Antis".

For that matter, you get people who do identify as Antis but don't harass anyone. And most people in fandom have something they dislike but keep that to their own blogs rather than harassing anyone, even if they feel really strong about it. Like, in my current fandom (The Locked Tomb), a lot of the fandom really does not like John Gaius (my blorbo) or second cousin incest ship Camilla/Palamedes (my OTP), but I have not received any harassment for my fandom content here.

So let's talk about strawmen, exaggerated harm, and Making Up A Guy.

See, the reason I started doing these check ins is that I'd encounter breathless warnings about Antis harassing people across fandom. Don't leave comments turned on for your dark fic, the warnings would go, or you'll get harassed. You can't ship X without getting harassed, I was told.

And it just wasn't matching up with my experiences, even though I'm a prolific fic writer who writes a variety of content for a multitude of ships.

Oh, Antis who harass people exist. Like I said, I've encountered them. And I've seen the same happen with others. But I feel like the fear of Antis on a pan-fandom basis outstrips the actual threat. (It seems like some fandoms have a worse Anti harassment problem than others. Our Flag Means Death is bad, and I've heard horror stories about Voltron. But that's the thing: the warnings I see don't narrow their scope to a few specific fandoms; they treat it as if every fandom is as bad as Voltron.)

Now let's talk about Tiffany G. Last year, Tiffany G ran for the AO3 board. Now, like all candidates, she had to meet certain volunteer requirements; not just anyone can run for an AO3 board position.

Tiffany G made some comments about wanting to push back against misconceptions of AO3, and fandom lost its damn mind. She got accused, no lie, of being an infiltrator spy for the Chinese government. Hey, if you're ever wondering why the AO3 board isn't more diverse, it's because when a Chinese fan ran, fandom rallied together to slander her as a spy for the Chinese government. Fans openly celebrated when she lost. Which, you know, has to be a really shitty experience for a devoted AO3 volunteer.

And she was positioned as an Anti and a threat to fandom.

Fandom collectively Made Up A Guy. The phantom menace they'd made up didn't reflect who Tiffany G actually was or what she wanted. It was a caricature - a strawman for fandom to band together and destroy. But there was a real human person being targeted by all that ire.

So what's going on?

Well, out in meat space, there is a lot of censorship and repression, from the U.K. banning protests to the U.S. banning everything from books to gender affirming care to a thousand other shitty things happening all over the globe.

And that can make people feel genuinely powerless. Making Up A Guy to destroy is easy. It makes people feel like they've accomplished something.

But they haven't accomplished anything.

Well, except for probably making one dedicated AO3 volunteer (Tiffany G) feel like shit. Good job, everyone. You didn't stop fascism, but you hurt one random person.

And this is what all the warnings about Antis harassing people are about, why they're broad instead of narrow and why they tend to overstate the [real!] problem.

Because it's about Making Up A Guy that fans can feel so brave for opposing.

Because that's easier than actually doing something.

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: Children of the Sea’s Director on How Doraemon Taught Him About Filmmaking

  Ayumu Watanabe is one of the most versatile under-the-radar directors in the past few years. His works have ranged from the funny comedy/drama Space Brothers, to the classic Doraemon movies, to the nostalgic and bittersweet TV adaptation of After the Rain. Today we sit down with him to discuss his latest and grandest work yet: Children of the Sea, a movie that hit Netflix and other streaming services earlier this month.

  Children of the Sea is a movie focusing on a girl named Ruka, and her mysterious connections to two other kids — Sora and Umi — as they investigate the unnatural disappearance of ocean life. The bonds of their friendship are tested by fate, the call of nature, and adolescence as they find themselves intertwined with a greater force than anything they could have imagined.

  Before the movie hit streaming services this month, we got a chance to talk to Ayumu Watanabe and take a look at the themes of this movie, the incredible animation and work put into it, and what it was like working with the famous Joe Hisashi (composer for many Ghibli films).

  What is challenging adapting such a dense and mysterious manga from the prolific Daisuke Igarashi?

  First, it was the visual aspect. We aimed to get the atmosphere of the manga just right. We didn’t want to simplify the information. Especially for the close-ups, we drew in more elements to make a stronger impression.

  Then there was the structure. We didn’t have enough runtime to fit the manga’s expansive story, so we narrowed it down to the points that maximized the appeal of the manga. And for the parts that didn’t make it into the movie, we decided to leave it to the manga. We wanted to narrow the story to being about a girl to open the door to a vast world.

  I hope we were able to achieve it.

  Children of the Sea uses a mix of traditional animation as well as CG animation. Could you tell us a little about how you integrated both aspects to make such a visceral experience?

  Everyone on the team was aware of what we were pursuing, and we thought about what we need to do to achieve it. What we wanted to animate, to film…we thought of those things first and how to make them come to life, rather than primarily focusing on technique. I think that was all influenced by how much of an impact the original manga had on us.

    You’ve worked on a variety of adaptations in the past decade, ranging from Space Brothers, Doraemon, and After the Rain. Was there a particular work or experience that helped you tackle adapting Children of the Sea?

  I learned everything I needed to know about animating films from Doraemon. Films have an audience waiting for them, and I was able to experience the wonder of sharing emotions with them. I also learned the harsh reality of when things didn’t go well, either. What does the audience want? I value the determination to identify and show it.

The way I approach any property or work is the same. All of the films I worked on were titles that I liked. And I am really fortunate for that.

  Some of the animation in Children of the Sea is incredibly inventive. I’ve heard that a variety of techniques were used, including backward imposing of CG on genga, mirroring the sea’s lighting with composite, etc. What was the most technically challenging moment to create in this movie and why?

  It was difficult to determine how much to express in the film. Simply put, it wasn’t easy to decide where the goal was. All the staff made every cut, every scene with their heart and soul. The more effort we put in, the better it got. We could have continued working on this film forever, but then we would lose sight of the goal.

  It wasn’t about the technique; it was about our spirit. The retouching of every drop. Matching the CG to the hand-drawn parts. The magnificent motion and lighting to create the size of the whale. Also, the movement and denseness of the water that surrounds it. Coloring it. Anywhere we can put in the effort, we can keep working, lol.

I don’t know if this answers your question. But it was always the ideals that led us and not the techniques.

    Ruka is a delightful and refreshing female protagonist. She’s feisty, impulsive and wears her heart on her sleeve, but she’s also struggling with some personal issues. Could you tell us some of the work that went into the process of making her such an engaging protagonist?

  Ruka is a difficult character. I’m not a teen nor a female, so it was hard to understand her emotions. Especially because I think that she didn’t understand herself either. I patiently waited until she started to move on her own. Then, I was able to understand what she was thinking. Words are so light and fluffy, but if she doesn’t put it in words, no one will comprehend her. But it’s so hard to put in words…her thoughts went in circles. She was always wavering, like a flower floating in the water.

  What was it like working with Joe Hisashi? What were some core musical elements that you wanted to bring out in this film?

  It was my dream to have Hisaishi-sensei to compose for me, so I’m excited that it was fulfilled. I am a huge fan of his. I heard his music for the first time when I was a teenager and was fascinated. I also think that he is best-suited composer for this film. His unique style of minimalistic was perfect for this property.

What was important was the objectivity of the music. As an entity that overlooks the story, the theme simply flows with occasional silent moments to casually snuggle up next to the audience. But in the festive scene, it is firm and lifts our emotions. When you realize it, the score envelops those who are watching. That is the kind of music Hisaishi-sensei creates.

    Speaking of music, the sound design of this film was incredibly detailed. Could you go into what that process was like and how you synced it with the animation and soundtrack to make those moments?

  Mr. Kasamatsu has incredible instincts. He has the ability to come up with sounds that don’t exist. And the sense to put in no sound at all when necessary. It was refreshing to have scenes that don’t have a score, but you felt like you could hear something. He pulled back to match the music and the dialogue.

For the scenes where I wanted the audience to focus, he was discreet, using extreme bass. His use of range that didn’t create sound was also wonderful. I learned a lot about sound design from him.

  Children of the Sea captures many sweeping themes - growing up in a world where there are more questions than answers, the cycle of nature, and finding the beauty in our surroundings and the surreal. Is there a particular moment or theme in the film that you found most interesting or personally moving? If so, what was it and why?

  This film is completed when the viewer interprets it freely. It makes it interesting that the interpretations differ. That indicates diversity. Everyone is part of this world. I think it would be wonderful if we can acknowledge our differences yet share the same awareness. I believe this film gives a clue to how we should exist while depicting the mysteries and joys of life.

    Was there any additional scenes or stories you’d like to have incorporated from the manga into the movie that didn’t make it in?

  There are many scenes that didn’t make it. I wish I could have included them. Especially the background of Umi and Sora, Anglade and Jim’s past, etc. It would be great if we can depict them in Children of the Sea 2, but this project only exists in my heart. Jokes aside, we made it so that the stories we couldn’t include in the film would be shown in the manga, so it would be great if you can read the manga as well. 

  Any last words you’d like to share to Western fans?

  I’m excited that everyone will get to see the film. How you interpret the film is up to you. Please watch it with an open mind and accept the story as it is first. I would be happy if you enjoy it. And I would love to hear your thoughts.

  Children of the Sea can be watched on Netflix, Google Play, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and is available for purchase via Blu Ray/DVD by GKIDS. Our thanks to GKIDS for the opportunity. 

  Got a favorite Ayumu Watanabe work? Enjoyed Children of the Sea? Leave your comments below!

      When not finding ways to doom all her ships, Natasha can often be found on her twitter as @illegenes, or writing more about anime on the blog Isn’t It Electrifying! Feel free to swing by and say hi.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[alivingroomatthebottomofalake]

20 tracks to help celebrate International Women’s Day 2019!

Here is a top 20 type list of music by the women who have inspired me to not only love and make music, but to be a better fucking person in the world. It is in no way exhaustive, but I wanted to share some favourite pieces of music from inspirational women.

Happy International Women's Day. Keep shaking the tree.

Bjork: Who Is It? Bjork has just always been my go to when people ask, "who is your favourite musician?" I can't really think of anyone more influential on me, from how I hear music, to how I compose, how I think about the world. So what better song to kick off this list than one asking the very same question?

Who Is It? It is you Bjork. Always you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppXfsX9ph7k

YoshimiO: Oizumio (OOIOO) From Boredoms to OOIOO, OLaibi, and more. Whether on drums, or guitar or vocals or trumpet or whatever madness she tries her hand at, the music is always phenomenal. This track is taken from the all female band OOIOO's second album Feather Float.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQcDd5kCGSk

Braids: Lemonade Canadian group Braids have changed a lot over the years, but this is when they were at their best (sorry, but that's just how I feel eh). Such effortlessness in the way the songs connect and flow, it's a true wonder. Yet the lyrics are hard and fierce. This album, "Native Speaker" is one of my all time favourite albums to just chill out with. And this is how it opens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPZmcgUBJM

Melt Banana: Circle Jack (Chase the magic words, Lego Lego) When I first heard this band my head exploded. It still does. This song was the first thing I heard by the band. I can't believe the way this woman maintains such an energy from song to song. It's fucking brutal. This song is from the album Charlie, which for me is still the best one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKmyeH0nA6Q

Amiina: Crocodile Starting life as a string group but quickly expanding into a lush cinematic ensemble of various timbres and possibilities, Amiina are one of my favourite ever live performances, opening for Sigur Ros (and stealing the show with their amazing and entertaining personalities). This track is from the album Fantomas, an interesting record where the group scored a soundtrack to the old school silent movie of the same name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N8qw8Mr4TE

Eliane Radigue: Islas resonantes No one comes close to touching on the infinitesimal the way that Eliane Radigue does. Her work is a true extension of time and space, a hypnotic exploration of patience and true extended listening. She was also a pioneer of synthesis, and pretty much single-handedly created the drone genre. Many of her works are enormous in duration, and thus here is one favourite in part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RrsiGmLp_E

Emel: Ensen Dhaif Tunisian singer Emel blew my mind when I saw her live at MOFO last year. I had already fallen for this album, but live… What a fucking voice. Such a presence on stage too. The most humble spirit, and such a unique voice in popular music right now. I have no idea about her lyrics, but it still moves me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXv5ByGSsbA

Evelyn Glennie. I wanted to put a track from Glennie's improvised album "Shadow behind the Iron Sun on the list, but couldn't find an easy link. So instead, enjoy this performance video. Glennie is deaf, and has been most of her career, but that hasn't stopped her from being one of the most formidable voices in the world of percussion music. The aforementioned album is a masterpiece, and she is an inspiring educator as well as performer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw05QRdBiis

Fatima Al Qadiri: Dragon Tattoo Al Qadiri's music is so much more than just fun, but it manages to make you think at the same time as funk out. Her production is fresh and her minimal layers and messed up approach to beat scattering is amazing. This album is probably my favourite and this song is super infectious. Definitely a high point in recent electronic music for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmSDgtolWKI

FKA Twigs: Give Up. LP1 by FKA Twigs is an emotional ride for me. And it's made even better by the clever twists on pop sounds and formulae that FKA Twigs plays around with. There's heaps of artistry in here, but also heaps of feeling. This song in particular just made me break down every time the chorus kicked in, and still kind of does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO7k_n5379I

IKI: Archaea Scandinavian vocal group IKI are a pretty special thing. All 5 singers are amazing in their own right, but they're also really experimental and adventurous, a character that is missing in a lot of vocal only groups. They also all have a unique sound and unique approach to electronic manipulations, which keeps the flavours interesting from moment to moment/track to track. Also, not to single any of them out, but I met Johanna Sulkunen and she is a really generous soul with lots of great ideas about music. This song is from Oracle, their most recent album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuB9OHJTh50

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Existence in the Unfurling One of the biggest names in synthesiser music right now, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is doing amazing things with old school and new school systems, making some of the most lush, rich, and unique sounding music that mixes the 70s era flavours with a more NOW character. EARS was the album that I first heard, and since saw her perform live. Such a great performer, and she was also a really nice person, who enjoyed a good chat about gear. So that;s also nice. This track is the closer from EARS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gerjJPKPfSw

Maja Ratkje: Vacuum Ratkje's voice is amazing and super versatile, she is also a diverse and super accomplished composer and improvisor. She performs with and in many amazing groups, including Phantom Orchid Orchestra (with Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Shayna Dunkelman and others). This song was my introduction to her work, I first heard it when I was working on a piece with dancer Susan Van Den Ham back in the day. Life changed. The album this is from is called "Voice" and it's entirely Rakje exploring vocal and microphone techniques. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XB8fB3QAQs

Phantom Orchid Orchestra: Red Blue and Green An all star ensemble starring Ikue Mori – electronics, Zeena Parkins – electric and acoustic harps, synths, omnichord, objects, Sara Parkins – violin, Maggie Parkins – cello, Shayna Dunkelman – percussion, Maja Soveig Kjelstrup Ratkje – voice and electronics, and Hild Sofie Tafjord – French horn and electronics. Insane and dense contemporary compositions from some of the best musicians alive today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKgF9tBcyss

Nat Grant: Momentum Nat will go down in history with names like Oliveros and Radigue, as a pioneer of contemporary sound practice. As a drummer and percussionist, she is a virtuoso, and as a sound artist she is one of the most dedicated and adventurous listeners/sounders around. Her momentum project shows her extreme dedication to the field of sound. An ongoing practice based project, it is worth starting at the beginning and following it as she continues it. It's one of the best things that has ever happened in music.

https://natgrantmusic.bandcamp.com/album/momentum-box-set

Pauline Oliveros: A Woman Sees How the World Goes With No Eyes There is possibly no one more important in the world of sound than Pauline Oliveros. Her theories of deep listening have shaped the field of sound art and contemporary music practice so strongly. Her works are diverse, from accordion improvisations to tape experiments and more. This piece is a stand out for me, and considering how much work there is to go through, acts as a beautiful starting point for further exploration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hydO1JjMlno

Sarah Davachi: ghosts and all Davachi's work explores stasis and drone, but is also so much more than that. Whether working with synths or acoustic instruments, her music is delves deep into the sonosphere, and invites the listener to really commit to the joyous act lot deep listening. This piece is from the album Vergers, an album made entirely with the EMS VCS3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9V3TT4IpAE

Suzanne Ciani: Concert At WBAI Free Music Store Analogue synth maestro Suzanne Ciani is another one of those artists who totally defined their field, in this case the field of electronic/synthesiser music. The works that she created for the Buchla system are seminal. Her work spans decades and she has always been at the forefront of her field. This particular piece was recorded live in 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCfRqIqnSNY

Yuka Honda: Hydroshpere A bad ass composer/producer and keyboard player, Yuka Honda has several amazing solo records to her name, as well as being one half of the incredible experimental pop duo Cibo Matto. More recently she also produced an opera. She is an amazing artist and prolific too. This track is from her 2010 album heart Chamber Phantoms, an album that blends mad jazz vibes with ambient around pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnWu4Okhfc

[nyfacurrent]

Business of Art | Neurodivergent Artists Build Community

“My advice would be to look for each other and look after each other—be generous and share skills.” - Sonia Boué

Imagine a time when neurodiversity is integrated into the art world’s everyday vocabulary. Is this a new concept for you? Neurodiversity stipulates that neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. Increasingly, more and more people—and artists—identify as neurodivergent, or as individuals who diverge from the dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning. These differences can include Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autistic Spectrum, and others.

Now imagine an average event or opportunity for artists. This may be a networking event that features unstructured conversations, or an open call for funding that requires you to prove a strong network of support. For neurodivergent artists, these ubiquitous realities can present many challenges that often go unseen.

As a way of acknowledging barriers to access and offering solutions, we’ve invited Sonia Boué to share her experiences and recommendations. Boué is a visual multiform autistic artist and a prolific blogger on autism and art. Read her writings here, and visit her website to learn more about her practice. Since being diagnosed as autistic in 2016, Boué created WEBworks, a network and mentoring project funded by Arts Council England based on her own experiences and research. Boué designs projects, mentors, provides training, and consults for arts organizations with the goal of creating opportunity for neurodivergent artists.  

Says Boué: “I love my work because it is really varied and I get to work with some seriously talented neurodivergent creatives. Working with organizations is also fascinating and rewarding when you get to see thinking evolve.” Read Boué’s advice for neurodivergent and introverted artists below, as well as arts administrators.

NYFA: You’ve talked about “network ableism” and its impact on you in your quest to fund your projects. Can you tell us more? How do you define ableism in this context? 

Sonia Boué (SB): Network ableism in my experience is the assumption that social privilege (ability) is a baseline we all have access to if and when we want it. Because most opportunity in the arts involves some networking, this is a serious access issue for us. 

We can’t all summon up a smile and waltz into a room—and there can be many very good reasons why not, some of which may be neurological. For example, dyspraxia, which affects motor coordination and sometimes speech, can make these situations hard to navigate. We may not recognize faces or be able to remember names.

There’s a lot of shaming around not being "socially able” so it takes courage to say it. Decades of not showing up can mean that you don’t understand how conventional networks function. I had to unpick a lot of this to learn how to write a funding bid. 

Social assumption also runs through the kind of Arts Council England funding bid I needed to make for my project. Your idea may be brilliant but unless you can find partners to back you (network klaxon!) you will not succeed.

NYFA: You’ve written that when you encounter an ableist comment, you think, “this person needs training – and I (and all my autistic colleagues) hold much of the missing knowledge.” How can institutions work to welcome and incorporate this knowledge? 

SB: It’s a brilliant question, and this issue is in the room always. Institutions just aren’t seeing it because of the social stigma involved. So first I think it needs to go on the agenda. Staff will also be autistic, neurodivergent, or introverted. 

Then it’s important to invite us in to your organization formally. We are consultants, speakers, and trainers. My view is that we should be paid for our work which is incredibly valuable to arts organizations as we are authentic voices. 

But it takes more than a training day! Building trust with community is also very important for any organization; ultimately it’s about relationships. Consider commissioning a review of marketing and events from neurodivergent perspectives. 

You can tell a lot about an organization from their use of language. Knowing who you are talking to and getting your message right are an absolute must. Delivering value to community is also essential. 

NYFA: Do you have thoughts on how organizations that emphasize in-person events can make them more welcoming to neurodivergent artists? 

SB: If you mean networking events, this is a bit like asking a wheelchair user whether they are sure they wouldn’t like to try the stairs just in case! But here are things which can help with in-person events. 

Personally, I need people on the inside who know me well, and access to the door. Environment matters greatly; is your building accessible for those with sensory sensitivity? Will your event be noisy, involve crowds, and involve mainly unstructured chats? Tell us! 

Information is the name of the game. I advise always publishing clear and detailed information giving a sensory menu for neurodivergent attendees so they can plan for what to expect from the event in terms of challenge. 

It’s the genuine thoughtfulness and attention to detail that counts in the welcome. Providing lots of options is also vital. Is there a quiet room with soft furnishing and dim lights, or outdoor spaces? Are there specific structured elements? 

Finally, the offer has to be right. If the event holds no interest, I’m not coming. Look into programming with a consultant from the community. 

NYFA: Are there resources or voices that you’d especially recommend to arts administrators looking to learn more? 

SB: Essentially we are talking about a culture shift in our understanding that humans are neurodiverse beings. Often I’ve found that the adaptations that suit neurodivergent people can benefit us all. This is about increasing options and thinking about individuality.

I recommend these neurodivergent thinkers, bloggers, creatives, and resources:

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism

Autism and Expectations: De-Mystifying Autism 

Dan Holloway, Rogue Interrobang

Katherine May 

Sonja Zelić

Kruse on adaptations to environments

Dr. Kate Fox  

Dr. Damian Milton

Jon Adams

I don’t particularly recommend sourcing resources from disability arts organizations that aren’t neurodivergent-led. My experience is that the thinking is often not there yet, despite some best efforts. 

Personally, I like to be very specific and stick to what I know. I wouldn’t try to advocate for other groups and always try to remember that within neurodivergent groups, there’s probably greater diversity than in the general population. 

NYFA: Many artists, for a variety of reasons, feel the typical networking advice is unhelpful or exclusionary. And we ourselves have given this advice! Let’s reframe the conversation: what is some more inclusive and effective networking advice that organizations and artists can begin to share with each other? 

SB: I think it’s worth unpicking what some of the difficulties are in quite some detail, as I began to hint earlier. Networking can be hellish if you can’t process language in real-time speed, for example. So this needs an honest and open two-directional approach. 

Have you ever been in a room with someone and texted them? I’m sure most of us have. Text slows things right down, and, you can use emojis! Result! Often we’re critical of using technology when we’re face-to-face, but if this could be an adaption, why not? 

It’s an exciting time to be breaking through the barriers to invisible disability. What holds us back is often social censure, which is ultimately ableist. Organizations could lead the way in creating a new trend. 

If we think about modalities, this is also helpful. How many ways of being in a room and communicating can you think of? I also love the ‘gateway friend’ idea: a known, trusted person who can enable you to get in to a venue and out again. 

But we need to understand adaptations to in-person networking are limited in effectiveness because—wash, rinse, repeat—we have to keep it up which is exhausting. Or it just doesn’t work for us. This knowledge puts the onus on change. 

NYFA: What are your favorite means of networking online? 

SB: Blogging, blogging, blogging! This has been the most effective tool in my entire armory. I also love Twitter. I began with a Facebook artists’ page many years ago, then progressed to a professional platform with the wonderful a-n Blogs.

My Wordpress blog has been my most significant online site, far outstripping any other. I’m also warming to Instagram as a more visual platform but have been slower to take it on. I think it’s hard to work across platforms but probably essential. 

NYFA: Can you tell us how WEBworks, an autistic-led peer support and mentoring group, came to be? How could this kind of group be replicated by autistic and neurodivergent creatives elsewhere? 

SB: WEBworks is unique due to the individuals who’ve formed it. It may provide a transferable model but we can’t yet know that, I feel. It developed from my Arts Council England research into autistic project leadership. 

I happened on a mentoring model through my own need to understand the ‘neurotypical’ workplace and then found other artists like me who needed support. Genuine enablement through supported opportunities and specific adaptations are a powerful combination we use. 

I now know this to be a responsive and relational approach and will be writing about it in more detail for my Arts Council England project evaluations. I hope to publish some of our findings next year. 

NYFA: What are your favorite resources for neurodivergent artists looking to build community or navigate the art world? 

SB: There’s no substitute for trawling the internet and I’ve built my entire community by sharing work and spending untold hours in online research. Social media platforms can be game-changing for us, though of course we need ‘realtime' contacts too. 

Often virtual and realtime contact overlaps as relationships deepen. I think the usefulness of contacts and resources could be quite specific in each case. My advice would be to look for each other and look after each other—be generous and share skills. 

Even neurodivergent networks can seem distant and closed from the outside. The most effective antidote to professional isolation is to send powerful smoke signals online, from which you can seek out more local neurodivergent contacts. We’re growing in number as we discover identity 

Being safe online is an issue I’d like to mention. We can all be taken advantage of, so I would also counsel caution. Take things slowly and allow genuine connection and trust to build up. 

Regarding the art world, in the United Kingdom I recommend the wonderfully inclusive online artists network a-n Blogs, whose support has been exceptional including publishing articles about this topic! 

Viewing fantastic online art content when you can’t get to many shows provides inspiration and learning. I love to watch the Tate Modern YouTube channel, and I do follow many wonderful U.K. and international artists on Twitter and Instagram, which helps me keep in touch, 

But I feel it is vital that neurodivergent artists don’t get dispirited or compare themselves to more neurotypical artists so I watch the scene with a dispassionate eye. I’m interested in building from within and remaining authentic which includes valuing the unique qualities of our neurological status.

NYFA: What has mentorship meant for you, both as a mentee and a mentor?  

SB: Trust is at the heart of the mentor/mentee relationship, and it’s a real joy, not to say privilege. I believe such support in an art practice is underrated. We are supposed to know how to navigate an uncertain profession solo.

For myself it has led to professional progression where, despite some early breaks, the complexities of the art world would have thrown me entirely. In many ways it’s about lending experience and gently steering.

Mentoring is a fascinating process because you learn as much as your mentee in many ways. It has allowed me to deepen my understanding of neurodivergent challenge in the arts. 

NYFA: You’ve credited successes in your career in part to your “own autistic methods.” Do you have any thoughts on how artists can not only accept their individual differences, but celebrate them? 

SB: I really feel we have to embrace a ‘not broken’ philosophy. Some of the artists I work with have acquired huge reservoirs of self-doubt and even despair. Our first job is to realign some of this thinking. 

Sometimes it’s my job to sustain hope and provide consistency. Our sensory challenges and issues with executive function can make a practice feel fragmentary until we begin to piece it all together. 

The worry that you can never ‘finish’ a piece of work can be quelled if you understand that the process is what interests you most and you can begin to value this. Transformation from ‘failure’ to a more performative practice can take place. 

How we frame our creative lives to ourselves really matters. Reconnecting to the source of our creativity—our brains—as valid and useful is incredibly empowering. 

- Interview Conducted by Mirielle Clifford, Program Officer, Online Resources

Sonia Boué is an Anglo-Spanish visual artist based in the U.K. She holds degrees in History of Art (BA, Sussex University), and in Applied Social Psychology (MSc, Oxford University). She is also a trained Art Therapist (Sheffield Hallam University). This background informs her research-based multiform art practice, which focuses on themes of exile and displacement, with a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War.

Inspired by the NYFA Source Hotline, #ArtistHotline is an initiative dedicated to creating an ongoing online conversation around the professional side of artistic practice. Our goal is to help artists discover the resources needed, online and off, to develop sustainable careers.

This initiative is supported by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Images, from top: Derek Fordjour (Fellow in Painting ’18); Angelina Gualdoni (Fellow in Painting ’08,’15)

[tamaracamerablog-blog]

How to Get Inspiring Blogging Topics

A simple and effectual method of interaction is blogging, which is constantly growing all through the internet for greater than ten years.

In right this moment's world, it envelops a diverse assortment of various concerns, also being itself a instrument in web promotion, whereas in the early 90's, bloggers usually maximized their private info to diary type annotations.

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Krystine Kercher writes about lifestyle hacks, well being ideas, and being the mother of a teenaged daughter. She shares ideas about writing, her views on the world stage, and tales about her personal fiction fantasy books. And she sells her creations by way of Zazzle, and her books on Amazon. She's a artistic author and can write or edit your ebook for those who need her to, plus a wide range of different companies.

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It's hard to stand out with a blog at the present time. Each different person seems to be writing about their life-style, work, interests or private dramas. Many businesses expect their workers to contribute weblog posts to their firm's web site, and some expect graduates to prove their curiosity in a job by writing a weblog and show off their writing, technical or analytical skills. Particularly in the creative industries, a weblog is nearly a requirement. However how do you launch and run a profitable weblog that attracts enough curiosity to make it worth your while?

Blogging is an artwork that requires time and effort to good. You can't simply depend on your running a blog platform (Wordpress, Blogger, Blogspot, Tumblr and many others.) to do all of the work for you. To be discovered on-line and to select up a steady amount of followers, it's good to do quite a lot of the graft yourself.

Subjects

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[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Nate

Our next aro-spec creator is Nate, better known on Tumblr as @astriiformes!

Nate is an asexual, aromantic, neurodivergent and mentally ill trans guy/person continuing the tradition of aro-spec creators demonstrating an impressive diversity of talent. He writes, cosplays, creates filk music and produces visual art--and that’s when he’s not playing D&D and attending conventions!

You can find him on Twitter as planar_ranger and on 8tracks as azhdarchidaen. He’s also found on AO3 as azhdarchidaen, with a prolific selection of works for the Gravity Falls, Doctor Who, Critical Role and Pacific Rim fandoms! If you have a dollar or two you’re wanting to invest in worthy aro-spec talent, please take a look at Nate’s Ko-Fi!

With us Nate talks about expressing emotions through creativity, the intersection of aromanticism and perfectionism, the importance of storytelling as self-expression and his passion for D&D as a way of giving voice to his aromantic experience. His love for fandom, creativity and storytelling shines through every word, so please let’s give him all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

While I didn’t know the word “aromantic” until I was 15 or 16, and took a while to embrace it even then, when I look back on my childhood I can definitely see some of the earliest signs. Perhaps the most prominent was my mild disappointment at age 12 or 13 in discovering the Star Wars EU novels only to learn that Luke Skywalker, one of my most pervasively favorite characters since I first watched the movies and likely my earliest aro headcanon, ended up getting married! I ended up writing what was technically my first fanfiction after that discovery, an alternate take on the post-Return of the Jedi universe in which he didn’t.

But I didn’t really start to realize I was aro, or even know it was an identity at all, until two things happened. First, I joined an LGBTQA+ group on a writer’s forum I used to frequent and started to not only learn the vocabulary but also that identifying as something other than straight or cis was even allowed. Second, I entered what was essentially the closest thing to a romantic relationship I’ve ever experienced. By some measures it probably was one, but there really wasn’t much romance involved – because I wasn’t pushing it (for reasons that are now obvious to me), and the guy I was sort-of-dating was pretty respectful of my boundaries and was probably waiting for me to make some of those moves before trying himself. The relationship eventually broke off several months after he moved to Europe. He messaged me to say he felt bad about the fact that our long-distance “relationship” was probably holding me back from finding someone I could be happier with, and he would be more comfortable breaking it off. The fact that I felt no real sadness over that was a fairly big bit of evidence for my aromanticism, second only to the fact that I had actually become more comfortable with our situation when he moved across the Atlantic Ocean.

Clues like those eventually lead me to adopt the label and really begin to understand myself, I think around age 16 or 17. I went through a slow process of accepting all my queer identities one-by-one and kind of see them all as pretty interconnected. The aro one was in the middle.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

I really like making things. For all the frustration I experience trying to write something I’m happy with, or panicked near all-nighters trying to finish props before a convention, I really am at my happiest when I have projects to engage in. I take a lot of pride in my identity as a content creator as a result, though it also means I can set discouragingly high standards for myself. That being said, there’s nothing that makes me happier that someone enjoying something I put time and effort into and being able to go “I made this.”

Writing was definitely my earliest outlet (I did draw things when I was younger, but I didn’t show my art to anyone until this time last year). I was posting fics (under a different username, fortunately; I don’t want my early teenage writing unearthed ten years later) on ff.net by early high school, a narrative I’m sure I share with plenty of other creators. I’ve done more interesting things with my writing since migrating over to AO3 though, and I continue to feel like my writing is growing (even if, sometimes, I worry it’s going too slowly).

Getting into cosplay was something I picked up only a year or so later, though again, comparing my current work to those first few attempts feels almost silly. My first cosplay was a patched-together Eighth Doctor mostly made out of thrift store finds that looked only debatably like the real deal. Since then, I’ve gotten better at sewing my own things and have realized one of my true strengths lies in elaborate props. My two most recent cosplays were Stanford Pines from Gravity Falls, with a fully-illustrated and screen-accurate copy of the third journal, complete with blacklight effects, and Taako, from The Adventure Zone, with an Umbra Staff that I had re-covered in fabric and had fully-functional LED “stars” built into it, stars I could make twinkle via a secret remote. I’m attempting two characters that are even more ambitious for conventions this year, but we’ll have to see how that actually goes…

My filk contributions aren’t massive, but the community aspect (and that it connected me to someone who is now one of my closest friends, who made me go from enjoying the genre to contributing to it) and some of the things I’ve done as a result of it make me feel it has a place as part of my creative identity. You haven’t lived until you’ve performed decades-old songs about space travel with your friends, in cosplay, in a crowded convention center! (Okay, a debatable statement. But a truly wild experience.) It’s also been a good outlet for me in some ways, because music is a powerful way to get across emotions. I play viola and piano, and have for years, so I knew that to some degree before I started writing my own lyrics to things. But personalizing songs by making them be about things you have really strong feelings for is another level entirely.

And then, art. Like I said, I never really shared it with anyone (or drew much at all) until about a year ago. Part of that was due to wanting to try my hand at digital art but not really having an understanding of what programs to use or how to get started with it, and part of it was the inertia of feeling like “if I’m not good at something immediately, I shouldn’t try at all!” The thing that really got the ball rolling for me is the long D&D campaign I’m currently in. When I was excited about other stories, chances were someone else had drawn art of it that I could enjoy and reblog. That’s not really the case with one you’re telling with only 5-6 other people. I had a sort of epiphany moment a couple months into the campaign, as the story really started picking up, that if I wanted to see the kind of art I appreciate for this new story I was falling in love with, I would probably have to do it myself. I’m still not incredibly happy with my work, since I’m surrounded by friends who are incredible artists and my style is fairly simplistic and oddly stylized, but I have gotten to a point where I draw fairly regularly, and generally put up what I create on our shared campaign blog. The same D&D game has wrenched over 15k words of original writing from me, which is pretty astonishing. Most of that isn’t anywhere to be found on Tumblr just yet, though – it’s largely still-top secret character backstory.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

The most obvious way is that I write fics about characters being aromantic and dealing with their aromanticism. All headcanons, unfortunately (I’m yet to find a canon aro in anything I love that I didn’t help create myself), but there are several stories on my AO3 about characters from Pacific Rim, Star Wars or Gravity Falls realizing they’re aromantic. And the fics that don’t deal with that are still all gen – I’m too romance-repulsed to write anything else, and I feel the world needs a lot more genfic anyways.

One other way, though I feel a bit silly calling it “art”, is that I am intentionally playing an aromantic character of my own creation in my current D&D campaign. I’ve been playing for several years now, and did have another character back in high school who I also imagined as aromantic. (Partially because of an awkward flirting mishap – an enemy tried to get my character off her guard with romance and it all backfired because she didn’t know how to respond. All my own fault – I don’t even know how to roleplay that!) But none of the campaigns I’ve played in until this one were particularly intent on exploring characters and their feelings all that deeply, or really making them a part of the story.

With my current character, it’s become incredibly validating to view him as aromantic and asexual, like myself. It’s that same impulse that got me started doing more art – if the fiction I like isn’t going to provide me with aromantic characters, I’ll have to make one myself! And it’s slowly leading to some very interesting explorations of aro identity and the normalising of it in our world. We’ve established that identifying that way isn’t particularly unusual for elves and talked about what that means for worldbuilding. Do they hold platonic relationships in the same regard as romantic ones? Is there a special kind of relationship that signifies that? What if we put friendship under the banner of the goddess of romantic love too? Though at the same time, I’m exploring some of the same feelings I experience with him – he’s a particularly lonely person, who worries about people actually wanting to stay with him, both of which are prominent features of my own aromantic experience.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

Like many of us, I do worry that my genfics will be less enjoyed or circulated as a result of choosing not to include ships. And whenever I post a fic about a character actually being aro, I definitely get that little stab of “Someone is going to have a problem with this” fear.

I also feel that my experience with aromanticism has shaped a lot of my perfectionistic tendencies. Because I worry so much about trying to remain important in my allo friends’ lives, and because I think of so much of my identity as associated with creativity, I tend to get really wrapped up in my work needing to seem amazing somehow, to make people think I’m worth their time. It’s a silly thing to get preoccupied over, but it has had an impact on me. In some ways wanting my work to be really good is not a bad thing – it encourages me to do my very best whenever I can – but the motivation is really all wrong.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I’m honestly pretty disconnected from them. I might be less-inclined to be if this website wasn’t suddenly experiencing such backlash against a-spec identities, but as is I’m almost afraid to engage with anything that might make me a target. Which is really unfortunate. That being said, whenever I do make any aro content and I see it circulated to other aromantic people, I get a lot of joy from it. The comments on my multiple aromantic-focused fics are some of my favorite ones I’ve ever received. If I can channel my experiences into something that elicits that kind of a reaction from our community, I consider my work well done.

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

When I’m able to talk to other aromantic people about headcanons (or even some of my very understanding allo friends who absorb them from me, too), pretty well! Unfortunately, that’s a pretty tiny fraction of my fandom experience. Even some of my interests where you’d think I wouldn’t run into problems have been difficult at times. I once had someone dressed as a character often (non-canonically) shipped with the one I was cosplaying, and they assumed that I would be interested in hearing that they shipped our character. Instead, they just made me very uncomfortable, particularly with the way they chose to do so.

In general, the expectation that as a member of fandom, producing fandom works, I will be interested in creating and consuming romantic content is hard to deal with. I’ve had people ask me to put ships in my fics, the aforementioned convention incident, and been heckled over having aromantic headcanons at all. That being said, aromantic headcanons were how I met at least a few of my good friends. Finding each other may be hard, but since we all feel so isolated I think that finding other aro creators inhabiting the same or similar spaces can lead to pretty quick bonding, or at least an appreciation of each others’ works. I do like that.

I’ve also, as I have mentioned a couple times now, realized the worth of telling my own stories, particularly if I have other people to share them with who will respond positively. Right now, most of my D&D group is not aro, but they are a group that respects my and my character’s identities, and being able to tell an aro narrative that means a lot to me and get a positive response is a breath of fresh air. I count them as fellow content creators and they’ve really encouraged the story I want to tell. I hope that someday the inspiration I’ve gained from that will lead me to publishing my own original fiction (with aro characters, of course), but it’s been due to this small start that I’ve decided that’s something I could realistically pursue.

How can the aro-spec community best help you as a creative?

Comments on my fics are one of the biggest things that keep me writing, so they’ll always be a boon to me. Even old ones. It makes me happy to see people still reading and enjoying them. Same goes for reblogs of any of my stuff – art, writing, filk, cosplay photos, anything else I might post. The biggest thing that keeps me wanting to create and share more creative works is knowing that other people are enjoying them, so if you do enjoy them, any way you can let me know that is wonderful.

I do hope that in some point in the future I’ll have original fiction available and a science writing blog (I consider non-fiction to be creative expression, as long as you’re putting your spark into it!), but neither exists quite yet. If you follow me on either of my main platforms though, those might pop up someday. Seeing either be circulated when the time comes would be massive. I also intend to, perhaps in the much nearer future, start publishing D&D content (likely homebrew 5e subclasses, but who knows) on the DMsGuild, starting with a pay-what-you-want model for downloading my content. If that goes up and I make something you’re interested in, and you want to pay something for it at all, I would be massively grateful.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

I’ve been working on a Critical Role Modern AU story since January or so that places heavy emphasis on the platonic relationships in the show (Percy and Keyleth’s is particularly dear to me, so they’re likely to get a fair bit of the spotlight) that’s my most current fandom fic.

I’m also tackling two ambitious cosplays at the moment, though the timeframe is making me wonder if I’ll actually pull either off. Especially given what I need to get done. One involves sewing pseudo-historical menswear, and I’m going to have to learn how to make armor for the other one. If I can figure it all out though, I’m really excited about them both!

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

Hopefully the next chapter of the CR fic, if I get hit with the inspiration (and motivation) to work on it soon. I also have another aromantic Luke Skywalker fic I really want to get down on paper at some point, though thus far it’s proven a little elusive.

My two big cosplay projects are Percy de Rolo (from Critical Role), which I intend to take to a local convention, and Erwyn, my own D&D character. I hope to do a photoshoot with the rest of the players as their own characters sometime late this summer.

As for art, I fully intend to keep drawing major or touching moments from my ongoing campaign, likely with much more frequency than any of the things above. It may not be as engaging for people to interact with as my fandom-focused projects are, but I still really do love sharing it.

[citymaus]

i recommend reading the entirety, but here are my choice excerpts from RA’s cover story on the electronic music scene in the bay area: 

Mike Bee (Mike Battaglia) is the shaggy, affable purveyor of Lower Haight record store Vinyl Dreams. Battaglia moved to San Francisco from Western Pennsylvania in the early '90s and arrived in a dance music promise land. The city housed ten dance music record stores in its heyday, an all-jungle shop, a trance and progressive store, one for house music and a store in the historically gay Castro neighborhood that stocked disco and Hi-NRG. 

"I feel like people moved here from the '40s through the '90s to be changed," Battaglia says. "They came here because they heard this place was where you could shed your skin, be yourself and explore who you really are. Now they move here to change it ... there's a huge cash grab, there's a real estate grab, there's a tech sector grab and those people just don't support subculture, they don't support art, they're not philanthropists like the first round of dot com people. I don't see the investment in the infrastructure by these new people. They bring the monoculture back to San Francisco with them which is chain stores and consumerism and everything else you see in every other fucking town in this fucking stupid country. San Francisco used to be an oasis away from that stuff." 

"A friend of mine who manages a team at Google said his team was so bored and had so much money they would, like, fly to Southeast Asia to go skiing for a weekend because they couldn't find something intriguing to do at the civic level." — Miroslav Wiesner, founder of Surefire Agency, a San Francisco outfit that handles booking for the likes of Kode9, Call Super and Vatican Shadow

wow. these dumb uninteresting people need to move the fuck somewhere else if they don’t appreciate and can’t contribute to local culture. basic bro’s. 

"The first part of the '00s, the East Bay... There were a lot of artists living in warehouses... Where you could have events. Now, there's going to be a neighbor with a little sub-loft who's like, 'Hell no.'" —Michael Buchanan, AKA Identity Theft, the founder of a prolific collective called Katabatik.

The trifecta of capital, people and post-Ghost Ship code enforcement has rendered the word-of-mouth gatherings that once flourished in the neighborhood's disused commercial spaces untenable. "It was difficult even before Ghost Ship," said Mara Barenbaum, who with Buchanan as Group Rhoda has released several albums of spectral post-punk on labels like Not Not Fun and Dark Entries.  "Which is why shit happened at that fucking place because there are literally no other options as everything is being sold and priced out," says Buchanan. "The artists who lived in the lofts got kicked out because they wanted to build a condo. That whole familiar story." 

If San Francisco is a hotbed of radical thought, the majority-black Oakland is a stronghold of radical struggle, marginalized classes facing their most formidable opponent yet. "There was this place in Oakland called Qilombo, a black anarchist space," Butler says. "I saw [minimal wave bands] High Functioning Flesh and RedRedRed there and there were black folks from the neighborhood and West Oakland dancing to EBM. I know that the potential to engage with this immediate community is there because we share this entire experience." 

ghost ship, oakland, 03.12.17. 

“If Trump was the worst case scenario for the radical progressivism that originally shaped The Bay, creative destruction is the worst threat to its economic diversity. Policies springing up in the wake of Ghost Ship, without opposition, could stamp out the underground and drive out marginal artists, the intellectual lifeblood of the region. "Look at NYC Dance with the Cabaret Law," Russell Butler says. "A 91-year-old law gets struck down less than a year since the election... if they can do that there, and it feels like people aren't really steering the ship over here, then let's take control of some shit. Let's make the mistakes in order to make a brighter future for everybody, what's the other fucking option?" 

read more: residentadvisor, 07.02.18. 

[un-enfant-immature]

Caroline Brochado and Sophia Bendz on the boom in Europe’s early- and growth-stage startups

As part of Disrupt 2020 we wanted to look at the contrasting positions of both early and later-stage investing in Europe. Who better to unpack this subject than two highly experienced operators in these fields?

After a career at Spotify and then as a VC at Atomico, Sophia Bendz has rapidly gained a reputation in Europe as a keen early-stage investor. She recently left Atomico to pursue her early and seed-stage passion with Cherry Ventures. Bendz is a prolific angel investor, with a total of over 44 deals in the last 9 years. Her angel investments include as AidenAI, Tictail, Joints Academy, Omnius, LifeX, Eastnine, Manual, Headvig, Simple Feast, and Sana Labs. She is known for being a champion of the femtech space, and her angel investments in that space include Clue, Grace Health, Daye, O School, and Boost Thyroid.

Carolina Brochado, the former Atomico partner and most recently a partner at SoftBank Vision Fund’s London office, recently joined EQT Ventures to help launch EQT’s Growth fund, which is positioned between Ventures and Private Equity. Brochado led investments in a number of promising companies at Atomico,  including logistics company OnTruck, health tech company Hinge Health and restaurant supply chain app Rekki.

After establishing that these two knew each other while at Atomico, I asked Bendz why she headed back into the seed stage arena.

“I’m a trained marketeer and storyteller by heart… What makes me excited is new markets opportunities, people, culture, teams. So with that, in combination with my angel investing, I think I’m better suited to be in the earlier stages of investing. When I was investing before joining Atomico, I said to myself, I want to learn from the best, I want to see how it’s done how you structure the process and how you think about the bigger investments.”

Brochado says the European ‘cat is out of the bag’ as it were:

When I first moved to Europe in 2012 and first joined Atomico, after having been at a very small startup, there was still a massive gap in funding and Europe versus the US. I think you know the European secret is no longer a secret, and you have incredible funds being started at that early stage seed and series A, and because I was here in 2012, I’ve seen the amazing pipeline of growth companies that are coming up the curve, how the momentum of those companies is accelerating and how the market cap of those businesses are growing. And so I just became super excited about helping those businesses scale… I just you now felt like bridging that gap in between ass really exciting and.

One of the perennial topics that come up time and time again is whether or not founders should go with VC partners who have previously been operators, versus those with a finance background.

“Looking back, my years at Spotify, we had great investors, but there were not many of them that had the experience of scaling a big company,” Bendz said. “So, I’m happy to give [a startup] more than just the check in a way that I would have wished I had a sounding board when I was 25 and tackling that challenge at Spotify.”

Brochado concurred: “Having operators in the room is just is an incredible gift I think to a fund and at certain levels, having people that understand you know different forms of financing and different structures can also be incredibly helpful to founders who may not necessarily have that background. So I think that the funds that do it best have that diversity.”

Bendz is passionate about investing in female founders and femtech: “It’s such a massive business opportunity that is completely untapped. We’ve seen it many times when you have a female investment partner [that] the pipeline opens up and you get more deal flow from female founders…. So I think we have a lot of work to do. I think it’s definitely improved a lot in the last couple of years but not enough… That is one of the drivers for why I put my money where my mouth is and invest in lifting the founders, but also because there are incredibly interesting business opportunities… There are so many opportunities and products or services that we will see being developed. When we have a more equal society, and more women, both building their own companies, coding and also investing… I can’t wait to see what that world will look like.”

Brochado’s view is that “even beyond founders… the best managers today are putting a lot of focus on this and I think what’s exciting is, I think we’re past the point where you have to explain to people why diversity matters.”

Is there a post-Series A chasm?

Bendz thinks: “We have more big funds in Europe [now]. We have a really solid ground here in Europe of a, b and c investors.”

Brochado said: “it’s definitely getting better. You don’t hear as many founders say that to do my Series B or my Series C I have to move to the Valley as you used to. But there’s a lot of room still for growth investors in Europe. I think Series B is the hardest round actually because, at seed or series A, you can raise on very early traction or the quality of the management team. At Series B the price goes up but the risk doesn’t necessarily go down as much. And so I think that’s where you really need investors who are sector or thematic focused, who can come with conviction and also some knowledge around the company to really propel that company forward.”

Did they both see European entrepreneurs still making silly mistakes, or has the ecosystem mastered?

Brochado thinks ten years ago was it was hard for European founders as a lot of the talent to scale companies was still in the US. “What you’ve seen is a lot of big companies grow up in Europe, a lot of people come back from the US, and so I think that pool of talent now is larger, which is very helpful. I don’t think it’s yet at the scale of where the US is. But it gives us, you know as investors, a great window of opportunity to help get some of that talent for our portfolio companies.”

The impact of COVID-19

Bendz thinks we will “see a much slower Spring, but… I think it has been overall a good exercise for some companies, and I have not seen a slower deal flow. I’ve actually done more Angel deals this Spring than I normally do… Some businesses have definitely accelerated their whole business concept because of COVID. Investments are being made even though we haven’t met the founders. We’re able to do everything remotely so I think the system is kind of adjusting.”

Brocado’s view is that at the growth stage “there’s been a flight to quality. So actually, the really great companies or the companies that are seeing great tailwinds or companies that will still be category-leading once [have] seen a lot of interest. It’s been a very busy summer, which usually it isn’t usually, particularly at the growth stage… I think a lot of money is still in the system, and has flown into technology. And so if you look at how tech in the public markets has performed it’s performed extremely well. And that includes European public companies and within tech.”

Watch the full panel below.

[melodymgill49801]

RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[deborahaphillips54303]

RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[cyberpoetryballoon]

RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[carolrhackett85282]

RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia

When DJ and nightlife entrepreneur Ty Sunderland created his flagship gay party, he envisioned stripper poles—an homage to the music video for Britney Spears’ 2007 single “Gimme More.” “But no strip club was going to let a gay promoter come in on a Friday night in New York City,” Sunderland recalls. “I asked if I could install stripper poles on the dance floor at China Chalet, and they said, ‘Yeah, totally.’ That’s how Heaven on Earth started.” 

One of the most beloved queer events in New York City in recent years, Heaven on Earth would also rank among the last of the great parties thrown at China Chalet, which shuttered last  month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened in 1975, the two-story Cantonese dim sum restaurant was the last of its kind in many ways. For one, it was one of the only remaining full-service, multi-room dim sum banquet halls in the Wall Street area, but most famously, it was one of only DIY party venues in Manhattan where New York City nightlife could be everything it’s been promised to be since Studio 54: liberating, inclusive, and spontaneous. 

It’s unclear when, exactly, China Chalet started moonlighting as a nightclub, even to those who worked there toward the end. (Following the venue’s closing, owner Keith Ng has declined to comment for press.) Alex Kellogg, the venue’s party booker at the time it closed, says he’d heard of parties rumored to have been thrown there by Madonna in the 80s, but that the venue’s most prolific era began in the late 2000s. In the last decade, the venue was visited by the likes of the Olsen twins, Timothée Chalamet, and Jay-Z—plus, pretty much any young person who went out in New York City.  

“Anyone could come, and you could do anything you wanted,” Kellogg recalls of his first impression of the space, at a party thrown by _Sex Magazine_’s Asher Penn in 2013. “There was no one specific ‘genre’ of people. It wasn’t like when you went to a Bushwick party and you didn’t look DIY techno, so they didn’t accept you. Skaters could show up in ripped jeans, and then Alexander Wang could walk in behind them. And they’d be on the same level. Or you’d see Chloe Sevigny there, dressed in a bucket T-shirt and jeans drinking whiskey at the bar.” 

Photo by Megan Walschlager

The end of the aughts was an inflection point for nightlife. As the moment of downtown stalwarts like Beatrice Inn and Bungalow 8 began to fade in 2009 amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, the city’s cool kids decamped to various new stomping grounds, from old-school holdovers like Indochine and Lucien to warehouses in far Brooklyn. In Manhattan, temporary pop-up arrangements helped party-throwers find loopholes around the city’s draconian nightlife laws.

By 2011, the New York Times waxed of China Chalet’s instantly recognizable “chintzy floral carpet and pagoda paintings” in a trend feature on fashion-and-art–scene pop-up clubs, which also included Madame Wong’s, an exclusive party once hosted in the Chinatown establishment Golden Unicorn. The same year, The Observer documented an indie film after-party at China Chalet with an attendance of “ex-pat jet setters, debauched hipsters, and local lowlifes.” And the fashion house Opening Ceremony collaborated with homegrown psych rock band Gang Gang Dance for an album release party at the restaurant. 

Curtis Everett Pawley, musician and co-founder of the party-label 38 NYC, recalls seeing China Chalet for the first time at that Opening Ceremony party, noting that in the mid 2010s, the venue evolved from a fashion insider hideaway to a mainstay for local electronic music fans. In 2014, Pawley met Kellogg at the China Chalet while the latter was hosting a New York City offshoot of London’s experimental JACK댄스 party featuring performers like Doss and Stadium. 

“I don’t know how to describe the scene at JACK댄스—it was just a lot of people from the internet,” Pawley says. “But it was distinctly different from a warehouse party and other electronic DJ-oriented underground stuff that happened in Brooklyn. There was a Manhattan contingency that didn’t really venture into Brooklyn or maybe weren’t even into electronic music. The crowd was more diverse.”

Part of this broad appeal had to do with the functional and physical layout of the space. For first-timers, China Chalet would reveal itself one part at a time, starting with a steep entry stairwell that led into a main dining room, for lounging and gossipping, and finally through a mirrored hallway onto a packed dance floor—which was notoriously known to shake under the weight of hundreds jumping in unison. Then, there was the venue's far-flung location, which only contributed to its off-the-grid allure. And of course, there was the marvelously relaxed policy on cigarettes and other typical club contraband. 

“There was an air of freedom that everyone just instantly knew,” Pawley explains. “If you had even been there once, you understood it. It was a weird oasis away from the typical nightlife setting. Our parties were all over the map—it wasn’t ever pure techno or house. We didn’t want to overly aestheticize them to curate any certain crowd.” 

Photo by Tom Keelan

In the late 2010s, such a blank canvas would attract an increasingly diverse cast of revelers, spurred on by a new guard of social media-powered creative voices in the city. Nightlife photographer Megan Walschlager recalls visiting China Chalet for the first time to attend Club Glam, the fashion it-kid affair launched in 2016 by the powerhouse collective of DJ-artist Dese Escobar and siblings, celebrity stylist Kyle Luu, and influencer Fiffany Luu. Escobar told the Times earlier this year that the trio wanted to create a party that was distinctly “post-identity, meaning that it’s not strictly queer or straight, young or old.” 

“Club Glam was iconic—I remember they threw a ‘granny ball’ and people over 30 got in free, which I always found wonderfully funny,” Walschlager says, adding that there was a built-in sense of community at Glam. “People felt more at home at China Chalet because the venue let party planners use the space as their canvas, so everyone felt very relaxed. Security was pretty chill, and it was easy to get a drink at the bar, so it felt more communal.” 

During its three-year reign, Club Glam was a pioneer in its own right, offering a fresh approach to nightlife that united identities and industries without conforming to their norms. Themed events were announced just a few days ahead of time, and lines frequently rounded the block. The party’s organic aggregation of interdisciplinary creatives often draws comparison to the long-gone clubs of New York City nightlife’s storied past. 

The venue’s reputation in the queer community was further mainstreamed by the 2017 launch of Ty Sunderland’s Heaven on Earth, which drew the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Aquaria, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing, and transgender pop icon Kim Petras. (As Sunderland retells it, the latter once famously grabbed the mic for an impromptu performance of her latest single.) The party would continue through 2020, with its last iteration taking place in February.

To this day, Sunderland credits the owner, Keith Ng, for his open-mindedness in allowing the party to thrive. “From 10 p.m. to midnight, we got to live our stripper-pole fantasies—no questions asked,” Sunderland says. “There were 400 gay men there on a weekend night. That’s hard to find in New York City in most places unless they’re LGBT establishments.” Kellogg, who first introduced Sunderand to Ng, adds of the China Chalet staff: “The coat-check girls would say, ‘Oh my god—there are so many pretty boys running around.’ They loved it.” 

Photo by Serichai Traipoom

For young queer people, including queer people of color, Sunderland’s party filled a much-needed void in gay nightlife far from the insularity of Hell’s Kitchen. Sunderland’s hosts were predominantly performers, artists, and partygoers of marginalized identities, explains drag queen Ruby Fox, who was known to captivate the dance floor at Heaven on Earth with an acrobatic routine between two stripper poles. 

“The artistry I push out into the world comes from the emotions I pull from people around me,” Fox says. “At China Chalet, in such close quarters, it was really exhilarating because I’m getting so much energy and so many positive vibes, whether that was spiritual or just a brain thing. But I would feel the wavelengths off of people to the point where I’d be like the Energizer bunny.” 

As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding. That’s not to mention the thousands of freelancers and gig workers—performers, DJs, and party planners—who make their living by creating these spaces for community and expression. 

“It's funny—when quarantine hit, all of us who work in live music were all stressed about how our venues were going to stay open,” Pawley remembers. “I remember thinking, ‘At least we’ll always have China Chalet.’ That’s why its closing is such a hard blow. I really thought it would be the last thing standing.” 

But while China Chalet deserved a more fitting end—maybe one final party to commemorate its legacy—Pawley says what made it special is the creativity it fostered and the connections it created. “To this day, I met so many of my closest friends at China Chalet,” he says. “We’re all still friends. I really believe all the people in New York City are what made the parties great. I don’t think that energy will die.”

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[andreacaskey]

How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever

What started out as a simple alert panel has evolved into the most prolific set of direct information the Google SERP has ever seen. Google’s on-the-SERP coverage of COVID-19 isn’t only an easy-to-access beast of a data source, it’s also a peek at what could be coming to the SERP… permanently. 

The uniqueness of the COVID-19 SERP 

The SERP Google shows for many queries directly related to COVID-19 (i.e., anything from coronavirus to COVID-19 cure) is unique in two essential ways: 

The amount of raw data being presented. There is just an absurd amount of data that Google presents on these SERPs. Google is showing you a breakdown of the COVID-19 cases in your location (as well as the world at large) as an accent to a global map of the pandemic’s spread. Of course, Google gives you the opportunity to click ahead in order to see a full breakdown of the COVID-19 data shown on the SERP. It’s a testimony to how hard Google can push direct content if it really wanted to. It’s both radically awesome and a bit frightening at the same time. 

The left-hand menu functionality. While the right side of these ‘COVID-19’ SERP contains “knowledge” the left side contains specialty functionality. Here Google gives us a sticky menu (i.e., it follows you as you scroll down the SERP) that serves as a way to delve deeper into various aspects of the pandemic. Clicking on a given option brings up an entire SERP devoted to exploring that particular aspect of COVID-19.

While I could talk about the implications of Google going so deep into offering direct data on the SERP, it’s the functionality at the left side of the page that really caught my attention because I think it solves some of the biggest problems Google faces going forward. 

The COVID-19 SERP functionality solves some of Google’s biggest problems

Personalization is a tricky matter. There’s a lot to balance when trying to highly target a specific user. That’s true for us as marketers and that’s true for Google. Google has long faced issues around personalization. The prime example of this has been the controversy Google has faced in regard to personalization within the search results leading to a filter bubble. November 2020 is not that far off so you can expect the issue and allegations of “biased” results to rear its heads again once the US elections kick into full-gear.

At the same time personalization puts Google on a collision course with another one of its ‘search result aspirations’ – diversity. As a means of effectively targeting its users, Google, more often than not, caters to multiple intents with an offering of a diverse set of results. Hyper-personalization and a strong diversification of the search results are obviously at heads with each other. You simply can’t have both. There’s not enough space on the SERP. You’re talking about showing an effective amount of diversity while strongly targeting a user with just 10 results. That’s damned near impossible.

So how is Google to solve this? With the functionality you see at the left of the page for COVID-19 queries.

Let’s take the two problems I’ve already brought up, the filter bubble and the collision that is personalization and result diversity, add another issue into the mix, and see how the unique functionality of the COVID-19 SERP is the great panacea.

The problem of personalization is solved with user input

The biggest white elephant when discussing personalization within the search results is not the filter bubble nor is it the great battle for diversity vs. personalization. Rather, it’s personalization itself. I’ve long been on a soapbox saying, nay shouting, that the ultimate personalization that Google is after is not possible without user input.

I don’t care how smart Google gets and how great it becomes at offering personalized results, Google will never be able to know what a user in a specific moment is after (which is partly why it cannot abandon result diversity even with advanced personalization). The only way Google can offer the level of personalization it is after is by putting the user in control of the SERP. By letting the user tell Google what they want and by letting Google give that to them.

Now, how do you give the user control over the SERP?

I don’t know, how does a sticky menu at the left of the page that lets the user filter out what they want sound?

Imagine you searched for estate planning. (I recently realized my will is worthless ever since I moved out of the US.) There’s a lot you could mean by this query. Are you looking for information on the financial end? Do you need some tax information? If it’s the latter what state are you in as every state in the US has different laws?

In this instance, Google might look at my past behavior and think that I’m looking for a local lawyer to help me navigate the legalities of my “estate.” Which it does when I run the search (though in my case I have no prior search history):

Suppose, however, that despite my previous searches I really want financial information. In that case, the Local Pack I get is totally irrelevant and now I have to skim the result to pick and choose what I want or think of a more refined search to run and what a drag that is.

Now imagine I had a SERP with a sticky menu at the left of the page that let me see a SERP related to either local lawyers, financial services, etc. With user input, Google can offer me a full set of results that matches my exact intent.

I’ll take this one step further. Not every user has only one intent. How efficient would it be if Google let me toggle back and forth between various menu options so that I can open tabs for results that hit on multiple intents without having to run multiple queries? So if I wanted to look up a local lawyer and read up on some financial tips I could do both with the same search!

Simply, the sticky menu Google has implemented for COVID-19 queries brings a new level of user input to the SERP. That’s huge. 

More space prevents personalization trainwrecks

At this point, you can see how having a sticky menu, like the one seen on the COVID-19 SERP, prevents a collision between personalization and result diversity. The contradiction that is both superb personalization and diversity among the results is mainly a problem because of space. You can’t adequately meet both demands with the limited space a single SERP offers the user.

The sticky side menu functionality lets you breakdown the query by intent. It lets Google energetically target the user on the initial SERP without having to water that level of personalization down with a diverse set of results. Rather, the options within the menu would reflect the intended diversity Google needs to offer.

That is, the sticky menu would allow Google to engage in a topical intent-based segmentation. This could play itself out in a variety of ways. If you search for buy car insurance Google could offer you whatever it thinks is personally relevant on the initial SERP. It could then segment according to intent. 

In this case, I could imagine a side menu that included a tab that read Compare policies where you would see results that compared what’s included in various types of insurance policies. I could also imagine a tab entitled Policy reviews where you could read reviews on the various insurance companies and their policies. If you don’t need to research anything at this juncture then you might click on a tab for Buy policies where all the sites that offer a policy would appear.

I think you get my drift.

Nothing pops filter bubbles like sticky side menus 

Last, but not least, a side menu that sticks gives Google the opportunity it needs to avoid any sort of filter bubble criticism. In such a scenario, Google would not have to directly worry about the results on the SERP further confirming a user’s biases. The side menu would allow Google to go full-on personalization. All Google would need to do is supplement the extreme levels of personalization with a broader set of content that would be accessed via the side menu.

Imagine the worst-case filter bubble scenario, political bias. Even if, hypothetically speaking, a search history slanted towards a particular political party produced results that reeked of confirmation bias, it wouldn’t be a problem. Google could counteract that level of personalization by supplementing perspective via, you guessed it, a sticky side menu!

You might have a set of initial results that are slanted towards a given political perspective. However, Google could easily supplement this with a broader look at the topic via the side menu. In this case, all Google would have to do is insert a tab that read Also in the news much like it does in its multi-carousel News Box on mobile:

It’s an easy solution that not only ensures Google offers a well-balanced look at sensitive topics but simultaneously extends the user’s journey in all-new ways (which is another significant aspect of Google’s mantra).

There you have it, search result objectivity that extends the user’s journey – two birds with one stone!

The multi-faceted SERP is coming (I think)!

The SERP as it is now is antiquated in many ways. The entire construct is one that was designed for a different era of digital content consumption. As Google gets better at understanding what’s out there and gets better at serving what it now understands it’s going to need creative solutions to head-off some serious problems.

Obviously, I can’t predict the future. But it’s hard for me to imagine Google designed a new format for the SERP and isn’t thinking about its implications much the way I have above. Whether it be the format and functionality Google is using for its COVID-19 SERPs or whether it’s something different – a results page that allows for some sort of user input – seems all but inevitable to me.

The post How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever appeared first on Search Engine Land.

How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever published first on https://likesandfollowersclub.weebly.com/

[lindarifenews]

How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever

What started out as a simple alert panel has evolved into the most prolific set of direct information the Google SERP has ever seen. Google’s on-the-SERP coverage of COVID-19 isn’t only an easy-to-access beast of a data source, it’s also a peek at what could be coming to the SERP… permanently. 

The uniqueness of the COVID-19 SERP 

The SERP Google shows for many queries directly related to COVID-19 (i.e., anything from coronavirus to COVID-19 cure) is unique in two essential ways: 

The amount of raw data being presented. There is just an absurd amount of data that Google presents on these SERPs. Google is showing you a breakdown of the COVID-19 cases in your location (as well as the world at large) as an accent to a global map of the pandemic’s spread. Of course, Google gives you the opportunity to click ahead in order to see a full breakdown of the COVID-19 data shown on the SERP. It’s a testimony to how hard Google can push direct content if it really wanted to. It’s both radically awesome and a bit frightening at the same time. 

The left-hand menu functionality. While the right side of these ‘COVID-19’ SERP contains “knowledge” the left side contains specialty functionality. Here Google gives us a sticky menu (i.e., it follows you as you scroll down the SERP) that serves as a way to delve deeper into various aspects of the pandemic. Clicking on a given option brings up an entire SERP devoted to exploring that particular aspect of COVID-19.

While I could talk about the implications of Google going so deep into offering direct data on the SERP, it’s the functionality at the left side of the page that really caught my attention because I think it solves some of the biggest problems Google faces going forward. 

The COVID-19 SERP functionality solves some of Google’s biggest problems

Personalization is a tricky matter. There’s a lot to balance when trying to highly target a specific user. That’s true for us as marketers and that’s true for Google. Google has long faced issues around personalization. The prime example of this has been the controversy Google has faced in regard to personalization within the search results leading to a filter bubble. November 2020 is not that far off so you can expect the issue and allegations of “biased” results to rear its heads again once the US elections kick into full-gear.

At the same time personalization puts Google on a collision course with another one of its ‘search result aspirations’ – diversity. As a means of effectively targeting its users, Google, more often than not, caters to multiple intents with an offering of a diverse set of results. Hyper-personalization and a strong diversification of the search results are obviously at heads with each other. You simply can’t have both. There’s not enough space on the SERP. You’re talking about showing an effective amount of diversity while strongly targeting a user with just 10 results. That’s damned near impossible.

So how is Google to solve this? With the functionality you see at the left of the page for COVID-19 queries.

Let’s take the two problems I’ve already brought up, the filter bubble and the collision that is personalization and result diversity, add another issue into the mix, and see how the unique functionality of the COVID-19 SERP is the great panacea.

The problem of personalization is solved with user input

The biggest white elephant when discussing personalization within the search results is not the filter bubble nor is it the great battle for diversity vs. personalization. Rather, it’s personalization itself. I’ve long been on a soapbox saying, nay shouting, that the ultimate personalization that Google is after is not possible without user input.

I don’t care how smart Google gets and how great it becomes at offering personalized results, Google will never be able to know what a user in a specific moment is after (which is partly why it cannot abandon result diversity even with advanced personalization). The only way Google can offer the level of personalization it is after is by putting the user in control of the SERP. By letting the user tell Google what they want and by letting Google give that to them.

Now, how do you give the user control over the SERP?

I don’t know, how does a sticky menu at the left of the page that lets the user filter out what they want sound?

Imagine you searched for estate planning. (I recently realized my will is worthless ever since I moved out of the US.) There’s a lot you could mean by this query. Are you looking for information on the financial end? Do you need some tax information? If it’s the latter what state are you in as every state in the US has different laws?

In this instance, Google might look at my past behavior and think that I’m looking for a local lawyer to help me navigate the legalities of my “estate.” Which it does when I run the search (though in my case I have no prior search history):

Suppose, however, that despite my previous searches I really want financial information. In that case, the Local Pack I get is totally irrelevant and now I have to skim the result to pick and choose what I want or think of a more refined search to run and what a drag that is.

Now imagine I had a SERP with a sticky menu at the left of the page that let me see a SERP related to either local lawyers, financial services, etc. With user input, Google can offer me a full set of results that matches my exact intent.

I’ll take this one step further. Not every user has only one intent. How efficient would it be if Google let me toggle back and forth between various menu options so that I can open tabs for results that hit on multiple intents without having to run multiple queries? So if I wanted to look up a local lawyer and read up on some financial tips I could do both with the same search!

Simply, the sticky menu Google has implemented for COVID-19 queries brings a new level of user input to the SERP. That’s huge. 

More space prevents personalization trainwrecks

At this point, you can see how having a sticky menu, like the one seen on the COVID-19 SERP, prevents a collision between personalization and result diversity. The contradiction that is both superb personalization and diversity among the results is mainly a problem because of space. You can’t adequately meet both demands with the limited space a single SERP offers the user.

The sticky side menu functionality lets you breakdown the query by intent. It lets Google energetically target the user on the initial SERP without having to water that level of personalization down with a diverse set of results. Rather, the options within the menu would reflect the intended diversity Google needs to offer.

That is, the sticky menu would allow Google to engage in a topical intent-based segmentation. This could play itself out in a variety of ways. If you search for buy car insurance Google could offer you whatever it thinks is personally relevant on the initial SERP. It could then segment according to intent. 

In this case, I could imagine a side menu that included a tab that read Compare policies where you would see results that compared what’s included in various types of insurance policies. I could also imagine a tab entitled Policy reviews where you could read reviews on the various insurance companies and their policies. If you don’t need to research anything at this juncture then you might click on a tab for Buy policies where all the sites that offer a policy would appear.

I think you get my drift.

Nothing pops filter bubbles like sticky side menus 

Last, but not least, a side menu that sticks gives Google the opportunity it needs to avoid any sort of filter bubble criticism. In such a scenario, Google would not have to directly worry about the results on the SERP further confirming a user’s biases. The side menu would allow Google to go full-on personalization. All Google would need to do is supplement the extreme levels of personalization with a broader set of content that would be accessed via the side menu.

Imagine the worst-case filter bubble scenario, political bias. Even if, hypothetically speaking, a search history slanted towards a particular political party produced results that reeked of confirmation bias, it wouldn’t be a problem. Google could counteract that level of personalization by supplementing perspective via, you guessed it, a sticky side menu!

You might have a set of initial results that are slanted towards a given political perspective. However, Google could easily supplement this with a broader look at the topic via the side menu. In this case, all Google would have to do is insert a tab that read Also in the news much like it does in its multi-carousel News Box on mobile:

It’s an easy solution that not only ensures Google offers a well-balanced look at sensitive topics but simultaneously extends the user’s journey in all-new ways (which is another significant aspect of Google’s mantra).

There you have it, search result objectivity that extends the user’s journey – two birds with one stone!

The multi-faceted SERP is coming (I think)!

The SERP as it is now is antiquated in many ways. The entire construct is one that was designed for a different era of digital content consumption. As Google gets better at understanding what’s out there and gets better at serving what it now understands it’s going to need creative solutions to head-off some serious problems.

Obviously, I can’t predict the future. But it’s hard for me to imagine Google designed a new format for the SERP and isn’t thinking about its implications much the way I have above. Whether it be the format and functionality Google is using for its COVID-19 SERPs or whether it’s something different – a results page that allows for some sort of user input – seems all but inevitable to me.

The post How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever appeared first on Search Engine Land.

How COVID-19 may change the SERP forever published first on https://likesfollowersclub.tumblr.com/