THE JOB OF nightlife czar may sound hedonistic. Then Corean Reynolds explains what it entails. Officially Boston’s director of the nightlife economy, Ms Reynolds can sometimes be found standing outside a bar at 2am, watching how staff manage crowds spilling into the street. When residents complain about noise, she may be nearby with a decibel meter, with a plan not to kill the buzz but measure it. “I’m like, hey, actually it didn’t seem that loud,” she says she tells them. Her task is, essentially, to help more people have fun without making nearby residents miserable. She is the first person to hold the job in Boston and one of a rising number of officials across the country tasked with livening up life after dark.
night life (Unsplash)
For decades city officials were interested mainly in enforcing strict rules, some dating to Prohibition, on pubs, music venues and dance halls. Now roughly a dozen American municipalities, from Iowa City to Philadelphia, have an official responsible for promoting the nightlife economy.
This evolution in thinking can be seen in New York. A measure known as the Cabaret Law, which required venues to obtain special licences before allowing more than three people to dance, was introduced in 1926. In the 1990s Rudy Giuliani, then the city’s mayor, revived the law as part of his administration’s “Broken Windows” strategy, an approach to policing that sought to deter serious crime by cracking down on minor offences.
The law was finally repealed in 2017, and the city’s first nightlife mayor, Ariel Palitz, was appointed to her post the year after. Her office set up mediation services to help residents and business owners resolve noise complaints. (Though Ms Palitz cautions that the correct term is “sound—not noise”.) The prior system was “purely punitive”, she says, with each complaint automatically dispatching police. Her office also assisted bars, clubs and restaurants navigate permits and city bureaucracy. The benefits are clear—New York’s nightlife economy is thought to generate $35bn a year. But enacting change has been arduous. Until May applicants for liquor licences in New York City still had to notify state officials if they wanted to allow dancing.
For officials like Ms Reynolds, the biggest limits to her agenda remain red tape surrounding liquor licences, zoning and permitting. Boston is one of many cities that caps the number of liquor licences well below market demand. But in 2024, after Ms Reynolds pushed for change, the city created 225 new licences. According to the local government, it was “the single largest addition to Boston’s liquor licence quota since the end of Prohibition”.
Other cities are experimenting with new approaches that, if successful, could spread. San Francisco has created entertainment zones where patrons may consume alcohol on streets and sidewalks. Boston and some neighbouring municipalities have done the same as part of the World Cup. The tournament has become an opportunity to test looser rules, with several host cities temporarily extending bar hours. Meanwhile Austin, Texas, which is known for its live music, has adopted a policy that protects established venues from noise complaints by occupants of new residential buildings, putting the onus on developers to provide adequate soundproofing.
Smaller cities are following suit. Syracuse, a college town of 145,000 in upstate New York, recently announced plans to hire a nightlife co-ordinator. A thriving after-dark economy, the city reckons, creates jobs not just in hospitality and entertainment, but also in sanitation, transport and security. It also generates more tax revenue. At a time when remote work has left downtowns quieter, encouraging nightlife is one way to sustain commercial activity after office hours while giving people more reasons to gather in person.
Nightlife czars have a different challenge now, too. Between 2003 and 2023 data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics’ American Time Use Survey shows that the average amount of time 18-30 year olds spent socialising each day fell by 38%. Andreina Seijas, an international nightlife consultant, says her industry is now in a war against the couch. In Boston, Ms Reynolds’s mission to reclaim the night continues. Next on her to-do list is persuading the city’s public-transport operator to run later into the night. The job of a nightlife czar is not always fun, but hopefully the cities they oversee will be.
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