Luxx

Overview

Small dancehall at 256 Grand Street that became the physical headquarters of the early-2000s electroclash movement, a queer-heavy room where Larry Tee and Spencer Product's Berliniamsburg party launched Scissor Sisters, Fischerspooner, Peaches, and Avenue D, and coined a genre in the process.

Luxx occupied a small, roughly 200-capacity dancehall and concert space at 256 Grand Street between Driggs and Roebling in Williamsburg, a neighborhood that in 2001 still had almost no dedicated nightclubs. Its interior (designed by the person who gave the club its name, Eben Luxx) ran to glitter bars lit in shifting colors, a disco jail, a crown-shaped DJ booth, mirror balls, and orange-and-silver zigzag vinyl wallpaper. Eben Luxx described the aesthetic as a 'tripped-out '60s space strip club.' The name doubled as brand: the room billed itself 'Williamsburg's Only True Night Club.' The defining event was Berliniamsburg, launched by Larry Tee and Spencer Product approximately a month after September 11, 2001, the name compressing Berlin and Williamsburg into a single word, naming the transatlantic electroclash axis. Tee had previously DJed at Palladium, Roxy, and Twilo; he relocated to Brooklyn and found no room for the music he wanted to play, so he made one. Berliniamsburg ran as the principal incubator of electroclash in New York, hosting Fischerspooner, Peaches, Scissor Sisters (Jake Shears later said 'being able to get on stage at Luxx in Williamsburg was scratching some kind of itch'), 2 Many DJs, Avenue D, and Ladytron, among others. Larry Tee organized and trademarked the term 'electroclash' during this period and produced the inaugural Electroclash Festival in Williamsburg in October 2001. Sophia Lamar served as co-host and DJ. Mutants, described in contemporary accounts as the 'offspring of Berliniamsburg,' created as the original party's crowd grew more mainstream, ran as a companion night. Juan MacLean recalled being brought to Luxx around 2002 as his first introduction to Williamsburg's scene. The crowd was primarily queer and 'skinny hipster,' with early accounts noting a roughly equal gay-straight attendance; by spring 2002, press coverage had re-marked it as predominantly gay. Out's 2017 retrospective on electroclash called it 'THE place to play.' Luxx closed on October 25, 2003. The space reopened as Grand Central, a gay dance club run by managing partners Troy Carson and Garry Hannon, around November 8, 2003; it subsequently became Trash Bar (2004–2015) and then Overthrow NYC, a boxing gym, from 2017. The electroclash moment Luxx anchored is credited in numerous accounts (including the New York Times) with making Williamsburg 'cool again' and seeding the borough's transformation into a dominant nightlife destination. Electroclash’s cultural stakes — synthesizer-driven dance music made primarily by and for queer artists, explicitly referencing the 1980s sounds that had defined downtown New York before AIDS — were sharpest in the months immediately following September 11, 2001, when Berliniamsburg launched and Larry Tee trademarked the genre name. Fischerspooner, Peaches, and early Scissor Sisters were all in rotation at Luxx during the period that established their national profiles; members of those acts have spoken in later retrospectives about Luxx's role in their early reception. Luxx closed on October 25, 2003 before electroclash was fully absorbed into mainstream electronic music, which means it never outlived the period it defined — the club closed before the scene it launched became legible to audiences outside downtown New York.