2025: The Year of ‘Soft Clubbing’

I see this as the delineation between IRL Clubs 1.0 and IRL Clubs 2.0. In order to be venture backable, the new generation will have to take advantage of the points discussed in 1-4 and leverage its technology, community, and brand to scale beyond its four walls.

So I will risk sounding like an old raver shaking her cane to note that subcultures, even the vapid ones, used to tie their participants to people and places. Getting into a scene could be work; it required figuring out whom to talk to, or where to go, and maybe hanging awkwardly around a record store or nightclub or street corner until you got sco... See more

Stark reminder of the parlous state of afterdark subculture in so many cities around the world. In the UK, for instance, 75% of nightclubs have shut since 2005 (75%!) - and, truth be told, so much of what survives is very corporate and highly contrived.

They say nothing good happens after 2am (or is it midnight?), but in the case of creativity, that... See more