Out Late: Elle Dee is transforming a chocolate factory into Brooklyn’s new ‘it’ nightclub

“Out Late” is Time Out’s nightlife and party column by DJ, Whorechata founder and Time Out New York Culture Editor Ian Kumamoto, and is published every other Tuesday. The previous edition was about the biggest challenges facing NYC nightlife right now.

Word on the street is that nightclubs are closing, the drinks are no longer flowing and people don’t really dance anymore. The shadow of a changing country is also sending a chilling silence that can be felt through the night. Now, according to the New York Times, New York is turning into a city that sleeps.

You’d never know that, though, if you met Elle Dee, a DJ, producer and artist who is overseeing the resurgence of The Chocolate Factory, an East Williamsburg warehouse venue I’d never heard of until last year. As you’d guess by its name, it’s located in an actual chocolate factory on 70 Scott Avenue, just steps from the Bushwick megaclub Elsewhere. One side of the building makes chocolate bars during the day and the other, separated from the factory by a wall, recently started hosting some of the most iconic parties in the city. In Elle’s world, the drinks are flowing, and the parties are going longer than ever—sometimes for 12 hours straight.

To understand why The Chocolate Factory is booming, you have to know about Elle Dee’s nightlife career and trajectory as a New York City ‘it’ girl. Her career began in Brazil when she worked queer club called Pix and later Lov.e Club, a São Paulo electric music venue that shaped that country’s club scene. When Dee moved to New York City in 2007 expecting to stay only a few months to learn English and write, she was taken aback by Manhattan’s comparatively tame nightlife.

“When I arrived in New York, people were talking about parties like The Misshapes and places like the Beatrice Inn, but no one was playing electronic music,” she tells Time Out New York. “I went from dancing to some of the best DJs in the world, like Sven Väth, Green Velvet, and Richie Hawtin, to what I found to be a rather strange scene in New York.” If anything, that disappointment fueled her. “Manhattan only inspired me to approach things differently.” 

There was one major obstacle: Dee spoke little English. Her first job in the U.S. was in designer Patricia Field’s store on the Bowery, and one day the actress and nightlife personality Sophia Lamar walked into the store and invited Dee to go to a party. There, the owner overheard Dee saying she wanted to learn to DJ and he booked her on the spot. “DJing was a way I could communicate without having to speak,” says Dee. 

Early on in her DJing career, Dee got booked and busy. She spun at Le Bain’s opening party, and other iconic venues like the Boom Boom Room, Number 8, Socialista, and Electric Room, to name a few. Her list of clients range from the New York Film Festival, to Interview Mag and Louis Vuitton. This was a time when there were almost no women DJs on anyone’s lineup. “Security would laugh at me when I arrived at some venues and told them I was the DJ,” Dee says. She has many crazy stories from that time, including the story of when she met socialite-scammer Anna Delvey (and wrote about it for the BBC).

In 2017, Dee launched her own party, Mild Fantasy, which she later turned into a mix series and record label. Eventually, she became an assistant booker at the legendary and now defunct Williamsburg nightclub, Output. She went around and helped with programming at other venues, but nothing was hitting. “If I’m going to do this work, I need it to really mean something,” Dee tells me. 

“If I’m going to do this work, I need it to really mean something,” Dee tells me.

When she was approached to book The Chocolate Factory last summer, something about the vibe of the space felt different to her. “When you go to a venue or you’re looking for a space for a party, it’s a little bit like when you are renting an apartment,” says Dee. “There’s an indescribable quality that either draws you in or makes you want to leave. It’s hard to explain, yet easy to recognize because you feel it.”

If you haven’t been, the Chocolate Factory is a true warehouse club, with columns, a cement floor, and wide open space. There’s a mezzanine where you can picture a big boss watching over an industrial line production below. On certain nights, giant projectors color the walls with moving images. Since last summer, Dee has created the venue’s own party series “TCF Presents” and brought in parties like Tijolo, Haus, Soul in the Horn and nightlife legends like The Carry Nation, which tested a 15-hour long afterparty called “It Went on Forever.” 

We’re living at a time when the barrier for entry to start new parties is higher than ever—venues are charging thousands of dollars to producers and underground parties are struggling to find places that can play a heavy bass late into the night. Paragon is closing at the end of the month and decades old venues that we thought would be here forever—Barracuda, Black Flamingo and many others—are calling it quits.  

There’s a lot that goes into curating a nightclub with any hopes of longevity. For one, there needs to be a community that rallies around it. That starts with something as seemingly trivial as the security at the door and extends to who the bartenders are and of course, the DJ lineup. Those details indirectly signal if a space is one that welcomes women, the queer community, and other people likely to support nightlife through a recession. If a venue doesn’t stand for anything or anyone, why would anyone come back?

I’ve seen Elle Dee in action many times—more often than not, she’s speedwalking through The Chocolate Factory, making sure that if any of the talent needs something, they’re getting it. Recently, she oversaw the installation of stairs connecting the mezzanine area to the main dance floor. Her love and care for the space and desire to create something for femme, queer, non-binary, trans and POC artists has fostered an organic community. If looking at nightlife venues is like looking at apartments, that’s exactly what The Chocolate Factory is beginning to feel like—a home to many nightlife kids that would have petered out of the industry without this space. On the factory side, which turns into a de-facto green room, her nightlife family hangs out on couches, drinking seltzer waters and eating bars of chocolate at 3am. DJs decompress from their sets and catch up with friends. New York City will always have the best parties in the world, but none of that matters if they don’t have a place to call home.

Nightlife shaped Dee and now, she’s building her own world within it. To me, she’s a vision of what nightlife can be again: A family affair.