After.PVD is officially one year old.

And honestly, typing that is kind of wild.

A year ago this was basically an idea. Get some people together, find a room, set up some speakers, find DJs who actually give a shit, make the space look cool, tell people where to go, and hope to God they actually show up.

Now I look around at what we have and think:

“Look at the community we built. Look at all of the support we have.”

I couldn't be prouder of the team willing to put in the work to create an actual experience for our local community. And that's probably the biggest thing I've taken away from year one.

Not ticket sales.

Not Meta ads.

Not Instagram followers.

The people.

Why I Cared About This in the First Place

Providence has always had weird nightlife hiding somewhere. If you've been around long enough, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

There was a time when Club Therapy was a legitimate piece of New England underground culture. Therapy operated as an after-hours spot in Providence, running underground house and techno into the early morning with international guests and a massive custom sound system. A 2014 article described Saturday nights running from midnight until 6AM, with 12 subs and eight line-array speakers in the main room.

People travelled for it.

People still talk about it.

I'm not saying nightlife disappeared after Therapy. But that particular feeling?

A dark room. An unreasonable sound system. Techno until way too late. People showing up because they care about the music, the space, and the community around it. That became harder to find.

A huge reason I threw myself into After.PVD was because I wanted some version of that culture to exist here again, and at the time when the team reached out to me they were essentially a blank canvas. I spend nearly every weekend for the last 11 years photographing nightlife content in Boston. I’ve worked with multiple venues and event organizers, so I have a clear idea on how to best market it from the ground up.

Re-creating Therapy wasn’t the goal, we wanted to build a similar community.

You can't recreate somebody else's era, but maybe we can help build the next one.

Hell Factory Proved We Could Actually Do It

Hell Factory Event with Max on Decks - Photo Cred: Eveline Levin

Hell Factory was the first moment where it became:

Oh. We can actually do this.

There's a massive difference between sitting around talking about throwing underground events and watching people actually walk through the door.

You can make graphics.

You can build an Instagram page.

You can talk about your grand vision for Providence nightlife all day long.

None of that matters if nobody shows up.

Hell Factory showed us that people would.

It wasn't the final form of After.PVD. Not even close.

But it was proof of concept.

We could find the space. Get the equipment in. Book the talent. Build an environment.

And people around Providence were willing to take a chance and come see what the hell we were doing.

That changes your brain a little bit.

Suddenly you're not talking about what you might build anymore.

You're building it.

Then Borealis Almost Became Something Insane

I still think about Borealis, and this one hurts.

We got access to an old church.

Now imagine what we had planned:

“A vaulted, echoing space. Light that breathes with the bass. Choir-kissed minimalism dissolving into hypnotic raw tech, then a hard-groove surge that turns the whole room in a moving pulse.”

We had something like nine festival-grade speakers ready to go. DJ decks stationed at the altar. The entire concept was built around taking this beautiful, unusual space and completely transforming it. It would've been ridiculous. The night before cancellation, the team got together and we did an audio test. Let me tell you, I was grinning ear-to-ear. I haven’t been more excited for an event in years.

And the people themselves were fucking excited. Tickets started to surge about a week before the event, the normal time-frame was 3-4 days max. This was the indication that what we had would be massive. We were ballparking about 400-ish tickets sold. This wasn't just another flyer floating around Instagram. The community genuinely wanted to see what we were going to do with this place.

Then we had to cancel it.

There really isn't a smarter marketing term for that. It just fucking sucked.

When you put this much work into events, you start seeing the finished version in your head long before anyone else does.

I could already see that church full.

I could hear it.

I could picture the lights. The lasers.

I could picture somebody walking through the doors and having a holy shit moment.

And then it was gone.

But Borealis proved something anyway.

We had managed to get a local community excited about something strange and ambitious. Something they couldn't get from a normal bar or club. The event disappeared.

But The excitement didn't.

Somewhere Along the Way, This Became Real

Then came more events like:

Void.

Prism.

Thermal.

Chrysalis.

Glitch.

Resonance.

Photosynthesis.

Infinity.

Some nights hit harder than others.

Some concepts connected immediately. Others taught us, very clearly, that what we think is an incredible idea does not automatically mean 250 other people are going to pull out their credit cards.

Welcome to nightlife.

But then you look at something like Prism hitting 283 tickets, Thermal hitting 261, or Void moving 217, and you have to stop for a second and think about how far this has come from a handful of people trying to make something happen.

Over a thousand of tickets have moved through After.PVD events.

And yet the number I'm probably proudest of isn't a ticket number.

750 People Are in Our WhatsApp Community

Seven hundred and fifty FUCKING people.

That's probably one of the most unthinkable parts of this entire first year.

Those are people who actively decided:

“Yeah. Keep me connected to this.”

And what I love even more is that the group isn't exclusively obsessed with After.PVD.

People talk about other events, other local nights, other things happening around New England and that's exactly how this should work. If we're actually serious when we say we want a healthier underground nightlife scene, then we shouldn't want a community that only pays attention when our logo is on the flyer. The rising tide should lift everybody. I'd rather somebody discover an amazing local DJ, promoter, venue, artist, photographer, or weird little event because they became connected to this network.

That's culture.

That's how scenes form.

Somehow, the Secret Location Thing Worked

Think about how absurd the pitch sounds to a normal person:

Give us money.

Where are you going?

We'll tell you later.

Amazing business model. After.PVD started out at “questionable”spots, and it adds a feeling of mystery behind it. But now, it became part of the experience.

Buy the ticket.
Join the WhatsApp.
Location drops day-of.

What we've learned is that people are completely willing to accept mystery as long as they trust you. That last part is everything. Mystery is fun. Confusion is not.

Tell people what music they're getting.
Tell them when doors are.
Tell them what the ticket costs.
Tell them what kind of night they're walking into.
Keep the weird part weird.

We Still Have Work to Do

I'm incredibly proud of year one. That doesn't mean I think we nailed everything.

First: After.PVD attendees LOVE waiting until the last minute to buy tickets.

I know you're reading this.

I see you.

We'll be looking at sales two weeks out wondering whether the entire state of Rhode Island collectively decided they're busy that night.

Then the final few days hit and apparently everybody remembers:

“Oh yeah, I'm going to After.PVD.”

Suddenly tickets start moving.

It's ONLY funny afterward.

It's significantly less funny when you're trying to figure out, equipment, budgets, and whether 80 people or 250 people are about to walk through the door.

Getting People Through the Door Once Isn't Enough

This might be the most important challenge of year two.

Getting somebody through the door once is great, but getting them to come back is how you build a scene. I don't necessarily want that to turn into some boring corporate loyalty program where you scan your After.PVD rewards card and your tenth techno night is free. I want people to feel like they've become part of something.

You were at the last one?

You hear about the next one first.

You've been coming consistently?

Maybe you get access to something other people don't.

You're the person who keeps dragging five friends with you?

We notice.

Participating in the community should actually mean something.

None of This Exists Without the Team

This is the part I care about the most.

After.PVD is not me.

It's not one person.

I want to give people their flowers.

Max, Ryan, Mahdi and Wilbur:

You guys are the foundation this thing is sitting on.

Getting audio equipment into spaces. Finding and locking down locations. Setting things up. Solving problems nobody in the crowd will ever know happened. At times literally putting your own money behind an idea because you believed we could make it work. (And I’m sure many other things I don’t even know about.) There is absolutely no version of After.PVD where I tell this story without you.

You made it possible in the first place.

Finbar, Heidi and Charles:

You guys knock it out of the park every time we host an event. Your visual work has helped give these rooms an identity. People remember walking into a space and seeing something beautiful, strange, or completely unexpected.

That matters.

To every DJ who has played for us:

Thank you.

One of the entire reasons for building this platform is that New England has an absurd amount of talent that deserves rooms to play in.Watching a local DJ absolutely destroy a dance floor is still one of my favourite parts of doing this.

There is so much talent here.

We just need places where people can hear it.

Alexa and Mycala:

Thank you for constantly helping us get the word out. Nightlife marketing is relentless. You finish promoting one event and congratulations: now it's time to promote the next one. Every post, share, message, and conversation adds up. A room doesn't fill itself.

To all of our volunteers:

You are lifesavers.

Running an event with a small team is a thousand tiny jobs happening simultaneously. Thank you for helping us each and every time where we needed it most. There are times I’ll stop shooting to make sure you guys are ok and things are going smoothly. Thank you for showing up and keeping these nights moving.

To all 750 people in our WhatsApp community:

You are genuinely one of the things I'm proudest of.

Thank you for caring.

Not just about After.PVD.

About Providence.

About Boston.

About New England nightlife.

About the artists, DJs, venues, promoters, and weird little scenes trying to make something happen here.

Please keep supporting them.

And lastly:

Lux Luminous.

My girlfriend.

Thank you for helping me think through how these events should be marketed, for telling me when an idea needs work, and for supporting the frankly unreasonable amount of energy I've thrown into this. You've helped shape this more than people probably realize.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

Year two needs to be bigger, but when I say bigger, I don't necessarily mean:

Put 2,000 people in a warehouse.

Would that be fucking sick? (Let us know if you have access to something like that, or a unique event space)

But bigger also means better.

Better spaces.
Better sound.
More visual art.
More local talent.
Better experiences.
Stronger community.
More collaboration.
More reasons for somebody in Boston to decide Providence is worth the drive.
More reasons for somebody in Providence to discover that nightlife can be a hell of a lot stranger and more interesting than going to the same bar every weekend.
More moments where somebody walks into a room and immediately thinks:
What the fuck is this place?

That's what I want.

Look at the team willing to put this together so that, for a few hours, our local community gets to walk into a room that doesn't feel like anywhere else in Providence. I couldn't be prouder of them.

Thank you to everyone who bought a ticket, told a friend, shared a flyer, joined the WhatsApp, played a set, installed a speaker, created an installation, worked the door, volunteered, stayed until close, or simply trusted us enough to show up.

You made year one possible.

And somehow, after everything we've already done, I genuinely feel like we're still at the beginning.

Year two is going to be fucking fun.