Beyond the high-rise laden skyline of Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge, a sea of nondescript warehouses stretches through East Williamsburg—a neighborhood where techno pulses through brick walls and party invites are passed around like secrets. On Thursday, May 8th, at the edge of a long, graffitied block outside 70 Scott, a crowd was swelling—Chuck Taylors on feet, digital camera flashes in the air and anticipation thick enough to drown out the bass.
The unassuming venue, The Chocolate Factory, emanated exceptionally assuming sonorous house beats drawing mesh-topped ravers and partygoers to its entrance. The sprawling industrial space transformed into Resident Advisor’s latest pop-up rave, powered by Converse: Club Chuck. Listed on its viral social media invite, its hours of operations were kept suitably vague and equally enticing for the neighborhood’s nocturnal inhabitants: 8 PM to late.
As a queue stretched around the block—crammed with chrome, nylon and mounting impatience—another shorter barricaded lane hugged the venue’s side wall. This was the “Chuck Jump”: a fast pass line exclusively for those repping Converse. Show up in a pair of Chucks and you were rewarded by skipping the wait. Oh so fitting.
“This is the most East Williamsburg thing I’ve ever seen,” one girl muttered zooming in on a guy in head-to-toe black who glided through the Chuck Jump line in beat-up high tops.
But in actuality, things were about to get a whole lot more East Williamsburg-y. Stepping through the steel door threshold, strobe lights flickered against the industrial bones of the Chocolate Factory—now more cathedral-of-sound than confectionery-adjacent warehouse. Jersey club beats untz-ed through the air as x3butterfly took over the decks. Conversations took a backseat to the soundscape but nobody could hear you anyway. After all, this wasn’t that kind of party: the music was the conversation, the outfits were the icebreakers and everyone showed up speaking fluent Converse.
Unlike other IYKYK raves, Club Chuck wasn’t born out of a flyer. Instead, it erupted from the digital ether—the climax of a weeks-long citywide spectacle. What began as a rogue “hack” on Highsnobiety’s Instagram spiraled into a full-blown IRL scavenger hunt: an elusive figure named “Chuck” hijacked the feed, dropping cryptic pins across New York’s most sacred alt-culture outposts. Brooklyn Banks. Dimes Square. Bushwick nightlife staple, Moodring. Each one scrawled with a signature Converse mark and a clue to send the city’s most plugged-in internet sleuths spiraling down a rabbit hole of blurry coordinates and digital breadcrumbs.
The prize? A golden ticket tucked away just outside of Bushwick nightlife staple, Moodring, discovered a few nights prior. The reward? A pair of one-of-one Converse designed by NYC-based cult classic tattoo artist Cake, whose emblematic cherub motif adorned a pair of custom Chucks. Encased in a shadowbox like the holy grail of hype, the shoes emanated an almost sacred shine as the evening’s beacon of underground exclusivity. Partygoers posed nearby, smizing and chucking up peace signs as photographic evidence of highly coveted attendance.
Meanwhile, the DJ booth kept shape-shifting: x3butterfly gave way to Black Rave Culture and JADALAREIGN, who sent basslines rippling through the concrete as the crowd got sweatier (literally), hotter (figuratively) and somehow more lit (no ring light required). Camera flashes glinted like strobe lights, capturing blurry dance floor twirls and grainy fit-checks in any reflective surface they could find.
Then came the headliner. The Raingurl herself: Yaeji. As she stepped behind the booth, the room hit a new octave of excitement. Phone screens shot up but no one was standing still. She bounced between house and ambient and back again, folding the warehouse into one glitchy, gorgeous beat drop after another. Concocted of pulsing syrupy sweetness, her set’s every synth line sent a new ripple through the crowd.
By 2 AM, Chuck Taylors were suitably scuffed as DJ Swisha closed out his set. Ravers dissolved into the night in bleary-eyed droves: afterparties, bodega runs or an Uber back to Manhattan the next item on their night’s lineup.
Club Chuck may have been one night only, but in the industrial underbelly streets of deep Brooklyn, where the party’s never really over, its aftershocks are still pulsing through concrete and reverb. Until the next invite drops.
