Apparantly this corner is now listed on some website as one of the "Hotspots" to hang out at on weekend nights. I walked over there after Ramie told me this really funny story. The Icecream Truck was belting Hip-Hop music and there were a bunch of teenage kids all crowded around dancing, with even a few of them busting a move on top of the truck. Ramie and I laughed pretty hysterically about all the hype online. (I still have yet to google "The Bench.") I snapped a few pics and then went back into his bar and had a Magners.
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http://www.timeout.com/newyork/article/9463/club-chair#articleAfterMpu
In the LES, benchwarming is the new hotness.
The Bench
Every Saturday night for the last couple of months, observant Lower East Siders may have noticed a conspicuously unproductive bunch loitering on the seating in front of American Apparel on Houston and Orchard. Meet "The Bench," possibly the nightlife hot spot of the summer. The allure? Nothing. As Max Glazer—Brooklynite, Bench cofounder and DJ who recently returned from a tour with Rhianna—laughingly observes, "People don't believe me when I tell them that the Bench is just us literally sitting on the corner. They ask, 'Is it a club? How much does it cost to get in?'"
Actually, longtime friends Glazer, Matt Goias, Ari Forman and "Fancy" are simply repurposing the term "slacker," though on July 21, the crew decided to be uncharacteristically proactive: They helped their friend, 2007 Fulbright Scholar Stephen "Espo" Powers, as he hawked T-shirts in front of his art space in Coney Island. Powers also spent the day belittling passersby—mostly hipsterfied Siren Festival attendees—on his PA system while simultaneously trying to sell them his self-designed wares. After limited success, Powers admitted, "I may need to rethink my business plan." Goias hastened to assure TONY that "we strictly do nothing as a nonprofit venture. This isn't usual—it's too much work!"
After Coney Island, the group took up their usual place in the LES for a night of hanging with producer Dante Ross, who brought along the 1999 Grammy (in a shoebox) he'd won for his work on Santana's Supernatural. Other attendees included graffiti artist Eric Haze, Hot 97's Cipha Sounds, former child star Mason Reese and any other passing layabouts wanting to take a load off. "This whole thing started," Goias explains, "because we realized one night that sitting here, we saw all the people we would've seen had we gone to all the parties. This way, we could just stay in one place."
— Drew Toal
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http://gawker.com/news/if-you-bill-it%2C-they-will-come/the-hot-new-club-the-bench-290712.php
If You Bill It, They Will Come: The Hot New Club: The Bench
Remember when we speculated that the next secret celebrity hotspot would be the upstairs of Barnes and Nobles on Thursday evenings? We weren't too far off. As the Observer observes, the new "it" spot is that bench in front of American Apparel at Houston and Orchard. "The Bench," as the bench is called, was founded by DJ Big Black Matt Goias, a sneaker "impresario" named Ari Forman and Moby's best friend, a guy named Fancy.
DJ Goias explains
"One night [earlier in the summer] we were sitting on that bench together and I said, 'Yo, this is the best club in New York...you know, because you have to go to a stupid club party, like, 'Oh, it's Jessica's birthday party tonight, I promised I would say hi,' or 'So-and-so is D.J.-ing, I told them I would swing by.' But then it was like, sitting on this corner, we see all of the people that we would've seen if we went to those stupid places that we hate, and we could talk and smoke and fuck this, this is the shit right here. We were like, 'Yo, wouldn't it be funny if we made a flyer?...It's almost like an art project/marketing thing...Like, I can make nothing at all the hot shit. We can take nothing at all and look like, 'Ah-ha, we made you come to a street corner!'
The kid is like the new Ionesco.
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