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Photos: The Lively Brings Retro '70s Vibes To The Meatpacking District
By
Scott Heins
Published Feb 4, 2016
Modified Feb 4, 2016
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By
Scott Heins
Published Feb 4, 2016
Modified Feb 4, 2016
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To walk into The Lively is to experience extremes of light and shadow, polish and grit. The new Meatpacking District club has plenty of dark corners and gnarled, arched brick ceilings. Then again, it features bright technicolor lighting and a massive disco ball at its center. The Lively aims to capture a retro vibe that's part CBGB subterranean, part Studio 54. It's as seedy as it is sheeny, and for the most part it succeeds.
"We wanted to take things back to the late 1970s, when New York was just coming out of a lot of violence, and a lot of fun arts and fashion movements were getting started," said Emily Sands, an associate at the creative agency hired to conceptualize The Lively. To create that feeling, the 9th Avenue club will feature live indie music during the evenings before transitioning into a DJ-fueled late night dance club during late night hours. Drink prices are modest for the neighborhood ($5 to $15 for a beer or wine), and the bar selection offers tasty surprises in the form of boozy snow cones.
Liquored-up snow cones at The Lively go for $5-8 and include iterations like the Smoking Hot (mezcal and passion fruit chili syrup) and Rocket Bomb (Skyy Vodka, Goddarrd blue curacao, and blood orange). It's the club's hope that the snow cones will go viral—"Having really fun boozy snow cones that we can take a picture of on Instagram is important to us. I think that the millennial population wants something different," Sands said.
(Scott Heins/Gothamist)
Backing it all up is a straightforward bar program that offers canned beer, wine by the glass, and colorful, easy-drinking cocktails like the $17 Offer You Can't Refuse: Dewars scotch, amaretto, and 8 year Bacardi. Drinking one is like sliding into a tailored leather jumpsuit. You immediately forget all your troubles. You're immediately ready to dance.
The Lively's stage and dancefloor area features stadium seating where, yes, bottle service will take place. This is the Meatpacking District, after all, but Sands stressed that the neighborhood's stereotypical "high-roller" vibe will be checked at the door. Liquor bottles top out at $275 each.
Currently, blank walls line the club's bar and dance area, but soon they'll sport a mural painted by graffiti legend Futura, along with a collection of photographs curated by the artist's son, photographer 13th Witness. It's all a part of The Lively's hopes of living up to its name and offering a genuinely fresh, approachable atmosphere in an area ruled by mega-clubs.
"We want to bring gritty New York back to a Manhattan that's sometimes so modernized that it's become boring and blasé," Sands said. "I don't think the saturated big nightclub scene really fits that vibe anymore. It's not niche, interesting, or worthy of a photograph."
The Lively is open 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. Thursday-Saturday; 5 p.m. to midnight Wednesday and Sunday // 26 9th Avenue, Manhattan // www.thelivelyspot.com
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meatpacking district
The Lively
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Scott Heins
Scott Heins is a freelance photo and video journalist based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Gothamist + WNYC. His work often centers around labor rights, housing, and policing. In 2018-2019 he traveled to four states while covering a wave of public school teachers strikes, with work featured in The New York Times, The Intercept, Getty Images, Splinter, and Bloomberg Photos. Scott is a dues-paying member of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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