AFTR/IMG

Get involved

The record needs the people who were there.

AFTR/IMG is designed to be corrected and completed by the people who were actually in these rooms: dancers, DJs, promoters, door staff, photographers, and the crowds. Here is how to help.

If you were there

Contribute

Submit a memory

A room, a night, a person nobody wrote down. Firsthand accounts are what published histories don't hold.

Add a memory

Record an oral history

Were you on the floor at the Garage, under the dome at The Saint, in the Bronx in '73? Your account belongs in the record.

Tell us

Suggest a correction

Dates, addresses, credits. Old heads keep the record honest. Flag anything that looks wrong.

Flag it

Sustain the work

Friends of the Archive

A public cultural archive needs patient support, not advertising. Membership will keep AFTR/IMG independent and free to read. In development, nothing is charged yet.

Where we stand: AFTR/IMG is not yet a registered 501(c)(3), so contributions are not tax-deductible right now. We are working toward fiscal sponsorship and will say so plainly the day that changes. We would rather you give with clear eyes.

Listener$5/mo
  • Early access to Dispatches
  • Your name in the credits
Member$15/mo
  • Everything in Listener
  • Quarterly archive drops
  • A vote on what we document next
Patron$50/mo
  • Everything in Member
  • Invitations to listening sessions
  • Named acknowledgment in the archive

Institutions & partners

Archives, libraries, universities, venues, estates, and photographers: AFTR/IMG is built to host and credit primary sources, flyers, photos, audio, oral histories. We're seeking collections to steward and partners to build with.

Start a conversation

Funders

AFTR/IMG documents nightlife as cultural infrastructure: queer, Black, Latino, and immigrant history that is rarely archived while it happens. The data model carries explicit confidence flags and sourcing, and is built so other cities can follow New York.

Read the mission & method
Current scope · prototype v1
160
Rooms mapped
835
Figures
424
Parties & raves
5
Boroughs

Growing with every contribution, spanning the 1920s to tonight.