Readerswives Centre Fold: People Don't Dance No More

During the 90s Mayor Giuliani followed in Mayor Koch’s footsteps and continued to fuck up a city that should still be the capital of cool. He enforced laws that had lain dormant since the end of prohibition and he enforced new laws that killed New York City’s soul. The city thought it had solved its crime problem with new zero-tolerance laws that ultimately did nothing but push crime out of Manhattan into the surrounding boroughs (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten). Giuliani also attacked the arts by introducing new cabaret licenses that effectively banned dancing in any venue that did not hold a costly cabaret license. So just as the Criminal Justice Act in Britain made Acid House political, so Giuliani’s short-sighted attempt to bolster city coffers by regulating music and the arts made the simple act of dancing in certain locations an act of rebellion. As a result of such laws the city that during the 70s and 80s was synonymous with its ‘aNYthing goes’ attitude to parties has turned into an overly sanitised state of ‘head bobbing robots’. Now in the mid-00s ‘The Head Bob’ is now the dance of choice for many New Yorkers, it seems like it is subliminal, people don’t realise that the reason they are not moving is because it is illegal. This lack of movement and the stifling, strange atmosphere it creates is obvious to an outsider. Unfortunately it seems that many people that attend gigs in NYC don’t consciously think about it, they don’t move, it is like they’re looking at paintings. It has turned gigs in NYC into a field of synchronised robots.

So how is the law enforced? Does NYC have ‘Dance Police’ and do they work undercover wearing silver flares and tight t-shirts? Well, not really, it seems that the law is in place and it works, but no one has ever been arrested for dancing. On talking to one bar owner, his response was “I’d sure like to meet a cop that would arrest someone for dancing”. In New York City the definition of dancing is ‘organised movement of two or more people’ so surely being in a room with 400 other people and doing ‘The Head Bob’ is illegal?

For a nation that claims to be ‘The land of the free and home of the brave’ how do such oppressing laws get passed without a major revolution taking place?

Here are some good songs about this subject: