If you have been a fan of Driven By Boredom for more than a couple of years you might notice that it’s not really a party photo blog anymore. I used to shoot parties almost every night and I had a blast doing it but things change. I got older and I priced myself out of doing it… I’m not gonna go shoot my buddies weekly party for $100. But one of the main reasons I stopped doing it is because there just aren’t a lot of places I want to go to anymore. I imagine that somewhere out there people are throwing amazing parties and doing crazy shit and I just don’t know about it, but if you walk around the Lower East Side it’s pretty clear that Downtown is dead.

Jerome’s was one of the last Manhattan bars where if I walked into it on a random night of the week I knew I would run into some people I knew. When I had friends in town I would have them meet me there if I couldn’t convince them to come into Brooklyn. My friends ran it, my friends DJd it and my friends drank there and while Jerome’s as it existed is a relatively new bar, the place has history.

I used to party at St. Jerome’s all the time. I met so many people there and did many shady things in those bathrooms. It was the kinda dirty rock and roll bar that existed all over the lower east side until a few years ago. When St. Jarome’s closed I was bummed but it was quickly re-opened under the new Jarome’s name and after a couple walls were knocked down the place was bigger and better even if it was (slightly) less shady.

But now two generations of Jarome’s are gone and last night they threw a hell of a party to mourn it’s demise. It was one of those occasions that brought everyone back out again. A big reunion where we all get together to talk about how we old we and how everything used to be. It’s a conversation that will be happening for the rest of time as more and more condos go up and banks replace bars and culture is pushed farther and farther out into the boroughs. Yeah we all got old, but it’s easy to look around and see that downtown Manhattan is no longer a place for art and music and creativity.

So last night was fun to reminisce and when it was last call there was a good 20 minutes of pure madness and New Yorkness, but then suddenly we all had to go and by 4:20am the party was over and another bar was gone to be replaced by some sort of cocktail lounge for finance bros who moved into one of the many giant buildings that have been built south of 14th street in the last 7 years.

So I shot proper party photos for the first time in months and it felt really good, but then I woke up this morning thinking about how I should probably just fucking move to LA like everyone else…

Rest in peace Jarome’s. It was nice to have you while we did.

Click here to see all the pictures from the last night at Jarome’s.

Comments (0)