In the heady days of NYC intern season, it’s easy to wonder if, at 24, I might already be too old for the club. Maybe, I think, it’s time to take up pilates, or collect tchotchkes, or get way too into TheRealReal. But then I remember I already do all those things—and besides, going to the club is part of my job—so I’m off to Pacha New York, the swanky East Coast incarnation of the iconic worldwide nightlife venue.
It’s exactly 10:42 p.m. when my friends and I arrive in East Williamsburg. Normally this would be early for a night out to begin in force, but Pacha’s collaboration with Spanish EDM event company elrow, “Dance With The Serpent,” has been bumping since sunset and promises to continue until 4 a.m. We’re led inside through a VIP entrance by a well-dressed man, whom we’ll later learn is none other than the DJ A-Trak. Around us are people of all ages and ilks, united in a proclivity for Halloweeny outfits. About 25% of the populace is sucking on lollipops, meaning they are likely having the sort of chemically-initiated great time one can’t allow oneself when technically on the clock.
The last time I stood on this hallowed ground was to see Galantis of “Peanut Butter Jelly” fame. It was also, technically, a different venue: after all, Pacha New York has been plopped on the site of the now-defunct EDM mecca Brooklyn Mirage. That venue closed down in late 2024 after financial issues had become too insurmountable to remedy. A private equity firm slithered in and made a deal with Kabir Mulchandani, a Dubai businessman whose company owns the Pacha brand. And thus, Pacha New York was reborn.
Luckily, everyone at Pacha New York seems to be of age, likely because the evening is a bit too expensive to risk wasting a fake ID on: regular ticket pricing runs in the high double-digits, while backstage experiences start at $500. If that sounds excessive, it’s because I’ve not yet enlightened you on just what elrow has promised the event’s attendees: total bedlam. The experience was marketed as an immersive world, a universe dedicated to the pursuit of fun.
What this means, in practice, is Pacha New York looks like one of the most intricately designed places to do drugs I’ve ever seen. Throughout the night, performers emerge wearing outfits reminiscent of the Dada movement: Anubis helms a parade that features giant walking eyeballs, snake-men on stilts, and skeletal birds. The elrow mascot, a giant chicken named Rowgelia, keeps getting twerked on. That’s the promise of a place like Pacha: hedonism dependent on total randomness; a series of events so devoid of logic they divorce you from reality almost entirely.
The night is hilarious, and fun, and incredibly cheugy. It is also, remarkably, mostly free from embarrassment, because a sense of ludicrous community reigns supreme. At risk of revealing myself to be a dance music dilettante, I am having an enormously difficult time identifying individual songs in the hours-long medley of house music being thrown at us. I can only tell you that there’s a banging remix of “Perfect (Exceeder),” and that during a dutiful A-Trak performance of “Heads Will Roll,” the place erupts into excitement.
It’s no coincidence that Pacha has taken over the predominant club venue in Brooklyn, nor that its brand of clubbing has returned to the zeitgeist with such force. Maybe everyone’s tired of trying to seem cool. Maybe Eurotrash is in just because it looks like fun, and our addiction to nostalgia mandates a new subculture be reincarnated out of its fossilized remnants. Whatever the reason, a bright, flashy, happily un-chic brand of clubbing has reinserted itself into the middle of New York’s nightlife scene, and it’s super duper weird. But it’s also infectiously fun and satisfyingly unique.
