Party Like It's 1939
January 21, 2010 5:15 AM   Subscribe

Willkommen Weimar! Looking for the most Jazz-Age places in NYC, ideally with a decadent Berlin feel. Awesome art deco bars, antique cocktails, hot hot neo-retro music where I could breakout a charleston without blush : Where can I find the past?

P.S Aware Of the Dances Of Vice depression-era parties. Looking for places that look and/or feel like the 30s.
posted by The Whelk to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (9 answers total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Are you aware of Michael Arenella & His Dreamland Orchestra? They played at the Jazz Age lawn party on Governors Island this summer. According to their calendar, they have weekly appearances around the city.
posted by hooray at 5:30 AM on January 21, 2010


Try Duane Park, Friday nights.
On Friday nights starting at 11 pm, there is Brian Newman's After Dark, with live jazz and burlesque dancers. Very much of that era feel about it, it's quite decadent, not sure in a Wiemeresque way.
Reservations are recommended. You can go earlier for dinner and stick around for the show, or just for drinks later during the show.
posted by newpotato at 5:31 AM on January 21, 2010


Weather Up, in prospect heights.
posted by tjenks at 6:21 AM on January 21, 2010


Neither Raines nor Weather Up have dancing or even music. None of the cocktail bars would come under the heading of "hot hot neo-retro music where I could breakout a charleston without blush " in fact I'm betting that would get you a stern talking to at most of them.
posted by JPD at 6:39 AM on January 21, 2010


Maybe Swing 46, though I'd only been there once and that was ... er ... 10 years ago ... I'm not sure how much they may have changed since. But they did have a dress code at the time, and most people there seemed to go with 30s to 40s styles.

After leaving Swing 46, my friends and I went somewhere else that would also be a decent answer to your question, but I was so hammered at that point I haven't the slightest idea what or where it was.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:53 AM on January 21, 2010


Is Lansky's on the LES still around? This is what you are looking for, but I feel like I heard a rumor that it closed. If not, it is a very speakeasy, enter-via-the-back-alley, big martini glasses of bathtub gin type of place.
posted by tractorfeed at 8:41 AM on January 21, 2010


I don't know anything about history, so how authentic this is I cannot say, but Shanghai Mermaid parties are so described. (Next one is Jan 30.)
posted by xo at 9:22 AM on January 21, 2010


Have you seen Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester? They're at Carnegie in March, and they're exactly the kind of music you're looking for, even if Carnegie's Perelman isn't exactly the venue.
posted by gladly at 9:55 AM on January 21, 2010


You shouldn't miss Wit's End, which is an occasional vintage-dress Jazz Age dance party with a live swing band.
posted by nicwolff at 12:14 PM on January 21, 2010


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