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“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 recession fueled return of clubstaurants.
There was a time in New York, sometime in the mid-2010s, when the craziest parties you could go to happened in the most unexpected places—we had club nights at dim-sum restaurants, raves inside half-emptied malls, and A$AP Rocky performing at art galleries no one's ever heard of. That city’s DIY spirit and sense that anything could happen if you knocked on enough unmarked doors was what made our nightlife more electrifying than anywhere else's, but it was squashed after the pandemic, never to fully return.
When I went to Third Floor Sounds for the first time last weekend, I felt the vague sense of a return to 2015. I had an address and no other details. Walking aimlessly up Elizabeth Street, I tapped into my 18-year-old self, who would walk up to doors in the same neighborhood, ringing doorbells until I found a party. This time, though, I arrived at a two-story glass, brick and aluminum structure, a beautiful and modern tattoo shop called Blindreason.
Third Floor Sounds is a gathering that happens every couple of months at different secret locations throughout New York City. I’d seen clips of the party on the Internet before; just one year after it was created by 27-year-old New York native Tyler Davis (aka TEE EM DEE), Third Floor Sounds has generated an outsized share of viral clips on TikTok and Instagram. The party format is simple: you fill out a form requesting to be invited. If you’re accepted, you’re sent an address, a date and time. All you have to do is show up.
When you do show up, you might find yourself standing in front of a retail store, a weed shop or someone’s apartment. Once you walk in, someone at the door covers your front phone camera with a sticker. If you arrive early, you’ll be in time for a period of mingling, where strangers get less awkward with each passing drink and begin, after a difficult 20 minutes, to ask each other for their names. Then, Davis gets on the mic to announce that the party is starting. The DJ starts spinning and little by little, the party begins to form around them. Unlike a regular DJ set, though, the DJ’s back is towards the audience and a wide lens camera captures them as partygoers dance and react to different tracks.
If you watch one of its sets on YouTube, you'll see strangers meet and become friends in real time. As the night progresses, there’s a crescendo, and then an explosive peak of energy around the two- or three-hour mark—people jumping, screaming, being in the moment, not a single phone in sight. If it weren’t for the quality of the footage and the trendy “clean girl” outfits, it feels like these could have been taken in the early 2010s. People might compare Third Floor Sounds to the mega-popular broadcaster Boiler Room, and it is, except it feels much more wholesome and chill—if Boiler Room’s drug of choice was molly, I’d argue that Third Floor Sounds is on shrooms.
Davis started Third Floor Sounds in 2023, around the time he started having mixed feelings about the club scene (he calls it “club fatigue”). Specifically, he noticed that people were going to the club with a certain close-mindedness about the type of music they wanted to hear, and they also really cared about being seen. So much of partying in New York has become a performance—the parties you go to say everything about who you are, and some dress up just to be photographed and posted online. Davis decided he wanted to start a party with good music but far removed from nightclubs. In March of last year, he asked a friend if he could throw a party in her tattoo studio in Bushwick. It was a massive success, and Davis saw that New Yorkers were eager to listen to good music in different contexts, not always in the pitch-black, fog machine-obscured whirl of a warehouse.
“If Boiler Room’s drug of choice was molly, I’d argue that Third Floor Sounds is on shrooms.”
He was also in search of a more chill sound that would bring people together. “I grew up on house music cause of my dad’s influence. He was a New York City club kid who went to Paradise Garage, Studio 54, all that stuff,” Davis tells Time Out New York. “I started growing more interested in house and dance music and I saw this resurgence of very intimate environments where people seemed really tapped into the music, and that felt more authentic and exciting to me.”
When I went to Third Floor Sounds for the first time this past weekend, I made my first friend about 10 minutes in. I was getting footage of the space for a video when she said, “isn't there a no phones policy?” just loud enough for me to hear. I turned around, embarrassed and a little annoyed, and told her I was working, but realized that was just her way of making conversation. She explained to me, very effusively, that she was from Houston and saw the videos from the party on social media. She talked about the party like it was an Ivy League school, about how she had been applying to get in for months. We ended up taking a tequila shot together.
Davis is combining an old New York party sensibility, where everyone is in the moment and actually talking to each other, with a digital reality. He tells me it’s a tricky balance to strike, especially because he knows some people feel self-conscious about being filmed, which prevents them from actually being in the moment. But when so much of your lore and the excitement around your party comes from socials, you can't really fight it—you just find ways to “feed the beast,” in Davis’ words.
“I saw this resurgence of very intimate environments where people seemed really tapped into the music...”
In one Third Floor Sounds TikTok posted last summer, party guests are enjoying a backyard set by DJ TEE EM DEE when the cops show up. The caption over the video reads “how to keep the party going when the police show up.” Step 1? Keep Dancing. Step 2? Loop the track so the music doesn't end. The last step? Celebrate.
What caught me off guard about that TikTok was that everyone in the video is calm, probably a little high, and the music is super chill. To me, it feels like a commentary on how uptight New York City has become. We’ve turned from a city of crazies and artists into a city of Karens, one where fun—even in its purest forms—is practically outlawed. But the video doesn’t seem to be concerned about these joy-killers. The party kept growing. The applications kept coming. The party kids, against all odds, are still winning. All you have to do is look at Davis.
You can go to Third Floor Sound's big one-year anniversary at Elsewhere on April 4. Otherwise, follow it on Instagram to find out about its upcoming events.