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Fringe benefits
Conscious club nights offer guilt-free partying.
“Socially conscious hedonism” may sound contradictory to the electro-addled, just-made-out-with-that-dude-at-Debonair party girl, but increasingly, night spots like Danny’s, Lava, Lumen, Metro and Sonotheque—known for embracing debauched music fanatics—are luring clubbers to parties with a purpose.
Setting the pace is perennial Bucktown boho spot Danny’s, which has hosted it’s Peace Party for more than a year now on the second Monday night of every month. There’s no cover, but the bar donates a portion (often half) of what it rings that night to local nonprofits in media and community outreach, like AREA Chicago. The casually hip crowd starts trickling in around ten; by midnight, the cozy dance floor is filled with flannel, beards and vintage dresses.
“It doesn’t feel like your typical hippie, island music, free vegan-food fund-raiser. It’s just a really fun party that happens to benefit a good cause,” says Peace Party organizer Joe Proulx. Proulx says that the amount of cash raised varies but a Skeleton News event netted more than $1,000. “Most of the groups we work with just need to pay the bills now,” he says. Partyers can even endorse local presidential hopefuls. In December at Lava’s Go Tell Mama, politically minded folks showed off their footwork to Derek Carter’s house beats and got a dose of Barack Obama’s message of hope along with their usual legal intoxicants. All of the $15 cover went to support the Obama campaign.
Last October Jeaneane Ally, the founding member of Multiple Solutions, an auxiliary group of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, reached out to Tim Juliusson, “Grand Pooh-Bah” of the Holiday Club to create the first Martini and Manicure for MS night at the besequined Uptown Lounge. Ally says she headed into what used to be the smoky nightspot to reach out to a different group of philanthropic Chicagoans. In between shades of Temptress Red nail polish and talk of men to come, the shindig raised $500.
Music’s ability to bring people together inspired Sonia Hassan to host her (formerly monthly) Africa Hi-Fi parties, where deep-house and Afrobeat lovers are encouraged to donate to NextAid, a group that works with AIDS orphans in South Africa. “The entire concept of my parties is to create a community of social consciousness through dancing,” Hassan says. Some late-night revelers are more conscious than others: Her last party only brought in fifty bucks. “It depends on who feels like giving that night,” she says.
Nightlife benefits provide the perfect opportunity for the up-and-coming, hemp dress–eschewing urban socialite to give back. “Even if you get drunk or are doing drugs in the bathroom, if you are there, you are still helping raise money for a good cause,” says Nicholas Tremulis, a DJ at WXRT and one of the founders of annual benefit concert The Waltz.
“It’s all based around the music,” says promoter PaulInChicago, who hosted a fund-raiser at Smart Bar for Tequila Mockingbird—the Windy City Roller who was badly injured last year. “Personally, I’m not into the whole tuxedo–$1,000 dishes–ballroom events. I like to have really different, artsy, music-based parties,” he says.
Some club fund-raisers take it to the next level. DJs from the Hump Day Dance Party on WLUW organized a benny at darkroom for the fledgling nonprofit Chicago Independent Radio Project and raised more than $200 for independent media. In between sets of mashed-up Christmas tunes, a team of elves helped collect letters to Congress and took Polaroids of clubbers sitting on a belligerent Santa’s lap. The night ended with beat-boxing, a cappella renditions of Christmas classics, and the crowd grinding together to holiday favorites. If that’s not evidence of the power of giving, we give up.
