At a recent dance party in Brooklyn, Berk Sawyer, wearing Nike high-tops and a white bodysuit covered in city icons like pigeons and a hot-dog stand, bopped his head to the heavy bass. Occasionally, he bounced so hard he tumbled to the floor.
Thankfully, at 13 months old and two feet tall, Berk was never too far from the ground.
Berk was running away from his mother, Rena Deitz, at St. James Joy, a lively all-age, block party in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
All around him, the brownstone-lined street was filled with grooving toddlers and their parents. Some nursed beers, some nursed. True to the party’s name, joy spread through a conga line, and through the swirls of dancers who paired off to salsa.
“It’s one of the few places you can come to dance with a baby,” said Ms. Deitz, 36, who used to seek out nightlife before becoming a parent, adding: “It starts to scratch the itch.”
St. James Joy is now one of a handful of dance parties around New York City where house music fanatics and babies alike find a dose of social life together in broad, pre-bedtime, daylight. It’s a city tradition that has grown in recent years. At multigenerational dance parties, attendees can listen to music by veteran New York D.J.s played on serious speakers — without any remixes of “Baby Shark.” It’s a small way for weary parents to find a dance floor release, while burning off energy with their children. And this summer there’s been no shortage of options.
That day at St. James Joy, Justin Carter, a D.J., was dancing with his daughter Navy on his shoulders, her tutu poking out the sides of his head.
“It’s amazing that we live at this time in New York where there are some good opportunities to take kids,” said Mr. Carter, who was there with his wife and other two children, adding: “to a party that’s fun for grown-ups.”
He is a co-founder and resident D.J. of the club Nowadays in Ridgewood, which throws its weekly dance party Mister Sunday on an outdoor dance floor in warmer months.
Mr. Carter said his children have grown up in and around nightlife since they were in the womb. Within days of being born, his eldest went to Mister Sunday, which began more than 15 years ago as a party called Mister Saturday Night.
“I consider this important living culture,” Mr. Carter said. “I believe that party spaces are vital cultural institutions, and it’s such an important part of my life that I want my kids there.”
Uptown, just a year earlier, Norman McHugh, or D.J. Stormin’ Norman, spun up a party in 2008 to fulfill a similar need in Harlem.
He found a spot in Morningside Park where he and his friends could set up turntables and bring their children. One park permit later, Sundae Sermon was born.
“After about three months of promoting it, we had about 50 people and half of them were probably our kids,” Mr. McHugh said. “It really just became this lovely energy.”
The grass-roots party later moved to St. Nicholas Park and eventually to Frederick Douglass Boulevard. It has grown to have swells of up to 10,000 people, still with space for children to run, and has brought on esteemed D.J.s, including Grammy winners like Louie Vega.
“Family-friendly, that’s really what it is,” Mr. McHugh said.
After Erika Hirano became a parent, she sought out healthier dance environments that were “less clubby.” She started taking her daughter Seika to Soul Summit, a dance party in Fort Greene Park, when she was just a year old. “It’s part of her DNA,” Ms. Hirano said. “It’s like muscle memory.”
Newer parties, though, are more accidentally multigenerational.
Billy De Lace helped start RebootNYC because he wanted to create an outdoor dance party to uplift people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He roped off a section of McCarren Park in Williamsburg, spread hula hoops six feet apart and turned on speakers. The event developed into Reboot, a roving party that uses silent disco headphones in public spaces across Brooklyn, where partyers of all ages color at drawing stations or jump up and down on the dance floor.
“Adults suck,” he said. “When you have kids, it helps regulate people’s energy. People dial it back a little.”
At each event, he draws a circle with chalk to designate a dance floor and asks that people put their phones down outside of it. The no-screens rule is strictly — if not warmly and a little mischievously — enforced by children Mr. De Lace tasks with monitoring device use.
Mickey Perez and Cesar Toribio, D.J.s and best friends, started Public Service in May 2021 to help people find a release — inspired in part by St. James Joy — from the claustrophobia of the pandemic.
Now, their parties draw crowds of around 300. Grandmothers tap canes to Afro-Cuban rumba, disco, hip-hop and old house music; 9-year-olds bounce around and thrash their heads; little girls sway from side to side. It’s not uncommon for passers-by to gravitate toward the bass and join the pack of dancers.
“Playing for these crowds, with all ages, all walks of life,” Mr. Perez said, “it kind of cultivates its own sound.”
The post A New Generation of Club Kids Is Born. They’re Younger Than You Think. appeared first on New York Times.