02A short history of going out

The short version: Most of what a night out looks like now - the cocktail, the mixed crowd, the guest list, the DJ booth, the 2 a.m. light switch - was shaped by a century of fights over who gets to drink and dance, where and until when. In the US the line runs from the men-only saloon through Prohibition's speakeasies and a New York law that licensed dancing for 91 years. The music runs from New York's private lofts to Chicago's Warehouse, Detroit, Ibiza, London's acid house nights and the empty buildings of post-Wall Berlin, and nearly every step left a law behind it.

What was a saloon before Prohibition?

The pre-Prohibition American saloon was, by most accounts, a largely "men only" affair.⁹ It was also a place where a lot of drinking happened. Historian Daniel Okrent puts it bluntly: "This country was very, very drunk," citing an 1830 average of 7.3 gallons (about 27.6 liters) of pure alcohol a year for every American over 15, which is his estimate for that year.⁹

The pushback started in the street. In 1870s Ohio, Eliza Jane Thompson led groups of women who knelt and prayed outside saloons; Ken Burns' documentary series describes local fire companies turning hoses on them.¹⁰ That direct action grew into the temperance movement, and the saloon became its target by name.

The saloon had a much older ancestor. In Puritan Massachusetts the public house was called an "ordinary," and a 2002 article in the Gettysburg Historical Journal dates Boston's first tavern to Samuel Cole, who opened it on March 4, 1634.¹¹ Taverns became centers of colonial social, political and travel life, and in 1656 the Massachusetts General Court fined towns that did not "sustain an ordinary."¹¹

Why was the Anti-Saloon League so powerful?

The Anti-Saloon League was founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, as a state organization, went national after 1895 and moved to Westerville, Ohio, in 1909, where it ran its own printing operation, the American Issue Publishing Company.¹² It called itself "a non-partisan organization that focused on the single issue of prohibition," and it kept to that single issue.¹²

At its twentieth-anniversary convention in Columbus in 1913, the League announced a campaign for a constitutional amendment.¹² Working with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, it steered the 1916 elections that delivered the two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress needed to send what became the Eighteenth Amendment to the states.¹² Okrent calls it "the most powerful lobbying group pressure group" and says it "actually made a constitutional amendment happen," with about 200 staff and roughly 40 tons of propaganda a month (his reported figures).⁹

The dry coalition was broad and odd: suffragists, small-town Protestants, the Ku Klux Klan and some Broadway producers, with World War I anti-German feeling aimed at German-American brewers.⁹

When did Prohibition start, and what was a speakeasy?

The Eighteenth Amendment passed Congress in December 1917, was ratified in January 1919 and took effect on January 17, 1920, one year after ratification.¹³ Enforcement was weak, and bootlegging and speakeasies - illegal bars - flourished.¹³

The speakeasy changed who was in the room. Unlike the saloon, it was "frequented by men and women alike," and as more women came, powder rooms became standard.⁹ Cocktails spread partly to hide the taste of poor-quality liquor, and CBS News calls speakeasies the forerunners of the modern nightclub.⁹ A mixed crowd and a drink with a garnish: a lot of a modern Saturday night is a Prohibition workaround that stuck.

Prohibition did reduce drinking, at least at first. Okrent estimates consumption fell about 70% from pre-Prohibition levels in the early years.⁹ Ken Burns attributes the collapse to difficult, unequal enforcement and "the monumental hypocrisy in its application," with loopholes such as doctors' prescriptions and an exemption for houses of worship.¹⁰

When did Prohibition end?

In stages. In March 1933 the Cullen-Harrison Act allowed beer and wine up to 3.2% alcohol, and on December 5, 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed federal prohibition.¹³ The Eighteenth is "the only amendment to have secured ratification and later been repealed."¹³

Repeal did not hand drinking back to a free market. It handed it to the states, which is why licensing boards, license quotas and closing times still vary so much from one state line to the next. The closing-time laws section covers that patchwork.

Was dancing illegal in New York bars?

For most of the twentieth century, dancing without the right license was. New York City's cabaret law, passed in 1926 during Prohibition and the Harlem Renaissance, required a license for "musical entertainment, singing, dancing or other form of amusement" in rooms where it was "permitted in connection with the restaurant business."¹⁴

From 1940 to 1967, the NYPD also required musicians and other nightclub workers to carry a cabaret card. Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Chet Baker all had theirs suspended.¹⁴ A 1971 amendment exempted up to three musicians on piano, organ, accordion, guitar or strings; courts struck down the instrument limits in 1986 and the three-musician limit in 1988.¹⁴ In the late 1990s Mayor Rudy Giuliani revived enforcement against bars as part of "broken windows" policing.¹⁴

The end came in 2017. Councilmember Rafael Espinal's repeal bill, Int. No. 1652, passed the City Council 44-1 on October 31, 2017, and Mayor Bill de Blasio signed it on November 27.¹⁴¹⁵ By then almost no one held the license, though the sources disagree on how few: a de Blasio administration representative put it at 97 venues citywide, while CBS New York reported 104 of more than 20,000 bars and restaurants (both 2017).¹⁶¹⁵ The security camera and guard requirements stayed in the public safety code.¹⁶

How to judge the law's origins is still argued. The NYC Artist Coalition, which campaigned for repeal, said it was "Created in 1926 with racist and discriminatory intent."¹⁶ Repeal also did not make dancing legal everywhere: zoning still restricts it in many residential and mixed-use areas.¹⁴ Two months before repeal, a separate Espinal law signed in September 2017 created the city's Office of Nightlife, run by a "night mayor," and a 12-member Nightlife Advisory Board.¹⁶

What happened at Stonewall in 1969?

"In the early hours" of June 28, 1969, a New York City police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar, "sparked riots and demonstrations" that "lasted several nights," in the National Park Service's account.¹⁷ The Stonewall uprising is the hinge in the history of gay bars and clubs as both social and political spaces. On June 24, 2016, a presidential proclamation created Stonewall National Monument, which includes Christopher Park across the street from the bar.¹⁷

The raids had a legal backdrop. New York's State Liquor Authority, created after Prohibition, could bar alcohol sales at places it considered "disorderly," and gay bars were treated as de facto disorderly and routinely raided, according to New York State Parks.¹⁸

In the early 1960s the SLA refused licenses to many gay bars and suspended or revoked others for "indecent conduct," which pushed them toward unlicensed private-club setups that organized crime ran, per PBS American Experience.¹⁹ The Stonewall itself was bought in 1966 by Tony Lauria of the Genovese crime family and run as a private "bottle club," which did not need a liquor license; it reportedly paid the local police precinct about $1,200 a month (reported figure).¹⁹

On Sunday, June 28, 1970, the first anniversary, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March went from Greenwich Village up Sixth Avenue to a "Gay-In" in Central Park's Sheep Meadow; it is the precursor of the annual Pride march.²⁰¹⁸

What was the Loft, and why does the Paradise Garage still matter?

Downtown New York's private parties wrote much of the rulebook for the modern dance floor. David Mancuso's Loft held its first official party, "Love Saves The Day," on February 14, 1970, at 647 Broadway near Bleecker Street, later moving to 99 Prince Street.²¹ The sound came from Klipschorn speakers and McIntosh amplifiers, and the idea came from Mancuso: "I want a situation where there are no economic barriers."²¹ He died in November 2016, aged 72.²¹

Uptown went the other way. Studio 54 opened on April 26, 1977, at 254 West 54th Street, founded by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, and closed in 1980 after their tax-evasion convictions.²² The famous rope, now a staple of the door, arrived later; a former busboy recalled, "We didn't have the (velvet) rope when we first opened up."²²

The Paradise Garage, at 84 King Street, began as "construction" parties in 1977 and officially opened on January 28, 1978, with Michael Brody as sole proprietor and Mel Cheren as backer.²³ It was "membership only - not open to the general public" and "served no alcohol - or food," which let it stay open past bar hours.²³ That structure - a members-only club with no bar - is how a dance floor could run long after the bars had closed.

Larry Levan was resident DJ from 1977 to 1987, and his sets were known as "Saturday Mass"; the closing party ran 48 hours.²⁴ The Garage closed on September 26, 1987, two months before Brody died, and Levan died in 1992, aged 38.²³²⁴

What happened on Disco Demolition Night?

On July 12, 1979, rock DJ Steve Dahl, then 24, ran a promotion at a Chicago White Sox-Detroit Tigers doubleheader at Comiskey Park: bring a disco record and get in for under $1.²⁵ About 50,000 people came, the records were blown up in center field, an estimated 7,000 fans stormed the field, and the Sox forfeited the second game (reported).²⁵

What it meant is still disputed. Vince Lawrence, who worked as an usher that night, said many of the records people brought were by Black artists - "Records that were clearly not disco."²⁵ Dahl calls the reading of the night as racist and homophobic revisionist, while also saying "it looks like a book burning."²⁵

Where did house music get its name?

From a club. The Warehouse, at 206 South Jefferson Street in Chicago's West Loop, a 1910 loft building, was founded by New York promoter Robert Williams; Frankie Knuckles (1955-2014) arrived as resident DJ in March 1977 and stayed until 1982.²⁶ The City of Chicago's landmarks staff report (2023) says the club first served Black gay men and women, and to some extent Latinos, before drawing a mixed crowd, and states that "the history of house is clear that it originated between 1977 and 1982 at The Warehouse."²⁶

Most historians trace house music to the club's name, though the report notes some debate.²⁶ Knuckles recalled first seeing a tavern sign advertising "house music" around 1980 or 1981: "I didn't realize it had a name."²⁶ After splitting with Williams in 1983 he opened the Power Plant, where he played until 1986.²⁶ The report is a staff recommendation; in Chicago, only a City Council ordinance makes a landmark designation final.²⁶

Who invented techno?

Techno is usually credited to three schoolfriends from Belleville, Michigan, outside Detroit: Juan Atkins ("The Initiator"), Derrick May ("The Innovator") and Kevin Saunderson ("The Elevator").²⁷ Atkins and Richard "3070" Davis, as Cybotron, released "Alleys Of Your Mind/Cosmic Raindance" in 1981, which sold about 15,000 copies (reported); Atkins began recording as Model 500 on his Metroplex label in 1985.²⁸²⁷

The genre got its name in Britain. The 1988 compilation "Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit," on Virgin's UK imprint 10 Records, compiled by May and Neil Rushton, was titled "The House Sound of Detroit" until Atkins' track "Techno Music" prompted the change.²⁹ Inner City's "Big Fun" was nearly left off and became a crossover hit that fall.²⁹ A second wave followed: Underground Resistance, founded in 1989 by Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and Mike Banks.²⁸

In New England

Two Boston beats, briefly; the full story is in the Boston section. When Prohibition ended, Massachusetts did not open the taps evenly: 1933 session laws set a population-based license quota that gave Boston 1,000 on-premises and 350 off-premises licenses, and a 2022 policy report, citing the session laws and a December 1933 Boston Globe account, says 1,080 licenses had been issued within 48 hours of signing (the same report also quotes a Globe tally of 508 and does not reconcile the two).³⁰ That 1933 quota is the root of the city's long-running license cap.

On the music side, 15 Lansdowne Street, behind Fenway Park, went from taxi garage to the Boston Tea Party rock hall (1969-1970) to Boston's first 1970s-style disco, then a string of dance clubs until the building was demolished in 2007.³¹

What was the second summer of love?

It started on holiday. In September 1987, four London DJs - Nicky Holloway, Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling and Johnny Walker - spent a week in Ibiza and ended up at Amnesia, an open-air club where DJ Alfredo played.³² Back home they started club nights, including Rampling's Shoom and Oakenfold's Spectrum.³²³³ Shoom's first official party was December 5, 1987, in a Southwark fitness center, Saturdays 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.; it held about 250 people at £5 entry, as Rampling recalls it, and closed in early 1990.³²³³ Those Balearic-inspired nights led to the 1988 boom known as the second summer of love.³⁴

Ibiza itself had been building since the 1960s and 70s, when it was a refuge from Franco's Spain for hippies, including Americans avoiding the Vietnam draft.³⁴ Ricardo Urgell opened Pacha in a converted farmhouse in 1973, and Amnesia opened in 1976 in a former finca; in the 1980s DJs including Alfredo Fiorito helped invent the eclectic Balearic beat style the London visitors carried home.³⁴³⁵ Space, taken over by Pepe Roselló in 1989, later made the 22-hour Sunday session, from 8 a.m., its signature.³⁶

What is the "repetitive beats" law?

The UK's answer to rave moving outdoors. After the week-long Castlemorton Common free festival in May 1992, which drew an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people (estimates vary), Parliament passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which received royal assent on November 3, 1994.³⁷³⁸

Section 63 lets police act against a gathering on land in the open air of 20 or more people "at which amplified music is played during the night" in England and Wales; Scotland's version uses 100 or more.³⁹ It defines music to include "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats."³⁹ An amendment inserted on January 20, 2004, extended it to gatherings of 20 or more trespassers on land.³⁹ Some popular summaries describe the powers in terms of smaller groups and specific fines; this guide goes by the statute text, which sets the 20-person threshold above.³⁷³⁹

As the England and Wales text stands on legislation.gov.uk as of November 2026, a superintendent or higher can direct people to leave; anyone who knows of the direction and fails to leave as soon as reasonably practicable, or comes back within 7 days, commits an offence, with "reasonable excuse" as a defence, punishable on summary conviction by up to three months in prison, a fine up to level 4 on the standard scale, or both.³⁹

A separate offence covers preparing for or attending such a gathering within 24 hours of a direction, with the same maximum penalty.³⁹ Events run under a Licensing Act 2003 authorization are excluded.³⁹ The site lists some amendments to the section as not yet applied to its text.³⁹

The bill drew three large London protests in 1994, on May 1, July 24 and October 9; for the last, police estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people and organizers claimed more than 100,000, and it ended in a riot in Hyde Park.³⁸³⁷ Autechre's "Anti" EP on Warp supported the civil liberties group Liberty, and its sleeve advised DJs to "have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times."³⁸ Professor Nigel South called the rave sections "badly defined and drafted," written amid a moral panic after Castlemorton.³⁸

What is a superclub?

There is no official definition, but the name stuck to the large, licensed, branded clubs that absorbed rave's energy indoors in the 1990s. London's Ministry of Sound opened on September 21, 1991, modeled on the Paradise Garage; co-founder Justin Berkmann's order of priorities was "100% sound system first, lights second, design third."⁴⁰ Its compilations have sold more than 55 million albums.⁴⁰ Liverpool's Cream ran weekly from October 1992 to June 2002, and its festival spinoff, Creamfields, was acquired by Live Nation in 2012.⁴¹ The Guardian notes that the commercial peak brought high drink prices, VIP culture and overcrowding.³⁴

How did Berlin become the techno capital?

When the Wall came down, East Berlin was full of empty buildings, and some of them became clubs. Tresor opened in March 1991, founded by Dimitri Hegemann and investors in the vaults of the former Wertheim department store at Leipziger Strasse 126-128.⁴² Hegemann had brought Jeff Mills to Berlin in 1990 and welcomed Underground Resistance to Tresor in 1991, the start of what became known as the Berlin-Detroit axis.²⁸ DJ Mag calls Tresor "the blueprint for all future techno clubs"; developers forced it out after 14 years, and it closed on April 16, 2005, reopening on May 24, 2007, in a former power plant on Köpenicker Strasse.⁴³⁴²

Berghain came out of a similar story. Its predecessor, Ostgut, opened in 1998 in a former railway depot and closed in January 2003 to make way for an arena development.⁴⁴ Founders Norbert Thormann and Michael Teufele opened Berghain in 2004 in a former combined heat and power plant in Friedrichshain, built in 1953 and owned by the club since 2011.⁴⁴ Phones get stickers over the camera, the door policy is famously strict and opaque, and in 2016 a German court classed the club as a cultural institution, allowing a reduced tax rate.⁴⁴

What happened to clubs in 2020?

They closed almost everywhere at once. In the New York area, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut jointly ended on-premises bar and restaurant service at 8 p.m. on March 16, 2020, capped gatherings at 50 and closed movie theaters, gyms and casinos, with takeout, delivery and carry-out alcohol allowed (official).⁴⁵ Berlin's clubs shut that March; Berghain reopened in September 2020 as "Studio Berlin," an exhibition of 115 Berlin artists, and resumed indoor club nights in October 2021 for vaccinated or recovered guests.⁴⁴

England's nightclubs, closed since March 2020, reopened at midnight on July 19, 2021.⁴⁶ "The last 17 months have been very tough, many businesses have been lost," said Michael Kill of the Night Time Industries Association, whose survey of 250 venues that year found 82% would not check guests' COVID status.⁴⁶

The losses ran on after reopening. In April 2024 the Night Time Industries Association reported that 3,011 clubs, pubs and bars in London had shut since March 2020, and that more than a third of UK nightclubs had closed; Time Out, which reported the figures, pointed to soaring energy bills, high rents, a generational decline in drinking and young people spending less (reported figures; the release did not separate the causes).⁴⁷

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