The weekend before I moved to New York I was in the city with the band I managed. We had a show and I used it as an excuse to bring up some of my stuff and sign my lease.  At the show was a comedian named Zak Orth who we had just do stand up in VA. We started talking to him and he and his girlfriend ended up sticking around for our set.  His girlfriend Kat loved the band and took us all to some crazy hipster dance party.  That party was Ruff Club.  Other than Motherfucker it was the first time I had been to any sort of party in New York ad it was my last for a while. When I first moved to the city I started hanging out with Kat and Zak and their comedy friends and I started going to see stand up two or three nights a week. I didn’t really start going to parties until January when I had some friends visiting and they wanted to party.  Three months later I had turned Driven By Boredom into a party blog.

Ruff Club was never my favorite party… I spent most of my Friday nights at Trash, but I had some great times at Ruff.  I miss the packed sweaty basement when the Ruff Kids were spinning George Harrison and I was getting my mind set on some cute girl talking to Sophia Lamar.  I am going to miss Sophia trying to give me drink tickets and telling me some crazy story while I am waiting in line for the bathrooms.  I am going to miss running into 24Court who always seemed so unreasonably happy to see me.  She will be my friend forever when she defended me when one of the Misshapes got in my face at Bleach.  I will miss Danzi’s drunken hugs and 5am rides home on the J train. I miss seeing Brad Walsh trying to make nightlife photography look like the yearbook photo you wish you had in high school. I will miss Felipe making people in line for his photo booth wait while he gets my shot. I am going to miss convincing Spenser and Denny to not hate me after I talked shit about their party on my blog. I am going to miss arguing with Jason about politics and I am going to miss the Annex. I am going to miss the upstairs bathroom where all sorts of shady things have gone down.  I am going to miss Roe help me sneak whatever cute 19 year old girl I was with into the club and talking football with me when I couldn’t stand sweating any more and had to come outside.  I will miss bringing out of town friends to Ruff to show them what a real NYC party is like and Ian for making them feel cool when he would let them skip the line not pay the cover… Then again did anyone ever pay the cover?

Man, I have been up all night and I am rambling and getting all nostalgic. Pretty much everyone I just mentioned I am going to see in the next week. This is getting out of hand and I haven’t even talked about the party last night.  It was really great.  I saw people I hadn’t seen in ages.  I flirted with some models cause it is fashion week and A.R.E. Weapons closed the place like it had to be closed.  After they fucked the crowd up all the regulars new and old hung out way past dawn.  I left pretty early because I had to get an MRI in the morning, but I heard people were there until 7am.  It was a pretty great way to end the party and to close down Annex forever.  At least the LES will have a decent sports bar now.

Click here to see all the photos from the last Ruff Club and the end of the Annex.

And click here to see the Driven By Boredom Ruff Club archive.

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