This year in Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the best cities in the U.S. for singles, Philadelphia cracked the top ten for the first time, and its nightlife was deemed the eighth best in the country. Philly has gone from a city known primarily for Rocky and cheesesteak to a city of the young and rich partying at the hundreds of restaurants, bars, and clubs that have sprung up in the past decade. On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife offers an insiders’ tour of Philly’s now booming nightlife, revealing a world governed by the art of the hustle. David Grazian, whose last book on the Chicago blues scene explored how nightclubs there package the blues for their patrons, here reveals how patrons of nightclubs package themselves—the lies that men on the prowl use to get phone numbers, the tricks underrage women use to get past the velvet rope, even the ploys that nightclubs use to make theirs the it place to be. An illuminating look at the sophisticated spectacle of a night out—the sets, the stage managers, the actors, and the audience—On the Make is as entertaining as the confessional stories it recounts.
Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.