New York City Goths – Uncovered

Yaphet Murphy – Capturing Communities in Words and Images

New York City Goths

It’s true. They live. I’ve seen them. They exist. Black clad gals and gents with whiteface makeup with an androgynous bent. They call themselves Goths. And if you’re really careful, they might whisper at you.

My entire effort in this project has been an attempt to get closer, close enough for someone to whisper at me, to tell me the things about the Goth community that are not normally transmitted to outsiders. I started at the periphery of this community. I didn’t know where to find a Goth. To me, Goths were scarce. If I was lucky I might see one in passing. But I was certain that they congregate somewhere. I turned to the internet to begin a search.

In short order I found a website, NewGothCity.com that contained promise. New Goth City is a website operated by a Sir William Welles, a long-standing member of the New York Gothic Community. The site contains a running list of Gothic-themed events taking place in or close to New York City. I scribbled the first three events in my date book and readied myself for the experience. I would need three things – a notepad, a camera…and the right clothes.

The first venue was a bar on East 14^th St., Otto’s Shrunken Head. It was a Tuesday and there was to be Gothic poetry reading inside the bar after 10pm. At 9:30pm I was at the door peering about to see who would enter. I was hoping to get a feel for things before venturing inside. I waited until 11:00pm before I gave up after realizing that no one ‘Goth-y’ was showing up for this event.

The next night, I went to the second venue on my list, a bar on the Lower East Side called Home Sweet Home for the Goth music party dubbed Wierd.. Home Sweet Home is a darkened bar located in the cellar of a non-descript building. A bouncer dressed in all black greeted me at the door, and waved me in. Downstairs, Victorian style candelabras hung from the ceiling, mist filled the air, and even the bartenders dressed Gothy. Wierd is a weekly event staged by the alt-rock/Goth music label of the same (misspelled) name. Every Wednesday, they have schedule a performer from their label to play. I didn’t know that going in but I found out soon enough. A plethora of Goth-dressed people attended, but I had trouble capturing any of them because of the dim lighting and misty air.

The third event I didn’t go to because it conflicted with the Wierd party. I had a winner and I was sticking with it. I came back to Wierd every other week. On other nights, I branched out to other Goth venues that I learned about through the New Goth City website.

One of the commonalities of all these gatherings was the music and the dance. Goths don’t get together to talk; they get together to dance. Even having a drink together is not as important as listening to music favorites and dancing. As such, deejays occupy a high place in this culture. All of the Goths I spoke to all had their favorites. You would often see the same faces again when a particular deejay was playing.

Music types enjoyed by Goths include Industrial, Alternative Rock, Gothic Rock, EBM, Synthetic Pop, Future Pop, 80’s New-Wave, Post-Punk and Electro. Dancing involved feeling the music and letting one’s body ride to it. The scripted dance moves that accompany more popular music cultures is largely absent here. Most Goths prefer to take to the dance floor, close one’s eyes, and sway arms, hips, and hands to the music. More uptempo songs would be met by rave-like dancing. If a deejay played a song that went outside the known and accepted genres, you would see a mass exodus from the dance floor. Deejays saw very quickly what the crowds wanted and often put things back on track after one song.

Another feature central to this community is the focus on fashion. The emphasis in being dressed ‘Goth’ is more prevalent in the women than in the men, but also taken seriously by the LGBT’s in the community. Some of the more remarkable outfits I’ve seen have been worn by the guys who clearly don’t identify as strictly male. All in all, fashion is an issue for every Goth, and beyond the music and the dance, one must be in some way fashionably appropriate in order to be seriously accepted by the other members of the Goth community.

Dressing Goth means dressing black, with machine-like, vampire-like or ‘Victorian-style widow’ styling. White-face make-up, buckles, and straps as forms of adornment are de rigueur. Leather dresses, lace-up corsets, and silver jewelry are popular choices. Fetish attire also makes regular appearances on the scene.

On my jaunts to the club scene, I would dress dark, but I didn’t really have Goth attire. I really couldn’t afford to acquire any. Also, even if I could afford it, I didn’t want to come under consideration as a poseur on the scene. Still, there were times when I wondered if it was safe to take pictures as a known outsider or whether I’d do better dressed as a member of the scene. In the end, I found it didn’t matter. When it came to taking photographs, it wasn’t who I was that mattered most. It was who they were. Some people were camera shy; others were not. Gesturing with the camera gave me an immediate signal as to who is which type and then I would proceed accordingly.

After club crawling for a while and seeing and faces and habits, I found that I needed to get in closer in order to truly understand the motives. A chance encounter put me in touch with a student who moonlights as a Goth. I got to interview her about what Goth meant to her. She told me her history as a Goth through high school, how she and her two girlfriends embraced the culture and how it lead to the practice of witchcraft. Says Teresa of the allure of being Goth, “As a Goth, you could just do anything and it would be okay. It was just crazy. It was awesome. It was fun.” Teresa picked up her knowledge of Goth culture and witchcraft through books borrowed from the public library. She’d go to a local forest park with her friends with candles and form a coven circle and use incantations. She helped explained the difference between angelic Goths and anarchist/pain loving Goths. Angelic Goths witches dabble in earth magic, out of a respect and desire for alignment with the forces of nature. Indeed, published books acknowledge the connection between Goth culture and Sado-Masochism. As for wearing black, Teresa couldn’t fully explain it. She said she felt more comfortable in black. “If I wear any other colors, I feel too bright.” Teresa only moonlights as a Goth now, saying that wearing the black clothes and silver jewelry presented a problem with job-hunting. I asked Teresa what she thinks of the future of Goths. She’s answered, “Goths should tell people what they’re really about so they won’t be so looked down.

My last contact was with Z of the Midnight NYC Meetup Group. This is a group that is organized online and meets for Goth happenings and events around New York City. I went to Lucky Cheng’s nightclub, located below the famed drag dining restaurant on 1^st Avenue near Houston St. in Manhattan. Z, and three others showed up for the Meetup – Purity, Lara and Uru.. I introduced myself to another patron at the club (no names exchanged) and told her what my intentions were. I asked her what about the Goth scene attracted her. She replied, “The music.” She paused, then she leaned over to me and said, “People won’t respect you if you don’t dance. They’ll think you’re a tourist and they’ll just ignore you. If you want to connect with people, first you have to dance.” I got the message. I took to the dance floor and started dancing.

Before I left, the same woman came back and told me how proud she was of me. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. This community has norms. Observe the norms and you’ll be fine. Break the norms and you’ll be sanctioned.

I met one more fellow, DJ Father Jeff, before I left the club. He agreed to talk to me about Goths, but not that evening. I kept his card.

I learned a bit about Goths on my explorations, but not quite enough yet. I plan to pursue it further. I’ve learned that really exploring a community like this takes time, lots of time, because insider access doesn’t come easy.