The Lunchtime Dance Trend You Didn't Know You Needed
Oh, The New York Times does not disappoint this dreary New York Thursday. Thursday Styles is bumping and grinding with all the vim and vigor of a sunny day. Have you heard of the latest trend in lunch, what all of the coolest office-weary kids are doing on their mid-day gruel breaks? They're. Dancing.
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How do you Dance Party USA your way through lunch? Well, first eat (at your desk, presumably). One must fuel, then party, though at these parties there might be PB&J sandwiches. Those are secondary to the main event. According to the article — "It's Lunchtime: Let's Dance" by Sheila Marikar — the main event is dancing. For the noontime dance, people are exiting their large office buildings and jumping in cabs with coworkers and heading to 10th Avenue-area nightclubs, where they wait in lines to get into clubs where they drink cocktails, wear "purple lensless Wayfarer-style glasses," can wave "a footlong foam glow stick," and mouth "the words to Warren G's 'Regulate.'"
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This is not a solo instance of one dance-crazed cubicle hopper. It is, as they say in the industry, a trend: "Around her, hundreds of other revelers did similar things: a guy in Chuck Taylors moonwalked across the dance floor, a man in a hoodie threw up his hands to form the 'W' that stands for the rap group Wu-Tang Clan. Strobe lights bounced off a giant disco ball. Sweat glistened on foreheads. 'Gin and Juice' thumped. Cheers erupted. It was midday, but inside Marquee, it could have been 2 a.m."
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It's this thing called Lunch Break, writes Marikar, a party series hosted by Flavorpill and Absolut, with a soundtrack provided frequently by Questlove. You're not supposed to get drunk, though there is alcohol (one drink! Just one drink!). You're supposed to get up off of your desk chair and groove. As with any getting-out-of the office midday mission, there are challenges involving wardrobe appropriateness, how to actually get out of the office (lie or simply escape for an hour without anyone noticing?), how to explain that you smell like sweat and vodka when you return, and how to laugh off the giant foam glow stick that's somehow become attached to your hand when you return. How do you work after all this? Who knows. That's your boss's problem.
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This is not the only lunch club. Other party series exist, Lunch Rocks, for example. As one might expect, these ideas come from foreign lands. "As for Lunch Break, it began in August at Le Bain, the nightclub atop the Standard hotel, after marketers for Absolut, a frequent partner in Flavorpill events, told Mr. Lewis about a midday party series that was doing well in Sweden, Lunch Beat." (It was inspired by Fight Club, of course.) But there are far fewer questionable dudes than there might be at a nightclub, you know, at night. Said one denizen of the party circuit, "I think it’s less creepy of a scene."
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Normal people, in a nightclub, dancing in the middle of the day with no holds barred: Not creepy at all. Or, you could just sit on an exercise ball at your desk and listen to headphones as you tweet your life to strangers. Falling off counts as dancing, and there's no cab fare involved. To each his own! Dance. Dance.
Image via Shutterstock/Anna Omelchenko.
