No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999

224 pages
Text(s) by Adrian Bartos (DJ Stretch Armstrong) and Evan Auerbach
24.5 x 21 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Hardcover
Publisher: PowerHouse Books
2016

No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999 is a visual history of the halcyon days of New York City club life as told through flyer art. Spanning the late 80s through the late 90s, when nightlife buzz travelled via flyers and word of mouth.

No Sleep features a collection of artwork from the personal archives of NYC DJs, promoters, club kids, nightlife impresarios, and the artists themselves. Club flyers, by design, were ephemeral objects distributed on street corners, outside of nightclubs and concert halls, in barbershops and retail shops, and were not intended to be preserved for posterity. Through the 90s, they became both increasingly prevalent and more sophisticated as printing technology evolved. Overnight, however, with the birth of the internet, the club flyer essentially disappeared, and despite it being common at one time for promoters to print thousands of flyers for any given event, they are now hard to come by.