TRAVIS BASS' NEW CLUB ZAZOU

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“Nightlife is escapism,” says dance club and pop-up party veteran Travis Bass. “It’s very carnal, in a way. At night, it’s that ritualistic and animalistic time where you can dance and hug and jump around and get wild and be like a kid again.”

With a résumé that includes nightlife staples like Madame Wong’s and Red Egg, Bass’ remarks about nightlife—New York City nightlife, in particular—are not without grounding. The self-proclaimed New Yorker (though technically a Los Angeles transplant) originally moved to the city decades ago to help nighttime guru Peter Gatien redesign—and reinvent—the Limelight and the Tunnel on a weekly basis.

It’s this concept of reinvention that has defined his career: Bass now bounces from pop-up parties to club projects the way one might bounce from a post-dinner cocktail lounge to a bar to a dance club to a late-night house party on a random Thursday. But Bass’ latest venture with business partner Tommy Saleh seeks to redefine the New York standard of party-hopping (something that has become second nature in the era of instant gratification). The recently opened Zazou, accessible through an unmarked door on MacDougal Street, boasts not only a rocking dance floor (which will host live acts as well as DJs), but also a mirrored karaoke room, and a bar where you can actually hear someone talk.

“People need those moments where you can slow down, like a girl talking to a boy,” explains Saleh, former vice president and creative director of GrandLife Hotels and the brains behind epic international fashion and art parties like New York, New York in Paris. “People want to dance their faces off, but they also want to talk,” he continues.

“When you have that ecosystem,” adds Bass about the layout of Zazou, “People stay longer. They’re not searching for the next party.”

Bass and Saleh understand the importance of letting the space evolve organically. The karaoke room (which is basically a mirrored box with banquettes and a plug-in karaoke machine) came into being simply because one of their friends was looking for a place to host her karaoke party. They got a machine for the occasion and realized it was so much fun that it should become a permanent (or, at least, permanent for now) part of the club’s DNA.

“Clubs should be always changing,” explains Bass. “So when you open a club and you just design it and that’s the way it is for two or three years, I think that’s very Vegas or very Meatpacking.”

And if there is anything the two want to steer clear of, it’s that manufactured, over-the-top feel of a Vegas nightclub. When asked what club in New York they would most closely align Zazou with, both agree that it is similar to somewhere from either a different era or place—perhaps the Eighties, or Paris or Spain.

The concept of doing pop-up parties and opening gritty clubs with a weird, cool vibe, in fact, originally came from Germany’s club capital. “The energy in Berlin was so raw and unpretentious,” explains Bass. “What was so cool was that there was no pretension of over-design and over-expenditure of money. It’s the opposite of Vegas—the ultimate fake reality.”

The vibe at Zazou is intimate, weird, and hip—an aura that will attract everyone from the fashion crowd that has long followed Bass and Saleh to “the richies, the punks, the cool kids, the nerds, the Euros,” says Bass. “We are throwing a party for our friends to come hang out and meet new friends.”

Zazou is now open at 179 MacDougal Street.