Photos: RIP Ruff Club on September 11

Since the beginning of time--we're hyperbolizing here--people have wanted to lay claim to witnessing things. Whether through cave paintings, papyrus and reeds, storytelling, Greek theater, etc. for millennia, the common bond that's been shared by all great seers is this: they were able to say, in a modicum of differing ways, "I was here". In the modern age, a time we've come to call A.I. ("After the Internet"), it's become more and more a proving ground for those descendants of the great seers to lay claim to their laurels. In a way, it's like scrawling your name in a bathroom stall or on a school desk yet in the information age, it's more a shouting of "first!" or some other message board-based response, Tumblr, blog, et al.

To take it one step further, we're saying that for the few hundred kids who popped into the final Ruff Club ever--after three-and-a-half years since the party's beginnings and due to some interesting back-alley dealings the venue that held it, The Annex, is going the way of the buffalo--they'll be joining these ranks. In truth, we hadn't been to the party in a little over a year since we'd acquired our weekly hosting/photographing duties on Friday nights at Webster Hall. But there was no way we'd miss this, as some of our favorite times have been at The Annex, and most of those trips were spent in honor of Ruff Club. So, with sweat, blood and melancholy, we went over to the Annex after leaving Webster Hall and had probably the best time we've had in God-knows-how-long. And every kid who came through will tell you the same thing, whether it's in the stalls of The Annex as it takes its new ownership and re-branding, on a message board, in a blog post or Tumblr, or in these photographs. We heard a lot of reminiscent stories and friends talked of the energy that we all felt that night and how being at Ruff Club always felt especially like "old New York" (code for before everything got marginalized, splintered and of course, 'cleaned up') and how it was never going to be the same again.

And while we disagree with some that it signaled an "end of an era" or something like that, we feel very strongly that the weekly party's three-plus years were something that will be very hard to erase/forget/one-up. But it's over now and the shoveled dirt is still fresh. The praise is still deserved though, and so we'll give it. Rejoice, fellow seers, we (and you) were there and none of us will forget what it all meant. Ruff Club is dead. Long live Ruff Club. So long and thanks for letting us "be there" with you.

(mp3)    Fever Ray - Here Before (Vashti Bunyan cover)

Godspeed!