The Newspaper of Record profiles the burgeoning fad of workday dance parties. You know how it goes: Ann from accounting changes out of her dress slacks and into her eight-inch freak 'em skirt before downing a Soco and Lime and engaging in some light Twerking. The bacchanals are basically the 9:30 Club’s 90’s dance party with a one-free-drink maximum.
Around her, hundreds of other revelers did similar things: a guy in Chuck Taylors moonwalked across the dance floor, a man in a hoodie threw up his hands to form the "W" that stands for the rap group Wu-Tang Clan. Strobe lights bounced off a giant disco ball. Sweat glistened on foreheads. "Gin and Juice" thumped. Cheers erupted. It was midday, but inside Marquee, it could have been 2 a.m.
Now I’ve been to my fair share of dance parties and clubs. You need a lot more than one drink to dance and socialize. Or at least I do. Otherwise the party runs the risk of resembling that time at your cousin’s wedding when they played the Electric Shuffle and the Cupid Shuffle back to back. And where does the Times find these people anyway. I can’t for the life of me think of a fellow Millennial who can leave work, change from a dress shirt to a deep v-neck, wait for drinks at the bar, mingle, dance, change into work clothes, and cab back to the office all in one hour. The only people I know who pull off the club Sunday through Sunday are the promo girls and bartenders. Don’t the people in the Times article also have to, you know, work? (If anyone reading this has a job that gives you that long a lunch break, hit me up if your boss needs an intern.)
After Kriss-Kross's "Jump" (R.I.P. Chris Kelly) wraps up the midday hootenanny, Ann puts her slacks back on and heads to her full-time job. I’m sure Marie from Detroit wishes Lunch Rocks made it to the D, but she's too busy balancing three part-time jobs while looking for a full-time gig.
Good to know there's an American city where the elite spend lunch grinding up on randoms while "Regulate" (R.I.P. Warren G) plays in the background. Of course this movement was founded in Sweden. They have a lot of free time on their hands. At least adopt siestas, New York. That’s a trend I wouldn't mind making its way to Washington.
The reporter interviewed retirees who frequent these workweek ragers. You've got to assume a party that mixes pensioners with mid-level staffers is lame. The people with real jobs don’t go to these events because they're too busy working.
The piece wraps up with an anecdote featuring a 26-year-old who works for the food division for Martha Stewart’s media conglomerate. Instead of "scrounging around the test kitchen" (because Martha Stewart’s test kitchen must copy its menu from Yodok concentration camp), Lauren Tempera and her co-worker head to the club.
"No one was here today, so we snuck out and left our intern with the phone," Tempera tells the Times. "Free peanut butter sandwiches, Absolut and Questlove? You really can’t beat that."
I hope that intern takes Tempera's job one day.
Bonus Tom Wolfe Quote: My boss, who says he's working from home but may be at Marquee doing the Robot, points out that Tom Wolfe first wrote about lunch-time dance clubs in London in his 1968 classic The Pump House Gang. His piece, "The Noonday Underground," contains the following description:
Right away the music is all over you like a Vibro-Massage—and—Larry Lynch just starts waffling out onto the floor by himself—so what?—who needs a partner?—a lot of boys and girls come here at lunchtime and go into this kinetic trance, dancing by themselves, just letting the music grab them and mess up their minds. Berry Slee, a 19-year-old fellow from Brixton, is out there, in the darkness at noon, heh, going like a maniac, doing a dance called the Rudy, by himself, with this maniacal suit on, with flaps on the pockets hanging down about eight inches, messes your mind right up, and Berry's friend, Ian Holton, who is also 19, is dancing by himself, too, and God, this green suit he has on, it messes your mind up, this waistcoat with the six buttons grouped in groups of two, great green groupy work by the great Jackson, like, one means, you know, the girls are all down here, too, but so what, the point is not making it with girls, there are plenty of girls out here dancing by themselves, too, the point is simply immersing yourself for one hour in The Life, every lunch hour.
It took the New York Times 45 years to catch up with Tom Wolfe. Man's a genius.