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Welcome to the Black Parade
Imagine a room where nearly everyone is dressed in all black, wearing eyeliner and well-lived-in checkerboard Vans, and screaming at the top of their lungs. Welcome to Emo Night Brooklyn, a sanctuary for Yellowcard and Paramore fans alike. Be prepared to mosh.
All Signs Point to Brooklyn
Emo Night Brooklyn founders Alex Badanes and Ethan Maccoby met in Surrey, England at just two years old. In an interview with Jamie Kahn for Brooklyn Magazine, the pair discussed their friendship’s culmination over a mutual fondness for emo and pop-punk music. Going to concert after concert together and moshing in their bedrooms eventually turned to throwing parties in their Boston dorms, and upon their graduation, the duo took the party to their Williamsburg apartments. Over time, Badanes and Maccoby built a close-knit community that started to grow too big for the house party scene, calling for a necessary upgrade in venue. They turned to the now-closed Williamsburg bar, Cameo, and in 2015, held the very first Emo Night Brooklyn in the bar’s basement.
The Best Place to Dance, Dance
When Emo Night Brooklyn had an overwhelmingly large turnout, Cameo invited them back. Badanes and Maccoby took up the DJ booth themselves, throwing parties that perfectly captured the emo/pop-punk essence, free of charge. It’s the perfect rager for people who wore black skinny jeans that were way too tight and made sure their bangs were swept heavily to one side. It’s sweaty, it’s loud, the energy is high, and everyone is encouraged to sing at the top of their lungs. As the ENB community grew, the party found new homes at Brooklyn Bowl, Irving Plaza, and many more venues across the country — even across the globe. Emo and pop-punk icons like Yellowcard’s Ryan Key and Sleeping with Sirens’ Kellin Quinn even joined Badanes and Maccoby as guest DJs as Emo Night Brooklyn skyrocketed in popularity.
Gen-Z Crashed The Rock Show
Even when emo and pop-punk’s popularity started losing momentum, Emo Night Brooklyn held its own, having built such a strong community within the borough that people always came back for more. The genres saw their resurgence in the face of the pandemic, as Gen-Z associated with the sentiments behind them. Brooding and angst, resentment in being misunderstood, and battling with isolation struck the emotional chords, but the inherently political nature of emo and punk music resonated with the more outspoken younger generations as well, giving the genres a resurrection, of sorts. Teenagers and twenty-somethings started headbanging and fist-pumping along with millennials and Gen-Xers, screaming along to albums decades older than them and adding even more life to the party, carrying the love for the music down the line.
Heroes Get Remembered, Emo and Pop-Punk Never Die
The thing that brought Emo Night Brooklyn to fruition, and the thing that has made it as successful as it is, is its sense of community. The idea of it came from something as simple as two kids sharing their love for music, the college atmosphere allowing it to blossom into something for everyone to get their fill and culminating it into what’s now a monthly slice of heaven for people to relive their glory days (or jam out to the kind of music they’d find on their older sibling’s iPod). Emo Night Brooklyn brings people together, and has kept the culture alive in its own way.
Three Cheers for Ten Years
Badanes and Maccoby are still going strong, as they and other ENB DJs continue to play show after show from Virginia Beach to Vegas to Kalamazoo. Emo Night Brooklyn celebrated its tenth anniversary this year, throwing one hell of a party at the Brooklyn Paramount on January 25th and promising the West Coast one of their own at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California, on the sixth of June. Whether it’s at The Stone Pony, Mississippi Studios, The Orpheum, or The Far Out, get your tickets and join in on the fun. Just make sure to have some cough drops handy.
