How Dylan Hales and Ronnie Flynn Made Loosie's NYC's Hottest New Club
If you're looking for a night of dancing, drinks, and disco balls, New York's hottest club is: Loosie's.
New York City nightlife is the stuff of legends. Going back to the days of disco at Studio 54 or the rise of the early punk movement at CBGB, the backbone of NYC has always been an equal desire to party. However, on the heels of a pandemic that closed down a number of established clubs and bars, NYC nightlife veterans Ronnie Flynn and Dylan Hales felt a shift in the air. “Everyone just wants a place to dance,” says Flynn. Answering that call, the duo opened Loosie’s, a subterranean dance club under the Moxy LES that’s already the club of choice for young NYC icons like Evan Mock, Maddi Waterhouse, and more.
Having both been working in nightlife since the mid-aughts, Flynn and Hales have a track record of successful spots: The Flower Shop, a casual pub on the Lower East Side, and Little Ways, a SoHo supper club catering to young creatives. But their newest venture, launched in partnership with TAO Hospitality Group, is bridging the gap between the heyday of NYC nightlife and the city's new generation of partygoers. With a revolving door of guest DJs and a ceiling lined with multiple disco balls, the space is one of the hottest new spots for young New Yorkers. To learn more about the space and its genesis, Flynn and Hales open up about their partnership, the city's new nightlife landscape, and some of their favorite celebrity encounters over the years.
L'OFFICIEL: How did you two first start working together?
Dylan Hales: Ronnie and I actually went to high school together in Australia. He moved [to New York] a year or two before I did. Through that and through just a variety of similar friends and mixed friend groups, we've always been hanging out in New York together. As the years rolled by, we started to do things like host events together and pop-ups together and things of that nature. In 2014, Ronnie and I were [in Miami] working a pop-up. He was there with the Butter Group doing an Up&Down pop-up and I was down there with Surf Lodge doing their Art Basel pop-up, but we were also working together because there was a club in the same space that we were collaborating on. We were out in the absolute pouring rain moving furniture around, just the two of us, nobody else, in the middle of the night, the night before the Art Basel event started. Once we made that happen, we just sat down afterward and just agreed that from then on, any project that we did, we would do together.
Ronnie Flynn: The two of us had known each other for a long time as friends and we had both been in hospitality in various degrees for the last 15-plus years in New York, but on different sides of the tracks a little bit, but very overlapped. And then there was this one event all in one week at Art Basel, and it was just one of those moments where there was so much going on and no one was really helping us. So, we both got together and thought, Hang on, we are pretty good together. We should just keep doing stuff together. We complement each other as far as skill sets and whatnot. We made a pact and that was that. It's like the meeting of Smith and Wesson.
DH: That really was the proper light bulb moment for both of us.
L'O: What made you want to open Loosie's? What was the idea or concept behind it?
RF: The reality of it was, as simple as this sounds, that we obviously are in the mix with different venues that we have now. We'd like to think we've been around the neighborhood—downtown—and are pretty familiar with what's going on. Obviously, over the last 15-20 years, I've got a nice, diverse Rolodex of friends, and everyone, young, old—especially since COVID—has just been like, "We need a place to dance." Everyone just wants a place to dance. We've said this in old interviews with people about our venues: we like to think that we're making places for not just ourselves but for our friends. And it feels like that's our job is: to be like, What do the people want? What do we want? What do our friends want? Let's try and find that and we can make it happen. It felt like there was a gap in the market in general in the particular neighborhood we're in with Loosie's—just a place to go, whether it's early or late or 1:00 in the morning, [and say], “Let's go dance."
DH: It is the answer and it sounds like an obvious one, but really if you think about it, in New York in general, outside of the mega clubs, pretty much all of the nightclubs in the downtown area, very few of them have an actual proper dance floor. That really was staring us in the face.
RF: To back that up, we have obviously a lot of friends in the industry too that have beautiful venues and we are all very familiar. I think that's the beauty of New York hospitality in general. Even with us with The Flower Shop, we've got the pub, nightclubs with the tables and the bottles, [but Loosie’s is] just a place where you could actually create space for people to just let loose.
DH: Move around.
RF: And I think during COVID, there were a couple of nightclubs in the East Village that always had a fun dance floor that got closed down. So, it was definitely just a necessity: fighting for our right to party.
L'O: Well, that answers my next question about what makes Loosie's different, and clearly it's a place you can actually dance.
RF: Yeah, for sure. Also, we made sure that we have a really good sound system in there, a very legit sound system with a real nightclub structure, not so much just like a hole in the wall with a little DJ booth. We wanted to make it so that whether it's local talent or serious talent, they're impressed by the sound system. Then, the location's an obvious one. What makes it different I think is the dance floor, the location.
And we put together a really good team with our partners over there. We brought in our door guy Benny Wiz. We brought in Cadi Storm who we worked with in the past who was at a different venue before. We built this cool little team, and we're going to try and add to that too, to create a little community, a foundation in that space. There’s obviously people who know us, but they’ll be other people like, "Oh, shit. Benny's on the door. No way." We're trying to solidify [Loosie’s] as a place where everyone knows the familiarity of the downtown players. We're trying to bring a lot of those people over, all the way up to the executive team and our managers and everything. We've got a really good solid team over there, so that makes it a little different I think too. It's organized.
DH: I think also we utilize a lot of current and young talent, but I think Ronnie and I, again, because we've been around for so long, we're able to pull in certain DJs, for example, that don't even DJ. They're still fantastic, but they don't even DJ nightclubs anymore because they've either moved on to bigger and better things in the industry or they've just moved on to other things in general. We are able to get some of those people back in the mix, which is just very cool and fun and super nostalgic. So, everyone that's in our age group is amazed to be able to see and hear these people play, and then the younger people who don't even know who they are, they think they're fantastic. And there's something quite fun about that as well.
L'O: Yeah, whoever you had on the opening night was amazing.
DH: Well, that's funny you say that. That was Rhett Bixler. Rhett was one of two of the original founders of the Chainsmokers. The Chainsmokers used to DJ for me in 2008 on a Wednesday night for $300, so that's a fun example. Rhett is still out and about there a bit but that's a good example of what we're talking about, for sure.
RF: It's this nice idea of bridging the gap between the old nostalgic New York stuff that we were part of in let's call it the mid to late 2000s, and then what all the young kids are doing now that's just as cool. It feels like the demographic in general went full circle. It feels like the first time, for me personally, in New York that the younger generation is doing exactly what we were doing when we were that young. It's a cool challenge to be able to mix everyone in. When I first came to New York in 2005, '06, '07, you would go to all these big clubs and it was skateboarders, models, Wall Street—all the different walks of life, all in one room. And I feel like it got a little segregated—not segregated, but it became like East Village. And then there's Tribeca. Maybe the internet did that. So, it's nice to be able to bring all those people back in the room where it's not one particular thing and the music's fun and everyone's part of it and that's it.
L'O: It's funny that you mentioned the shift in neighborhoods because recently we've seen these micro-neighborhoods like Dimes Square pop up as these new trending places to go out. Are these neighborhood trends something that you pay attention to in terms of the nightlife? Or is it more about the space itself for you?
DH: I think first of all, just on Dimes Square, Ronnie and I strongly believe that that is the last frontier of what used to be the downtown—really, really cool, gritty, downtown vibes. That neighborhood is incredible.
RF: I think it's a really good question and the answer is that it's both. I truly believe that we're in this position with Loosie's, in particular, because we have our ears on the ground. I don't think that I would've got up to this place [in my career] without having my finger on the pulse and understanding what's going on, the ebbs and flows of the New York neighborhoods and the people and where it runs, graduating towards geographically and also just as far as what's hot, what's not, what feels right.
For Loosie's in particular, in a sense, you have to block out all that. It's taking all that information, all that knowledge, and then ignoring it and doing what we need to do. It's this instinct: knowing all those things that are going on, hopefully being part of it, understanding all the different groups of people that are part of those places like Dimes Square or the Meatpacking District, even the East Village—you go to [7th Street] and [Avenue A], and between all those venues, [there’s] a little hub where everyone knows each other, everyone's part of that zone. So, I think knowing all those things, being aware of it all, and then tapping into it, bringing it in. But then when it comes to [the room], it's really about ignoring all that and just setting up the room to be like, This is what we think is going to work. Back to one of the first questions, What do we want? What do our friends want? And we set that up and then tap into those neighborhoods.
But the answer is it's both. I think it'd be silly to ignore that those things are going on. It kicks your instinct in. You just see what people like, what they're into and what the people are doing, where they're going. New York changes so quickly with everything, whether it's real estate or nightlife or the next cool restaurant, next cool bar. So, we'd be ignorant to not be aware of all of that.
DH: Yeah, I think in addition to that, as it relates to Loosie's specifically, the Moxy LES, as an overall venue in a hotel—it's obviously not a neighborhood—is going to build its own culture around it. It's a 330-room hotel. There are five venues inside the hotel, all of which are quite different and offer something. I think it's going to be a very, very interesting hub for people to go out. We are envisioning that people will go there, go to Sake No Hana, the restaurant, for a 7:00 dinner and then go to Silver Linings, the piano lounge, for a cocktail and then go straight to Loosie's and spend their entire evening there. So, I think that's an interesting consideration as well.
L'O: I think it's safe to say that nightlife in New York is officially back since the pandemic. How have you seen it change since 2019?
RF: I think there's this level of excitement and people being grateful for being able to be out and about in rooms with friends and celebrating events or birthdays or literally go dance. There's definitely a feeling in the air of almost the camaraderie of Yeah, we're back, we can all go and party. And I think that's why Dimes Square and places like that have lit up because everyone's just grateful to be out and about again.
But the obvious [answer] is that everyone's a little bit younger, which is great, so again, it goes back to that bridging the gap. We go out now, and there are friends of ours that are in our age group and older and then it trickles down. There's a lot of young people that are out and about every night that are doing really cool stuff too, different parties and DJs and all that. There's a whole new [group of] fresh blood in the nightlife community. Before the pandemic, even for us with The Flower Shop, it seemed like everyone was more interested in a place to chill and have a drink and you can obviously turn it into a night, but it was definitely not so much a full nightclub. I think people post-pandemic are like, Yeah, let's get that back again. There's something definitely in the air in New York. I haven't felt like this in a long, long time where everyone's just excited to be out and about and just up for it. I think before the pandemic, everything felt a little bit flat in nightlife in New York in general. There wasn't a whole lot of new stuff going on, so it's a good thing. People are excited.
L'O: As you've said, you both have been in this industry since the 2000s. You both probably have some amazing stories. Is there one that stands out to you?
RF: There's obviously been tons of stories over the years from all the traveling. We've been able to go to Art Basel, Paris Fashion Week, Sundance events, all these different amazing things, and obviously New York and LA, so there have been so many stories. The one that popped in our head because it's more about the location is that, a while ago, we were doing a party on The Bowery in this big loft that a friend of ours had.
DH: Coincidentally, I think it was literally two or three buildings down from the Moxy LES.
RF: We used to have a lot of parties there, but we were having a big party one night and there happened to be a handful of people there that were notable, and Axl Rose happened to be one of them. A friend of ours kept playing Guns N' Roses out of the speakers and you could tell he was just not feeling it, and we're all like, Oh, this is weird, he's not really that into it. And we were all just partying, there must have been 100 people in the room. Then, at some point, he disappeared in the crowd, and there's a piano in the loft, and we're all just partying on and everyone's doing their thing. He'd been quiet the whole time. Then, all of a sudden at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we just hear the piano. And he literally just starts playing “November Rain” on the piano in this loft party, and the entire party stood around the piano and belted out “November Rain,” start to finish, with Axl Rose on the piano, which was a very, very fun, weird moment.
DH: And also Guns N' Roses happened to be literally one of my top five favorite bands as well, so I was particularly happy about that.
RF: The coolest part about that story was that he checked out and we were all like, Oh, Axl's boring. It was like, Oh okay, I guess he's not like a rock star. And then it was hours and hours later that we'd forgotten he was even in the room and he just went over by himself and just started banging out “November Rain.” So, it was a really cool moment that sticks out.
And then at the same loft, we had a party a couple of weeks later. A friend of ours was basically like, "Should I bring my friend from the airport?" We were like, "Yeah, just tell him to meet us at the loft. We're going to go do the party now." Next thing, Bill Murray turned up with deli bags full of Forties beer. And we were like, "Oh hey," and we all met Bill Murray, and then all of us ended up slow dancing and hanging out with Bill Murray all night, playing piano and stuff. That loft itself has had some pretty wild stories, and it's cool that it was literally a block away from where Loosie's is now.
