A wild history of partying

Summary

Podcast Summary: HistoryExtra – "A Wild History of Partying"

Date: August 11, 2026
Host: John Baucum
Guest: Imogen Willits (author of Up All Night: A History of Going Out)

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Overview

This episode explores the fascinating, cross-cultural and centuries-spanning history of "partying" and nightlife. Historian Imogen Willits, author of Up All Night, joins John Baucum to trace how going out evolved from religious ritual and royal celebration into a vibrant, commercial culture, from 17th-century Japan to 20th-century Las Vegas, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The discussion highlights shifting social norms, economic currents, subcultural innovation, and even the impact of technology—including whether the golden age of nightlife might now be ending.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Defining "Going Out" and the Origins of Nightlife

• Defining "Going Out"

  • Willits distinguishes "going out" and nightlife as distinct from religious or court rituals:
    • "What I'm interested in is the moment at which they stop being part of religion or court celebrations ... Nightlife becomes its own distinct entity."
      (01:18 — Imogen Willits)

• Origins in 17th-Century Japan – Yoshiwara, Edo (now Tokyo)

  • Yoshiwara as a commercial, female-dominated pleasure district, distinct from the city's male-dominated, militaristic environment.
  • Space for merchants and samurai to compete in displays of wealth & status.
    • "Yoshiwara was basically a place where these two groups of men would try and outspend, out-compete each other."
      (03:15 – Imogen Willits)

2. Case Studies in Nightlife History

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, 18th–19th Century London

• The gardens functioned as "nightclubs" of their era, hosting balloon rides, fireworks, pyrotechnic volcano displays, and live organ music.
  • "The first thing I like to say about Vauxhall is it completely puts our nightlife to shame ... the things they were getting up to in the 18th century, it was ... pretty extraordinary."
    (04:38 – Imogen Willits)
• Class lines were blurred under darkness, leading to both thrill and moral outrage.
  • "The darkness and the fineries ... completely subverted or distorted the British class system."
    (06:25 – Imogen Willits)
• Decline due to financial mismanagement, urban sprawl, and competition from new forms of popular entertainment.
  • "It was really about escaping the squalor of the city ... by the 1850s, it was just seen as part of the city."
    (06:54 – Imogen Willits)

Belle Époque Paris and Montmartre

• Avant-garde artists of the 1890s steered nightlife back to a romanticized medieval past—cabarets as gothic clubhouses, darker than Renoir’s cheerful depictions.
  • "They had this very romanticized vision of medieval France ... very, very nostalgic."
    (08:46 – Imogen Willits)
• The concept of "slumming" – bourgeois visitors sought thrills in working-class areas, embracing danger and absinthe.
  • "It was a rejection of middle class comfort and conformity and embracing ... something that was darker and more interesting."
    (10:03 – Imogen Willits)

New Orleans and the Birth of Jazz

• Economic decline led to the rise of benevolent clubs for African American communities, with music and dance at the center.
  • "The economic decline actually fostered rather than hindered a party scene ... This whole system was underpinned by lively social dances."
    (11:27 – Imogen Willits)
• Storyville, the legalized red-light district, as a hub for jazz and cabaret—later fueling the migration of musicians to other cities.
  • "Storyville is the closest that America has ever got to a legal red light district ... that was definitely very much part of the jazz culture."
    (13:17 – Imogen Willits)

3. The Roaring Twenties and Beyond

• Nightlife in Paris, Chicago, Shanghai shaped by migrations (jazz musicians from Harlem, displaced Russians).
  • "People were excited by this idea that the world had been upturned and the elites were no longer the elites."
    (14:40 – Imogen Willits)
• The Jazz Age and post-WWI euphoria: exuberant spending seen as rebellious.
  • "Anything that was to do with like frugality and being kind of prudent was seen as very old fashioned."
    (19:06 – Imogen Willits)

Weimar Berlin

• The myth of endless decadence vs. reality: post-WWI euphoria gives way to harsh conditions during the Depression.
  • "There is a lot more to it than that ... It was much more about a market failure than this crazy, depraved city."
    (20:19 – Imogen Willits)
• Iconic figures like Anita Berber—performance, shock value, and the reality of struggling artists:
  • "Anita Berwer is the ultimate Berlin party girl. An incredible performer... they were two struggling artists ... shock sells."
    (21:54 – Imogen Willits)

4. The Post-War Era: Las Vegas, Havana, and the Rise of the "Party Holiday"

• A shift from "postwar euphoria" (post WWI) to "postwar paranoia" (post WWII), especially in America.
  • "Post World War I, you had post war euphoria, and post World War II, it's post war paranoia."
    (23:25 – Imogen Willits)
• Vegas and Havana as destinations for bored salarymen, catering to masculine fantasies of excess.
  • "The Rat Pack was so central ... the Frank Sinatra vision of a man that can kind of have it all."
    (27:37 – Imogen Willits)
• Tropicana in Havana and "cabaret in the sky" flights; Las Vegas promoted both as entertainment and as a place to watch atomic bomb tests.
  • "People would stay up all night and go to these bomb parties and watch the television go off in the distance."
    (26:10 – Imogen Willits)

5. Marginalized Communities and the Birth of Club Culture

• Post-60s: The decline of live music revues in Vegas and rise of "canned music" opens the door for DJ culture in New York.
  • "The first disc jockey is supposedly some band leader’s butler called Slim Hyatt … one of the first DJs."
    (28:43 – Imogen Willits)
• Disco and the politics of club culture—backlash from left and right, e.g., Mud Club vs. Studio 54.
  • "It was criticized from both sides ... you get these quite interesting places like the Mud Club in New York that’s a backlash against Studio 54."
    (31:33 – Imogen Willits)
• Nightlife shifts from mainstream review clubs to youth, queer subcultures, and dance music.
  • "It becomes something that's more associated with youth, something associated with kind of hookup sex, also within the queer community as well."
    (30:27 – Imogen Willits)

6. Nightlife in Decline? Technology and the Future

• Cities in decline (Detroit, Belgrade, Berlin) often foster the most creative party scenes—a trend seen in the 1980s and 90s.
  • "This sense of decline and decay for them just meant that it was a time to experiment, produce, create ... it had a very invigorating and energizing effect."
    (33:06 – Imogen Willits)
• Drugs have always played a variable role, but early techno scenes could be surprisingly "puritanical."
  • "Often the very beginnings, the bubbling up of these new music scenes ... it actually can be quite puritanical."
    (34:12 – Imogen Willits)
• The surveillance culture of smartphones has fundamentally changed clubbing, eroding spontaneity and inhibition.
  • "I think nightlife should be about losing inhibitions completely ... smartphones have definitely distorted that."
    (36:03 – Imogen Willits)
• The future: Willits speculates the "golden age" of nightlife may be over, but remains hopeful for new forms to arise.
  • "We just need the new thing to come up in its place ... the 21st-century version of a nightclub and whatever that looks like. I'm very excited."
    (37:36 – Imogen Willits)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the competitive spirit of Yoshiwara:
  "There was one very rich merchant who spent ... millions of dollars in today's money to just hire out the entirety of Yoshiwara just so he could have the full run of the place for himself for the night."
  (03:15 – Imogen Willits)

• On Vauxhall’s social blurring:
  "You didn't quite know under the cover of darkness if that was a member of the aristocracy or a very well dressed merchant or someone else. And that was part of the thrill."
  (04:38 – Imogen Willits)

• On the atmosphere of post-WWI Paris:
  "It was just like insane levels of spending. And that was again part of the kind of Paris appeal."
  (19:06 – Imogen Willits)

• On Weimar Berlin's reality:
  "It was much more about a market failure than this crazy, depraved city that was too distracted to prevent the rise of fascism."
  (20:19 – Imogen Willits)

• On smartphone culture and nightlife:
  "Even Paris Hilton ... was talking in her memoir about how the rise of the smartphone in the early 2010s completely changed LA nightlife for the worse."
  (36:03 – Imogen Willits)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Nightlife Definition & Yoshiwara, Japan – 01:04–04:23
• Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, London – 04:23–08:21
• Paris & Montmartre, Slumming, and Belle Époque – 08:22–11:16
• New Orleans, Jazz, and Storyville – 11:16–14:31
• Jazz Age, Paris/Shanghai/Chicago Migration – 14:31–16:20
• Post-WWI Exuberance – 18:49–20:07
• Myth and Reality of Weimar Berlin, Anita Berber – 20:19–23:01
• Post-WWII Las Vegas & Havana – 23:25–28:43
• Shift to DJ Culture, Paradise Garage, New York – 28:43–31:25
• Disco Backlash, Rise of Alternative Clubs – 31:25–32:43
• Cities of Decline: Detroit, Berlin, Belgrade – 32:43–34:02
• Drugs and Clubbing – 34:12–35:52
• The Impact of Social Media & Technology – 36:03–37:24
• Is Nightlife's Golden Age Over? – 37:24–38:56

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Conclusion

Imogen Willits provides a panoramic yet vivid history of going out, showing that party culture has always adapted to the economic, social, and technological realities of its time. While she acknowledges anxieties about the decline of traditional nightlife in the smartphone era, she remains optimistic that a new, more liberated form of communal celebration will eventually arise.

Recommended for: Anyone interested in cultural history, nightlife enthusiasts, and those curious about how celebration, subculture, and social change intertwine.

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Transcript

[Imogen Willits]

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[Imogen Willits]

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[John Baucum]

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[John Baucum]

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[John Baucum]

For hundreds of years, people have gathered after dark to drink, dance and escape the pressures of everyday life. But how did going out become a habit across the world? In today's episode of the History Extra Podcast, John Baucum chats to Imogen Willits about the hedonistic history of partying, journeying from 17th century Japan to Weimar Germany, Cold War, Las Vegas and beyond. Imogen, welcome to the History Extra podcast.

[Imogen Willits]

Thanks very much for having me.

[John Baucum]

Now, Imogen, this is a book all about the history of partying, of hedonism, and people generally just having a great time. But before we properly begin, let's just get a bit of clarity on that terminology. What to you counts as going out?

[Imogen Willits]

Great question. So we have always had hedonism, drinking, dancing, drugs. All of these activities are so fundamental to what it is to be human. But what I'm interested in is the moment at which they stop being part of religion or court celebrations and nightlife. And going out becomes its own distinct entity that's separate from those two realms. And if we think of nightlife in that sense, then it's quite fun. We really can date its origin to 17th century Japan, when people partied in a way that was not to do with the king, wasn't to do with religion. It was its own separate commercial environment designed to be experienced and enjoyed after dark.

[John Baucum]

Excellent. So just talk about Japan then, because that's the, that's the first chapter of the book, isn't it? And you specifically talk about an area of what is now Tokyo called Yoshiwara. Can you paint a little picture of that then for our listeners?

[Imogen Willits]

So Edo at that time, which is now known as Tokyo, was a very male dominated city. So men outnumbered women by 2 to 1. It was a kind of quasi military dictatorship, you know, under the show Hogan. And what Yoshiwara was this amazing kind of 10 acre patch on the outskirts of the city you had to travel by horse for hours to get there. Very otherworldly. And the idea was that it was a female dominated space, you know, courtesans and performers and banqueting. And it was this kind of art cultural paradise that was very distinct and very separate from what Edo would have felt like to live in. It was just men and sword fights and rowdy banquets of eating meat and all of these sorts of things. Whereas there was something that was much more refined and feminine and cultural and artistic about Yoshiwara by comparison.

[John Baucum]

And the men that visited there was this part of a rite of passage for a certain type of man.

[Imogen Willits]

Well, I think what's really interesting is you basically have this quite intense sense of competition between the samurai warriors and the newly rich merchant class. So the merchants were. Were growing increasingly wealthy through domestic trade, which was booming at that time. But they were considered kind of low status. So it's kind of straight. It's almost like they were the bankers or something. But they had all of this money and went to Yoshiwara to kind of show off, basically. And then it was quite infuriating for the samurai who. It was the opposite. They were revered and they were respected, but they had nowhere near the spending power that the merchants had. And so Yoshiwara was basically a place where these two groups of men would try and outspend out, compete each other. There was one very rich merchant who spent, you know, the equivalent of like millions of dollars in today's money to just hire out the entirety of Yoshiwara just so he could have the full run of the place for. For himself for the night. So it was very much a kind of competitive spending place for these two groups of men.

[John Baucum]

Excellent. And so we move from 17th, 18th, 19th century Japan if we come to Britain. Another case study you talk about in the early part of your book is that of the Vauxhall pleasure gardens in London. Now, I'd not heard of those before. What exactly, Imogen is a pleasure garden?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, the first thing I like to say about Vauxhall is it completely puts our nightlife to shame. I mean, the things that they were getting up to in the 18th century, it was, yeah, pretty extraordinary. So the pleasure gardens, if we think of those as kind of the nightclubs of their time. So London, I think at its peak had about 70 of them. So if you were going for a night out on a Saturday in London in the 18th century, that is most likely where you would go and the kinds of things you would experience. Lots of hot air ballooning adventures were Going on. People were getting in a hot air balloon and going all the way to Germany from a hot air balloon that started in Vauxhall. There was a craze, a brief but intense craze for volcanic eruption shows. So after excavations began in Pompeii and then to the French Revolution created this real interest in the sense of apocalyptic destruction. And so people would go to these gardens and watch these pretty spectacular pyrotechnic displays involving fireworks and figures and things like that that were replicating Vesuvius or volcanic eruptions. And then also, you know, all the things that we would associate with a night out today. There was live music, obviously, without electricity. This meant playing the organ. So Vauxhall had an enormous organ right in the centre of it. People would dance and drink and all of these kinds of things. And what was really unique about Vauxhall was that it was a very class bending environment. You know, that was the thing that was a cause of anxiety and concern, but also something that was very thrilling, the idea that you didn't quite know under the COVID of darkness, if that was, you know, a member of the aristocracy or a very well dressed merchant or someone else. And that was part of the thrill.

[John Baucum]

Yes, it was. Was there a lot of moral outrage at these types of venues then?

[Imogen Willits]

Yes. Well, you do get poems and songs at the time who kind of, yeah, express a bit of dismay about this idea of the footman shining as lordly as his grace, or that the darkness and the fineries that people were dressed in completely subverted or distorted the British class system. And there was something that was quite exciting about that.

[John Baucum]

Yeah. And it closes, I think, in 1859. So what happened there then? Do they run out of money?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, yes, I mean, there was a bit of sort of poor management towards the end. I mean, they just kind of couldn't stop themselves from investing in these incredibly expensive productions. There was a recreation of an Arctic expedition that cost, you know, the equivalent of like hundreds of thousands of pounds in today's money. So managers were just, yeah, much more interested in the kind of mad creative side of things than perhaps being good with the budgets. But I also think by that point, Vauxhall at its core was really about escaping the squalor of the city and partying in this very idyllic nocturnal garden. And by that point, by the sort of 1850s, it was just seen as kind of part of the city, no longer an escape from it. You know, that was around the time that you had the big stink, when the Thames was just like overflowing with sewage and people were retching in parliamentary debates. So it just didn't quite have the same cell that it once did. But it is extraordinary to think that it was around for basically two centuries, you know, and Glastonbury has been around for 50, 60 years. So it was truly, you know, very much part of British social and cultural life for a very, very long time. And then I suppose things like the seaside towns and museums and music halls that all began in kind of Victorian England were really, well, competing with what Vauxhall once excelled at.

[John Baucum]

Yeah. So it's a massive period of change. But that's an excellent case study. Thanks, Imogen. And I know that we're hopping around a little bit. We've been in Japan, we've been in London. Let's move across the channel, because if listeners know anything about the history of nightlife, 19th century Paris is probably going to spring to mind. It's the romantic image that we have of Paris during this time. Strictly true. You know, the sorts of scenes we see in Manet paintings, for instance.

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah. I mean, I think what's so interesting about. I mean, we call that period the Belle Epoque from sort of. Yeah. Late 19th century to the outbreak of the First World War. And I look specifically at the 1890s, the kind of fin de sieck, like the end of that century. And I think what's so interesting is the avant garde artists at that time were not forward thinking. They were not embracing the oncoming 20th century. They wanted nothing to do with technology and progress. And they had this very romanticized vision of medieval France and that's what they were interested in. So it was very, very nostalgic. And these artists basically took over Montmarche, which was very underdeveloped, kind of hilly wilderness landscape. And they were opening these medieval style kind of gothic clubhouses and staging cabaret shows in those spaces. And it was very hark back to an earlier, bygone, very romanticized age. It wasn't exactly what we might think of when we see these very cheery kind of Renoir canvases. I think there was a darker and more interesting side to the nightlife of the time.

[John Baucum]

Yeah. And you had a lot of middle class people coming in and slumming it. Did that ruin Montmartre?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, it meant that it became a kind of more Disneyland, kitschy environment, for sure. But yeah, it is very interesting what was happening with slummers at the time. Because. Because what was happening in criminology at around that time is that this idea was that the environmental factor was a really key predictor of criminal behavior. And by emphasizing that environmental factor, it meant that slums and kind of working class nightlife areas were suddenly incredibly interesting and thrilling for bourgeois newspaper readers. So what they wanted to do was kind of experience firsthand these places that turned honest men into criminals. And drinking absinthe was part of that as well. It was believed to literally make you go mad. Even though it is basically just has a lot of alcohol, it's a very strong alcoholic drink. There's no hallucinogenic properties or anything to it. But people believe that that was part of the experience. So it really was about proximity to kind of danger. And that's what people wanted. It was a rejection of middle class comfort and conformity and embracing something that was darker and dangero and more interesting.

[John Baucum]

And talking about France, or at least a place with French influence. Of course, if we go across the Atlantic now, if we go to New Orleans, how did that become known as a party city during the 19th century?

[Imogen Willits]

So I think what's so fascinating about New Orleans is that in the 1890s, early 20th century, it was not the kind of rich city that it once had been five decades or so before. And it's real like boom years. But we today associate these left behind places as very, very much, you know, not having a thriving nightlife scene. But New Orleans was, was very different. So the economic decline actually fostered rather than hindered a party scene. And that's really because of these benevolent club dances. So at that time, particularly around like black working class communities, they would create or become part of these benevolent clubs. So you would pay in and then you would pay out of the system if you were sick or unable to work. So it was very much a kind of self administered welfare state. And this whole system was underpinned by lively social dances. And indeed, the man that invented jazz, Buddy Bolden, performed this crazy new sound at one of these benevolent club dances in about 1895. And that just sent the city kind of crazy. And there was just so many work opportunities for musicians as well. I mean, another part of the economic situation was people would have these Saturday night fish prize, so you would basically charge entry to your house like a paid for house party. And that would help you with rent payments. And everyone in the community would come along and there'd be musicians, you'd put on a spread of beer and food and everyone would have a great time. And there was a lot of competition with what band you were getting to play at one of these. So it was just a very, very musical city. And it, yeah, had this very interesting way of responding to economic decline through nightlife, essentially.

[John Baucum]

Yeah. And a key part of the city during this time is Storyville. Could you just talk a little bit more about that?

[Imogen Willits]

So Storyville is the closest that America has ever got to a legal red light district. So it opened in 1897. And this law is so strange. It basically said you can't have prostitution in the area that isn't Storyville. So people kind of took it to mean like, well, so it's sort of legal inside. But it was basically to kind of protect property prices and that kind of thing. That was the kind of reason that they were trying to keep sex work to this one very clearly defined area. But that, that was definitely very much part of the jazz culture as well. There were these amazing, like Pete Lala's cabaret where people would come and, you know, there would be these jamming sessions till 4 or 5 in the morning. It was this very kind of, of music centric, booming, incredibly lively place that, yeah, lasted for a couple of decades and then closed at around the time of the, the First World War. And so again, all of those musicians kind of lost a key place where they were relying on for jobs and for work. And many of them moved north. So moving then to Harlem, moving then to Chicago. So it was part of what created this kind of dispersal of jazz musicians.

[John Baucum]

And Imogen, you've teed up my next question really well there, because I was going to ask you, how does that connect with what we then call the Jazz Age later on? What's the link?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, I think of the twenties again, it is really like the golden age of nightlife. So there are many chapters in the book that talk about the Roaring twenties and what it was really like. And I think that in many instances, particularly when we think about these cities like Paris, Chicago and Shanghai, that had incredible nightlife scenes, it was very much to formed through migration patterns. So Paris was home to many of the Harlem jazz players who opened jazz cabarets in Montmarchre. So that was a big part of Paris. And then you also had kind of bohemians from New York that were moving to Montparnasse. And then in Chicago, the same thing. The north would drift from New Orleans and Shanghai. What's really interesting is that that was also very affected by the Russian revolution also, as was Paris. So the number of Russians that were displaced after the revolutions in 1917, many of them flooded into Paris or Shanghai, where they opened up their own cabarets. Maybe they worked as musicians or worked as dancers. And I think what's also really interesting is that that sense of or a very romanticized sense of a fallen aristocrat, then working as, you know, a drummer or a waitress or something was kind of also part of the appeal. So this idea would up in a lot of the guidebooks at the time, kind of nightlife guidebooks that would say things like at one time your waiter was likely to be a grand duke and the drummer an ex minister. And people were excited by this idea that yeah, the world had been kind of upturned and the elites were no longer the elites. And that was part of the appeal of Paris and Shanghai.

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[Imogen Willits]

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[John Baucum]

You talk about this in the book a little bit, but if we just talk about the first World War, what impact did a global conflict have on people's mindsets and the way they treated their spare time? Were they keen to savor every moment that they had because life was just seen as so precious or was that a bit of a myth?

[Imogen Willits]

They were very obsessed with spending money. And I think that that's something that is really interesting for us to think about from our modern vantage point. I mean, anything that was to do with like frugality and being kind of prudent was seen as very old fashioned. And so particularly in Paris, you would just have, I think it was Scott Fitzgerald who would go out with like wads of cash in his pocket and would just stay out until all the money had been depleted. And then you get these kind of crazy parties that might start in Paris and end up in Venice via a pit stop in the Nile. I mean, it was just like insane levels of spending. And that was again part of the kind of Paris appeal as well, because particularly if you're an American and you had access to the dollar, you could live in Paris very, very cheaply. So even kind of of middle class Americans could go to Paris and spend a year just basically just partying and spending a lot of money. So, yeah, that idea of spending as a bit punk like, or a bit subversive was kind of part of what was going on in the 20s.

[John Baucum]

And Imogen, we can't really talk about this period without talking about Weimar Berlin again. That's a city that's been really romanticised during this period. Was it really like cabaret suggests it was?

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Imogen Willits]

So I think Weimar Berlin has become quite misunderstood because I think, think particularly us, like, as Brits, we've kind of absorbed too much of the cabaret musical message. That was A faint kind of adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's writing. And he was, you know, British guy who gets to Berlin in 1929. So he really just experiences the tail end of it, you know, those four years between the Wall street crash and Hitler becoming chancellor. And that There's. Yeah, there is a lot more to it than that, I think. You know, there were these, these. This kind of golden age of a lot of wealth in Berlin that was from around 1924 until the wall street crash, where the nightlife was quite flashy and they had this crazy Disneyland kind of place called House Vaterland where people would go into these different kind of themed spaces, themed environments that was very, very popular with middle class Berliners. So this idea that it was, you know, 15 years of complete and utter depravity, I think is a little bit misleading. And I suppose really what was happening was in response to the Wall street crash and an unbelievably brutal economic situation that really did mean that many people were kind of forced into things like sex work and prostitution, you know, as. As a means of survival. So it was much more about a market failure than this crazy, depraved city that was too distracted to kind of prevent the rise of fascism. There's. Yeah, there's much more to it than that.

[John Baucum]

And Imogen, who were the key figures, would you say, within this movement, within this period of history?

[Imogen Willits]

So Anita Berwer is the ultimate Berlin party girl. An incredible, incredible performer. I describe her in the book as like a cross between Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Marina Abramovic. I mean, that's kind of who she was. And in 1922, she, with her husband at the time, staged this absolutely crazy performance at this very grand concert hall in Vienna that, again, is part of this Berlin kind of myth making. And they were reenacting getting high on cocaine and morphine. There were Egyptian princes trashing their treasures. I mean, like dipping their bodies into blood. I mean, it was like complete carnage and really, really shocked the Viennese kind of society people that were in the audience. And again, that was part of inflaming this myth of Berlin decadence. But again, when you think of the reality of what was going on, they were two struggling artists that were trying to make a living. They were kind of putting on what would sell and shock sells. So that's part of the story as well.

[John Baucum]

And Imogen, just to mention for the benefit of listeners, we actually have a whole episode on Berlin as part of our History's Greatest City series. In fact, I think it was series one, Episode one. So that's available to stream now. And I'll put the link in the show notes. But, Imogen, thank you so much for everything so far. We've got to the Second World War, post World War II. Do we see the same impact on nightlife as the end of World War I?

[Imogen Willits]

Not at all. And I do. I feel quite bad for those people that would have been kind of 20 and 1950, very, very different to being 20 and 1920. And as I talk about in the book, you can kind of say that that Post World War I, you had post war euphoria, and post World War II, it's post war paranoia. It's very. Yeah, it's a very, very different cultural reality, particularly in America. But what was kind of happening at the time, if we think about this Cold War age of conformity, return to kind of traditions and things like that. The thing which created the mechanism of escape was the party holiday. And so I focus on Las Vegas and Havana as these two places that really courting the kind of salaryman market. And there was, you know, a lot of men's mags at the time that would talk about the wild things that you could get up to in Havana. And this idea of organized crime and gangsters and espionage, that was kind of part of the thrill as well. I think there's a very operatic sense of the glistening kind of showgirl surface froth and this kind of strange, dark, sinister power play world beneath that of gangsters and criminals and that kind of thing who were running the show. So both of those cities were kind of competing with one another as places that men would come and party and escape the 1950s. And yeah, there's a lot of, you know, Hugh Hefner writing and Playboy and that kind of thing that were very much kind of encouraging, this sense of. Of escaping 50s conformity.

[John Baucum]

Yeah. And so you've got Las Vegas, as you said, and Havana. It's strange, isn't it? Because this is pre Cuban revolution. So we wouldn't really think about people flying off to Havana to party now in the same way, would we?

[Imogen Willits]

No. And again, talking about this idea of the party holiday. So there was a plane that went from Florida to Havana that was called the Cabaret in the sky, and that was put on to get tourists from America into this one very specific club called Tropicana, which was considered the most beautiful nightclub in the world. It still exists today. And this idea of, you have kind of tropical plants. It's just very beautiful, beautiful setting with modernist architecture and these crazy kind of opulent reviews that would be staged each night. So there was something that was very spectacular about Tropicana. And the way that it courted the kind of American tourist market is just kind of ingenious. Just a plane that's a cabaret.

[John Baucum]

And then focusing on Las Vegas. It's in the middle of the Nevada desert. It's actually quite a young city. I think it's founded in the early 1900s. Why does that become a magnet for such excess and hedonism?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, I suppose the best way of thinking about it is at first, the city was developed in the. Well, the 40s and 50s by kind of the mafia and these organized crime groups. And they were quite unstrategic. You know, I include a quote from a journalist who says something like, they were building hotels with no idea or vision of who would be in them or using them. And I think also what was happening was a lot of kind of prohibition riches were going into these new constructions and new developments in Las Vegas. So Vegas was essentially overbuilt. And then what's really interesting that happens in about mid-1950s is the rise of the showgirl, the. The review. And a way of creating demand for Vegas when they had built so many hotels. And to turn it into a kind of party city or an entertainment destination is perhaps a better way of putting it. But the other kind of fun side of Vegas at the time was that that was also where people would go to watch the atomic bomb tests. They were known as backyard blasts. That was also part of the tourism industry, Actively promoted by the hotel bosses. And people would stay up all night and go to these bomb parties and watch the television go off in the distance.

[John Baucum]

Wow, That's a really strange form of entertainment and pretty unique to that period in time, I think. And, Imogen, would you say then that the Vegas view of partying is very masculine then?

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah. The people that those two cities were catered to Was very much the kind of bored salaryman. And the Rat Pack was so central. You know, the Frank Sinatra vision of a man that can kind of have it all was, yeah, very central to the mythology of those cities. And as I talk about in the chapter, I think the assassination of jfk, in a sense, it's like the end of this idea of male omnipotence or of kind of men that can get up to whatever they want and not face any consequences and that kind of thing that it kind of shattered that illusion. And Vegas definitely changed in response to that. It became much More nationalistic. And these very twee shows were put on that were celebrating America in a very kitschy way that was quite different from what had gone before. So this idea of, yeah, you had a sort of decade of sense of triumphant masculinity and then this earth shattering event that broke the illusion and what's

[John Baucum]

going on in cities like New York at this point. Because at the other end of the spectrum you have marginalised communities who are really shaping nightlife at the time.

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah, and I think there is this very crucial moment for nightlife in the sort of end of the 60s, beginning of the 70s, because the arrival of what's known as canned music, so recorded music meant that many of the musicians in Las Vegas basically lost their jobs. It was like the end of the live orchestra accompanying these showgirl spectacles. And I think at the time, if you'd asked people, they would have thought, I don't really know where nightlife is going to go from here. This thing that's been so crucial to the going out experience is now changing. But then what happens is that just the way that you play a record became this whole new medium for artistry that really begins in New York. And I don't think anyone would have been able to predict it at the time because it's only with hindsight that you can kind of, you know, piece it all together. But the first disc jockey is supposedly some band leaders butler called Slim Hyatt, who played at this place in New York called the Club, which was a kind of aristocratic hunting retreat, kind of themed members club. It was, was Italian tapestries, like all very ornate. And then the disc jockey hadn't really been invented yet. So this guy was just there to kind of play records. And he was a butler, but he goes down in history as being one of the first DJs. And yeah, very much like those kinds of disco spaces like Paradise Garage that came later had this combination of gay subculture mixed with like disco records that just sweaty, euphoric, kind of messy, transcendent places.

[John Baucum]

And would you say then that's a bit of a backlash against what had gone before? You know, how nightlife had become very commodified and commercialised?

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah, well, I think that experience of going to a review, which was the traditional kind of nightlife experience in about the mid century, I mean you can watch videos of what those things were like. Some of them have been captured in documentaries and it is kind of live brain rot. It's like really kind of crappy slack, slapstick humor, like quite bad Comedy. And that was just where sort of middle aged couples, before the rise of television and at home entertainment, that's just what you would do in an evening. And a lot of the time it wasn't that great. And so I think when you have the more widespread adoption of television, then nightlife shifts gear to become something that's more associated with youth, something that's more associated with kind of hookup sex. Like also within the queer community as well. That, yeah, it kind of changes and becomes, well, as I would say, much better, more interesting, more cool in comparison to the review format that had come before.

[John Baucum]

Yeah, and so we have an explosion of disco music in the 70s, but even with that, do we reach a saturation point where that becomes a bit passe?

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah, absolutely. And with disco, I mean, there was a real kind of anti disco backlash sentiment that was brewing from the sort of mid-70s onwards. And basically it was. Was criticized on both sides of the political divide. So on the right you would have people that just didn't like the visibility of the queer community or these very interracial spaces was quite shocking to them. But similarly on the left you had a critique of disco as being just very corporate and commercial and bland, the kind of McDonald's of music. So it was, it really was criticized from kind of both, both sides of the divide. And you get these quite interesting places like the Mud Club in New York York that's a backlash against Studio 54. Like Studio 54 was crazy spectacle, disco every night. And then the Mud Club was just. Yeah, they didn't really kind of stage anything per se. It was more letting the crowd come and like create the fun themselves and this interesting mix of celebrities and artists and people from downtown. So yeah, you definitely had the sense of the anti disco backlash creating new interesting forms of nightlife.

[John Baucum]

And this is a controversial question, but in the book you look at three cities in particular. In a later chapter, you look at Detroit, you look at Berlin, you look at Belgrade and you're drawing parallels between those because they're cities that are undergoing upheaval. They're also cities in decline at the time. Would you say then that cities that are going through this spawn more lively party scenes because of that than cities where there is affluence?

[Imogen Willits]

Yeah, it's a really great question. And I think for these specific cities, I think that very much was the case. You know, I was interviewing some of the promoters from Belgrade who were part of that kind of rave scene of the 90s at the time. And they would say things like yeah, this sense of decline and decay for them just meant that it was a time to experiment, produce, create. It was, it had a kind of very invigorating and energizing effect and I think something similar as well. In Detroit there was a lot of, of vacant post industrial spaces, you know, factories and warehouses that people took over for techno raves and parties and things like that. And I think that, yeah, there was a sense of filling these fallen places with a new kind of energy and that these young people were definitely invigorated by it. That, yeah, that was part of, part of what was going on.

[John Baucum]

And we can't really talk about electronic music during this period and particularly the rave scene in the UK without talking about drug taking. Is that an integral part of going out at this time?

[Imogen Willits]

Well, I think that, I mean, in a way it's sort of. Yes, it is part of it. Not always, but that has been kind of part of the human experience for a very long time. I think in the chapter about the 90s where I was interviewing people that were going to these crazy kind of techno parties in the Packard Plant, this huge car factory that had kind of fallen into ruin in Detroit, and the experience of going to those raves and kind of hallucinating. And I found some very similar examples going back to the 19th century of these Parisian artists that were, you know, puffing on opium pipes and hallucinating and writing poetry about it. That, yeah, these, these hallucinogenic experiences are very much part of it. But similarly, I think what is also quite surprising that often there will be these early nightclubs associated with a particular, you know, new genre of music. Like the Music Institute, which staged one of the first, first techno nights. It was open for, I think around a year in the late 1980s. And that was run by a group of basically teenage boys, you know, barely out of high school and they didn't serve alcohol. It was not a drug scene at all. It was all about the music and the dancing. And you know, the kind of connection between like techno and MDMA or ecstasy did come much later. So it's interesting that often the very beginnings, the bubbling up of these new music scenes, it's actually can be in some senses quite puritanical. It's like, no, we just want to listen to this new type of music we've never heard before and we just want to dance for five hours and drink and drugs weren't part of it at all.

[John Baucum]

And if we go to the 90s and the early noughties, I suppose so much more Recent history. Does the rise of social media and the Internet make clubbing more sanitised, would you say?

[Imogen Willits]

Yes, I mean, I think nightlife should be about losing inhibitions completely. And smartphones have definitely distorted that. I think that, you know, as a millennial, I'm old enough to remember, you know, going out before the smartphone and can compare it to going out now. I think that we have lost something quite fundamental if we're not able to kind of really let go and feel uninhibited in a nightlife environment. Because I think, yeah, the ever present surveillance aspect of smartphones do make the old style of going out very, very difficult. And I think it's very telling that some of the most interesting forward thinking nightclubs either have already done so, or are starting to ban phone cameras or maybe even smartphones altogether. You know, Berghain is a really famous example of that, but other nightclubs are kind of trying to follow suit. And so I think that the smartphone has definitely distorted the nightlife experience. And even, you know, Paris Hilton, who we think of as a very kind of social media savvy influencer person, you know, was talking in her memoir about how the rise of the smartphone in the early 2010s completely changed LA nightlife for the worse. You know, it used to be these crazy wild clubs where celebrities would party with non celebrities. And that just really stopped being the case from about the 2010s onwards.

[John Baucum]

And there are endless reports about Gen Z ditching the night out cause they're all glued to TikTok, they'd rather film dances in their bedrooms. So you know, is this the end then? You know, all these hundreds of years of history, is it just, is it deemed to fail?

[Imogen Willits]

I know, I mean there's definitely one way that you could look at the last 120 or so years and say this was the golden age of nightlife, you know, from the widespread adoption of electricity so you get street lighting, going out becomes much safer, you know, particularly for women. So that's about 1890s up until the invention of the smartphone in the 2000s. And those 120 years created the perfect conditions never to be repeated. It's done now, it's over. But I try and remain optimistic. I think that it is much more likely that what we are going through now is a kind of transition phase rather than a full on nightlife apocalypse. I think that basically what needs to happen is we need nightlife that rejects and responds to the technology that we're living with now. The nightclub that used to be a really exciting, overstimulating place now just can feel quite lacklustre, maybe even boring. So we just need the new thing to come up in its place. And I think that's for the next generation, maybe Gen Alpha, when they come of age and reject social media scrolling bedrotting and they want to kind of embrace nightlife and all its possibilities. And we'll create the 21st century version of a nightclub and whatever that looks like. I'm very excited.

[John Baucum]

That's an excellent place to end. Imogen Willits, thanks so much for your time.

[Imogen Willits]

Thank you so much, Jon. You thank

[John Baucum]

that was Imogen Willett speaking to John Baucum. You'll find plenty of other stories about parties through the ages in Imogen's new book, Up All Night, A History of Going out, which is available now. I'm Gwen Washington from Snap Judgment, the storytelling podcast from kqed. Imagine an iconic piece of paradise overrun by one of the most horrific fires in recent memory. Everyone flees. Everyone except one person who decides to fight the flames alone. The moment when nature, institutions and technology fail at the exact same time. That's all. Systems down and new Snap Judgment miniseries from kqed. Tap to listen now.