New York City appoints its first nightlife mayor

On Wednesday afternoon City Hall was planning to name her as New York’s first Nightlife Mayor, its ambassador-at-large to the late-night world of bars, burlesques and cabarets. Soon enough, she would be back in the bacchanal. For now, it seemed like a prudent move to be in bed before dawn.

“I’ve always been a nocturnal person,” Palitz said, sipping her Manhattan, the only drink she has ordered for months in a superstitious effort to secure the job. “Nocturnal people just sort of gravitate toward night life. But I don’t think that will change even if I have to be in the office at 9 a.m.”

Since September, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was forming an Office of Nightlife to promote the industry and soothe the strained relations between the city’s night spots and the neighborhoods that complain about their merriment, the local demimonde has been wondering who might nab the glamorous position. Would de Blasio appoint a modern-day Tex Guinan, someone who would quaff Champagne in the small hours of the morning under the trapezes of the erotic circus scene?

In her first interview since accepting the post, Palitz suggested that her stint as the Nightlife Mayor would be slightly more sober and focus less on carousing than on conflict mediation. In today’s New York, gentrification has pitted partygoers against the settled residents of neighborhoods like the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. In her first official act, Palitz promised to hold a series of listening tours and entertain the gripes of those who are bothered by the vomit on their streets or the noise at 3 a.m.

“Both sides feel unheard,” she said. “Both sides feel that things are unfair. I think the grievances are almost the same but there haven’t been any practical real-world solutions to address them.”

As a fifth-generation New Yorker, Palitz, 47, claims to be of a broad enough mind to discern those solutions and to ably serve as advocate for the after-hours set while remaining responsive to community concerns.

Though she was raised on 86th Street on the Upper East Side, she moved to the East Village in 1996 and has lived there ever since. In her early 20s, she took her first night life job, managing the guest list at the old Club Mars. Soon she was producing the “Soulution Spontaneous Groove Open Jam” — a night of hip-hop, spoken word, gospel, rock and drag — at clubs like Nation, SOB’s and the Tunnel.

In the early 2000s, a friend from grade school asked Palitz to invest in a bar near her apartment called The Flat. (It was briefly famous as a rendezvous that actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher used for their romance.) But in 2004, The Flat went under and Palitz took it over. She turned it into Sutra, which for the next 10 years until it closed, was known for Toca Tuesdays, an old-school hip-hop party overseen by the DJ Tony Touch.

It was during that period that Palitz joined Community Board 3, a fractious body that includes the East Village, Chinatown and the Lower East Side. There, she was introduced to the brass-knuckle politics of night life — chiefly through her dealings with what she has called the “no-more bar contingency.”

In an interview in 2012, Palitz told The Daily News that the area was “ripe for the picking” by high-end nightclub entrepreneurs — a remark that did not endear her to local residents and bloggers. Though she later claimed she was misquoted, the comment triggered a firestorm and some in the neighborhood called for her removal from the board.

Now in charge of a mayoral office with a 12-person advisory board, a $300,000 budget and a salary of $130,000 a year, Palitz seems to have realized that even a doyenne of New York night life must make a few concessions when joining city government. On her Tuesday evening drink, she was accompanied, for instance, by a minder from City Hall. While she admits that there were times in her career when she personified “what the no-bar movement rejected,” she also claimed that she has always tried “to find solutions that work for everyone.”

Among those who will be watching her as she begins her job is Rafael Espinal, the Brooklyn city councilman who sponsored the law that created the position. Espinal, whose district includes the night life neighborhood of Bushwick, said he was excited by Palitz’s appointment, but hoped that she would not be too Manhattan-centric.

“I would love it if she were sensitive to the DIY underground in Brooklyn too,” Espinal said. “That’s the scene that has set the trend for years and has made things in the city so interesting.”

Palitz acknowledged that the scene had changed from her day in the mix and that the once-cool clubs of the Meatpacking District had moved to Queens and Brooklyn.

“You can’t crush culture — or subculture — in New York,” she said. “It just goes deeper and longer. New York culture and night life still thrive in a very real way. It’s just going to find its new place.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

New York City appoints its first nightlife mayor

For a veteran of New York City’s after-dark community it was a tame time for a cocktail, but Palitz had good reason to get home early that night.

Enhance Your Pulse News Experience!

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!