This ‘party historian’ chronicled the world history of nightlife — and L.A. gets its due

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”

A memorable evening out on the town is about escape — from work, from obligations and daily drudgery, and (hopefully) from the woes of the world, if only for a few hours. Dressing up, drinking, dancing, flirting and frolicking amid immersive sounds and stimulating sights beckons most of us at some point — especially when we’re young — which makes it all significant on a personal and cultural level. But social scenes have never been considered a heady topic worthy of deeply reflective documentation. Historian Imogen Willetts wants to change that.

“I love the idea of doing this kind of big, grand sweep of nightlife, and treating eras like the club scene of the early 2000s and L.A. celebrity culture with the same seriousness as 18th century pleasure gardens in London,” Willetts says via Zoom from her home in the U.K. She highlights these hedonistic eras in her recently published book “Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife.”

The initial pages center on 17th century Edo (now Tokyo), and its government-controlled red light district, Yoshiwara. Willetts describes it as the first bona fide nightlife zone in history and likens Yoshiwara to an “Orwellian Coachella.” The district’s saki-soaked amusements went on to inspire Japanese fashion (from intricate kimono looks to stacked footwear), art (woodblock prints and paintings) and Kabuki theater for hundreds of years to come.

In the book, Willetts covers other pivotal party locales throughout the ages while defining nightlife as “a commercial and secular environment designed to offer “a variety of pleasures at night,” i.e. more than just a place to drink.

“I wanted to differentiate from bars and pubs,” she says. “I was thinking of a ‘big night out’ — in the U.K., we use that expression and it’s like pre-drinks, going to a club, maybe another club, then an after-party. You’re going somewhere for different kinds of experiences, more than sitting in a bar and having a catch-up.”

Self-described “party historian” Willetts previously served as senior creative producer at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she led festival programming and after-hours gallery events. Among them was the academy’s annual summer party, themed after 18th-century Georgian pleasure gardens — Britain’s oil-lamp-lit outdoor venues where aristocrats, the newly rich and everyday revelers gathered to see, be seen and behave badly. The work ultimately led to “Up All Night.”

When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted from events to lecturing in universities. “That helped me consolidate some of my ideas,” she says of how the book came together. She also cites the club scene in her London hometown as a huge influence on her perspective as a historian and culture chronicler.

Another huge influence? Los Angeles, which stands out alongside New York as one of the major nightlife players in “Up All Night.”

Author Imogen Willetts

(Justine Trickett)

L.A. has its own chapter, honing in on the “noughties” — the English term for the period between 2000 to 2009.

Her research started with the usual suspects of nightlife lore — 1920s Paris, 1970s disco and 1990s raves. And she delved into the wildly inventive ’80s scenes in New York and L.A. “Then you go into the bottle service Paris Hilton of it all,” Willetts says.

Perhaps no representation of nightlife — other than Studio 54’s dance floor debauchery — got the same kind of media attention that the velvet roped, VIP-driven era of the early 2000s in Los Angeles did. That was largely due to the paparazzi that camped outside of hot spots in Hollywood and along the Sunset Strip, but it was also because of a new thing called social media, which only became more eminent as the ability to capture images on smartphones was perfected.

MySpace, LiveJournal, bloggers like Perez Hilton and Just Jared, and later, TMZ, Tumblr and Facebook, contributed to the public fascination with celebrities cavorting after dark, as did TV shows like MTV’s “The Hills “—which depicted one of its stars, Heidi Montag, working for the city’s top nightlife impresario Brent Bolthouse (where Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and pre-fame Kardashians all partied till last call and beyond).

At the same time, there was an underground alternative scene emerging, where hipsters in ironic tees and American Apparel garb posed in effortlessly cool set-ups at “indie sleaze” parties and clubs, earning big followings online and predating the influencers of today. Hilton, Lohan and their ilk infiltrated these scenes as well, and to hear Willetts tell it, the music and imagery that came out of both influenced the nightlife aesthetics everywhere, especially in the U.K.

“I’m born and raised in London and lived here my whole life and when I was a teenager, it was like the early 2000s era,” Willetts recalls, revealing how her millennial mindset guided “Up All Night” in many ways. “I was like, ‘I have to write about L.A. in the 2000s because that was what we were absolutely aspiring to at all times. All of the things that were big in L.A. completely crossed the pond.”

She describes this period in nightlife “frothy, glitzy, silly, fun, girly” and “just joyful,” and gives it the same weight and significance as established periods of history chronicled earlier in the book, an approach that’s validated by where we are today culturally — consumed by self-branding, gossip and aspirational lifestyles online. Club environments provide the perfect backdrop for all of it, then and now. They also make for an absorbing read. You may just stay up all night reading Willetts’ engaging, well-researched accounts.

The scope of the project meant leaving some things out (a complete history would require multiple volumes). Willets focuses on DJ and experiential atmospheres, rather than live music venues and locales. This allows for a dynamic connect-the-dots read. Still, the pages on Seattle’s grunge era, the ‘60s British invasion, New York and L.A. hip-hop and San Francisco’s Summer of Love hippie hangouts warrant more exploration.

Instead the book devotes engrossing chapters and sections to the decadence and queer cabarets of Weimar, Berlin, the explosive creativity and style of the Harlem Renaissance, the vibrance of the New Orleans jazz scene (and the jazz age in Chicago, Paris and Shanghai) along with postwar opulence in Las Vegas and Havana. There are also deep dives into New York discotheques in ‘70s the (and their important roots in queer culture); DIY and underground spaces in the ‘80s (L.A. gets some audacious accounts citing creative punk, goth and art gatherings) and lawless ‘90s raves in Detroit and abroad.

Still, no parties last forever. The bacchanals in Berlin eventually saw their demise in the ‘30s, a “demolition night” marked the death of disco at the close of the ‘70s, illegal raves evolved into mainstream EDM radio hits and events, and the millennial party girls all grew up, had kids and mostly stay home now. Everything must come to an end, and as Willetts winds down her journey through smoky party palaces and strobe-lit backrooms, she turns her attention to the present and future.

“Up All Night‘s” epilogue considers the post-pandemic remnants of the glamorous, somewhat gluttonous eves of yore and the effects that smartphones, social media and streaming have had on the art of going out. Gen Zers are generally not the biggest creatures of the night and studies show they drink much less than their predecessors. We’re in uncharted territory, but Willetts has hope that more history will be made after dark, noting that the “nightclub” is only six decades old.

“When Gen Alpha comes of age, I think that they will be desperate to connect to a pre-social media kind of aesthetic, whether it’s the ‘90s or the 2000s,” she says “I think that’s what they will be trying to reference and create. We’re in a bit of a nightlife slump — nightclubs are closing — but it’s absolutely not the end. We just need new forms of nightlife to emerge. … More nights out are coming.”

Lecaro is a Los Angeles-born music, nightlife and culture journalist. She’s the author of “Los Angeles’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Angels” and “Never Mind the Rules: The Alternative Dating Guide for Girls Who Wanna Rock!”