new york city’s an infinitely changing city.  it always has been and always will continue to change…that much is stating the obvious.  but aside from seeing old photos or hearing about the city of the past, it’s not always as easy to relate to or personally see until you get to a point in your life where you can slow down, look around, and go “what the…where the fuck am i?“

case in point…we’re moving into a new office sometime in september.  our space is still being renovated, so every so often we get an email showing the progress, with subject lines reading “new photos of the tunnel” and “tearing down walls at the tunnel“.  and i kept going “the tunnel, the tunnel…what the fuck is the tunnel?”  whereby the reply was “that’s the name of the building“.  a light bulb goes off.  i put two and two together.  i knew we were moving to the far west side of chelsea, but it took me an embarassingly long period of time to realize that the building we were moving to was in fact the old site of the club “the tunnel“.  fuck…am i now old enough to be working in an office housed in a space where i used to club when i was in high school and college?  admittedly i wasn’t a massive clubber…more of a wannabe raver that clubbed occasionally when i wasn’t raving.  but i’d been to numerous new york staples in my youth (tho the majority one or two times at most).  and even then, i only have slight recollections where most of them were even located.  most are gone now…nyc clubbings mildly comatose these days.  not that i would even know if it wasn’t.  so it got me wondering what happened to the other places i used to go to when i was younger…

the tunnel | welp, now i know what happened to the tunnel…it turned into my new office!  i don’t have many memories of this place.  in fact, i don’t have many memories of most of the clubs i went to, save a few.  the thing was, back then, i didn’t really pay much attention to the area.  i just remember dark side streets, lights all around the entrance, and late night food vendors lining the sidewalks.  it’s probably easy for me to say that the area probably didn’t look anything like it does today…

palladium | see…this one i already knew about.  the palladium was (one of?) the largest clubs back in the day.  it’s now the nyu dorm called the palladium on union square south (hint…trader joe’s resides in the ground floor).  i recall union square being pretty shitty back then.  it’s cleaned up nicely.

limelight | it’s a mall now.  if you told me ten years ago one of the best known clubs in nyc was going to be turned into a shopping mall inside a church, i’d laugh hysterically, then maybe go “for serious?  are you a time traveler?“

twilo | i have a higher than average amount of memories of twilo…but still not much.  i remember the bouncy ball chairs upstairs tho.  i was trashed this one time and bouncing around on them for an indeterminate amount of time.  i stopped going long before it became spirit, tho i don’t know if its still around.  it still says spirit on the awning on google street views…

wetlands preserve and vinyl | these two i lump together because i have the most memories from both these places.  partially because we went so many times, and partially because i was sober every time.  in high school, i ran with the ‘white hat’ crew…the majority of which liked to see jam bands and whatnot.  a small fraction of us frequented clubs however.  so when we headed out, these two places filled our needs quite well.  wetlands was a jam band venue for the likes of dave matthews, from good homes, moe, etc…while vinyl featured the likes of françois kevorkian and was literally down the block.  so we’d head in on a weekend, split up between the two venues, then meet up again at three in the morning.  both are long gone now, replaced by fancy pants luxury apartments.  i googled the addresses yesterday and barely even recognized the area…