Inside Inga, hip downtown partygoers weave through lasers and fog. (Astrid Stawiarz)
Outside a dark stretch of Chrystie Street, in between a Chinese laundromat and a grocery, stands a quartet of bachelorettes wearing penis-shaped balloon headdresses. They watch incredulously as other ladies looking to let loose are ushered inside Inga, the most talked-about non-club club in town, instead of them. Finance types in North Face vests are just as baffled when Kiwi doorman Vance Brooking declines their offers to “buy a table.”
Happily operating on a bare-bones budget, Inga doesn’t need their money. Excess on the cheap is the name of the game, and revelers making their way inside didn’t read about the party in Time Out. They get an e-mail or text from an insider who knows-someone-who-knows-someone, who is most likely Travis Bass, the pop-up party planner that doesn’t waste money on consultants, publicists, promoters or guest celebs
“A lot of owners spend too much money decorating their clubs,” says Bass, 44, who spent the past 20 years throwing product launches for companies like GQ magazine and BMW. “They’ll wait two years to open, spend a million, 2 million dollars, then people ask, ‘Why are they letting all these bankers in? Why are they letting all these douche bags in?’ It’s because they owe their investors money.”
Bass, on the other hand, has tapped into something more of-the-moment. Very “one man’s trash is another’s treasure.”
Rather than throw thousands of dollars into remaking a venue that won’t last, he strikes new deals with fledgling spaces that have already gone through the trouble and expense of securing licenses and permits. (In this case, the former bridge-and-tunnel Club Mystique, which opened a year ago and closed soon thereafter.) Then, Bass invests in a fog machine, some lasers and balloons and voilà! The most-talked about weekend destination in town is born, with a fashion-forward NYC crowd (think Alexander Wang, Terence Koh and Julian Schnabel) at the ready.
“I think Travis has figured out what a lot of people in New York haven’t — this isn’t just about making money,” says 31-year-old East Villager Dehlia Hennessy, a fashion industry show and sales coordinator. “I always see 15 to 20 people I know when I go [to Inga]. It has an underground feel. You don’t care if it’s not pristine . . . I like that it’s not fancy.”
Bass’ full-time commitment to unfancying the party scene began last spring when he and partner Simonez Wolf transformed the seldomly used Chinese restaurant Jobee into a raging pop-up “nightclub” called Madame Wong.
He spent a paltry $6,000 on adjustments like fine-tuning the sound system, and hung colorful Chinese lanterns, which gave the place a modest, if not slightly kitschy feel of a high school prom via Hong Kong. While food carts and unopened boxes of fortune cookies were hid away at night, one never lost sense they were nearby.
“He’s always had that special eye to take spaces and find efficient ways to renovate them,” says Avenue owner and undisputed club kingpin Noah Tepperberg. “That’s what he did for me in ’99 with Conscience Point [in the Hamptons]. For not a lot of money, he helped us transform that space.”
Soon enough, locals and neighbors began complaining about noise and his future intentions for the space, and Bass moved his ever-growing party a few storefronts east to Red Egg — a dim sum joint that had unsuccessfully spent a year trying to operate as a lounge.
The party there raged for about six months before, once again, locals tired of long lines stretching around their once-quiet block decided it had hatched into something too big for its nest.
While he refuses to predict how long Inga itself will last, Bass hopes his three-floor space will stealthily thrive near a busy crossroad where neighbors are already used to cabs honking and trucks rumbling by at all hours.
Sort of like the Meatpacking District he loathes to visit.
“The Meatpacking District is based on a ‘Truman Show’ reality,” says Bass, who rarely goes to nightclubs above Houston Street. “It’s like when you go to someone’s really nice house in Bel Air. You feel like you’re going to break something.”
At Bass’ spots, however, décor rarely goes beyond balloons (popable, yes, but not “breakable” in the Champagne-flute sense). “I’m always changing it,” he says, “Every week we’ll repaint the place, swap out the furniture, change the floors.”
Last week, they knocked out a glass barrier separating a lounge area from the dance floor.
Bass won’t say what’s next, but he cracks a grin when asking, “Have you seen the roof?” Right now it’s a raggedy surface covered by empty paint cans and debris — in other words, perfect for his next project.