Nik Mercer, NY Remixed
As a kid raised in Cleveland, Nik Mercer was dreaming of Tokyo, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Then it was 2001, The Strokes released Is This It and DFA Records, the label of James Murphy, was born. Nik was 14 and felt New York became “inevitable” for him. He spent the next decade in the city taking part in its dance music and nightlife renaissance, running the label Let’s Play House with the DJ and producer Jacques Renault. His 2010s were a wild but defining ride of free-wheeling parties and record releases. Still the West Coast was calling. It’s from L.A. that Nik tells us about his love for a gonzo New York and how the city made him find his voice.
NOUVEAU YORK: A recurrent question for our times: how have you been?
NIK MERCER: A little over two years ago, I left New York and moved to San Francisco, and while that was a meaningful, rewarding year, it was a challenging year that, in hindsight, was defined by isolation. Me being a person who reads—or weaves—symbolism into everything, it’s hard to not now perceive it as preparation for 2020 and beyond. Early last year, I moved back to L.A., where I had moved for college, in 2006. It happened a few months before the first round of lockdowns, and while this meant the look and feel of my return was different than anticipated, I don’t think I’d be as content and calibrated if things hadn’t happened as they did. Had options been more available, I probably would’ve flittered around a lot and not made up my mind on where I wanted to live, commit myself to.
NY: How did you stay motivated and sane through those last months?
NM: Early on, I kept my sanity and motivation by taking care of myself in ways I never had before. I started letting myself listen to my dreams and give agency to my creative voice in a way I hadn’t before. While this didn’t lead to anything novel immediately, it established the runway I would need to reconfigure LPH [Let's Play House], my label, and also prepare this new undertaking, LP HOUSE. Aside from that, I got to connect with old and new friends in intimate, thoughtful ways, and consider my role in this world more deeply than I did before. All that combined made the time flow slowly but intensely, like lava from a volcano.
NY: What did extract you from NYC?
NM: The opportunity to move to S.F. came up. While I was initially terrified, I quickly realized I had to do it. Can’t see and assess things from outside until you get outside. When you're in it, you can’t ever truly break out of that POV and see yourself and your life from the outside. Then, at the end of 2019, I had to make a choice between staying in S.F. and going elsewhere, and, long story short, staying in S.F. wasn’t the move. NYC seemed the most logical—I worked for an NYC company, I started my label in NYC, my life was defined by what I’d done in NYC throughout my twenties—and it was precisely for that reason I chose to not go back. I was concerned I’d fall back into comfortable routines and habits, and I wanted to exercise some other muscles and put myself in a wobbly place so I had to make an effort to properly stabilize. L.A. was close, and it was the only place I’d ever actively chosen to move to—it was the only place I wanted to go to for school; I dreamed of being in L.A. when I was a kid—so I thought I’d head back, see what my present-day life turned into when I let it rub up against my past experiences and aspirations for the future.
“That was the NYC that spoke to me. That weirdo, gonzo wackiness, fleshed out with Moby blogging constantly about relapsing into drinking and preparing vegan food.”
NY: Taking some distance with New York, what did that make you realize about the city?
NM: There’s a lot we put up with in New York for reasons that now sort of elude me; I think New Yorkers accept a lot because they have rose-tinted glasses on. But what I found the most frustrating is that the abundance of choice and possibility leads to a sort of malaise or indifference towards activity and adventure. New York is really a bunch of little villages that are all quite specialized and self-contained, and while you’re constantly aware of all your neighbors and what they’ve to offer, you don’t go to them too terribly often. When you’re always cognizant of how much opportunity lays a few train stops away, why ever do today what you can leave for tomorrow? Eventually, I began pushing myself to move around more, and that brought me satisfaction, but for years and years, I stayed in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bed-Stuy, only coming into Manhattan for, say, parties at Le Bain. There’s something distressing about this being a feature of one’s life in a place as big, diverse, and textured as NYC.
NY: You’ve been raised in Cleveland, Ohio. Could you describe your early fantasy about NY?
NM: Interesting. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was go somewhere else, and it was mostly San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. All three cities either looked to Japan or were literally in Japan, and I was just obsessed with the country. I studied Japanese starting in fifth grade, and lived there for a year after high school. I imagined a Japan-centric life ahead. However, NYC metaphorically and literally spoke to Japan a lot, too, particularly with magazines like Tokion and shops like TKNY. And a lot of the streetwear and toys-for-big-boys (Michael Lau figurines, BE@RBRICKS, Chappies) stuff that was bubbling when I was growing up, whether it was in NYC or L.A. or elsewhere, eventually manifested somehow in NYC. So I was often thinking of NYC, mail-ordering stuff from NYC, or thirsting for trips to NYC.
Tokion magazine #28 (January 2002)
NY: What about the New York music scene?
NM: I was extremely into the Beastie Boys. I loved their bicoastal presence. I think I wanted some of that. I was also really just bananas for the Strokes and Interpol and DFA, so everything they did I worshipped, and that very much drew me to NYC. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars, too. Big-time. There was an element to late-90s and early-2000s New York that made me feel it was connected to the NYC I perceived through the record collection of my father, too, and that stuff I glommed onto. So, like, Dad was into Iggy Pop and the Ramones and Blondie and Bowie, and he was hip to Glenn O’Brien’s work and whatnot, and while that stuff was not in production or novel in, say, 2003, it appeared to come from the same wellspring my contemporaries were drawing from.
NY: How did that translate in the way you looked at New York?
NM: As an example, there was a public-access program called Kid America Adventure Hour, that I think aNYthing’s Aaron Bondaroff helped shape and Donald Cumming from the Virgins was in. I have that DVD somewhere. Probably bought it by sending cash in the mail to a boutique in the Lower East Side. At any rate, that was the NYC that spoke to me. That weirdo, gonzo wackiness, fleshed out with Moby blogging constantly about relapsing into drinking and preparing vegan food. Cibo Matto converging with Sean Lennon and Mike Mills. Those were the stories I really dug. Anything that felt like it had been somewhat strangely, awkwardly plugged into the city, and that felt as though it had a foot in the past as well as the present. I am forever nostalgic for a past that only exists in my own head.
“Maybe, to a degree, NYC felt inevitable.”
NY: About your first NY selection, the comic strip "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer", you said you were devouring it as a kid. What did it tell you about the city and New Yorkers?
NM: Good illustration of what I’m scratching out with the previous answer! In Cleveland, I felt misunderstood and different, and connecting with stories of alienation made me feel more whole. In hindsight, I see I wanted to be misunderstood and perceived as different, so I pushed myself toward that which was obscure and confusing and beyond my maturity level because it helped me signal this characteristic. That’s what the Julius Knipl stories were all about. What the Paul Auster books were all about. Like the underground comix—R. Crumb and Ralph Bakshi and Heavy Metal and Moebius and Harvey Pekar—I collected, it was beyond me at the time, but it made me feel special in a way that didn’t require traditional competition. I could stand apart not by being the best at, say, baseball (I played a few seasons and recall hitting the ball once), but by simply attaching myself to things no one else knew about. My concern is this led to frustrating antisocial behavior, but that’s for a therapist to decide
NY: You were 14 in 2001, the year the music label DFA records was born in NYC, and you said you’ve been fascinated by both DFA and The Strokes. How did the early 2000’s NY music scene, where rock was having a renaissance and electro clashed, give a new boost to your NY fantasy?
NM: Boy, I wish I could remember how I discovered them both. It was probably through Pitchfork, which I read religiously from about 2000 on. First site I went to every morning—and it still is. I was also crazy for NME, and I had a blog, BiBaBiDi, eventually, where I wrote about a lot of this sort of stuff and all other related “next big thing” artists. I remember playing Is This It over and over and over on my stereo, and then bringing it on road trips to my aunt and uncle’s house in St. Louis and playing it on my cousins’computer tower. Anyone who had ears would get it.
NY: Why did you click so much with The Strokes?
NM: Both the DFA and the Strokes are boy bands, ostensibly of an alternative nature, but boy bands nevertheless. I think that’s what I responded to the most. I saw them both as groups—or elements of groups—that resembled the boys’-club social circles I desperately wanted to be a part of. I imagined them all hanging out together, working on records together, going to shows together, seeing one another out and about, traveling together. There’s something distressingly chauvinistic about this, but, like I said, boy bands! That’s what they’re all about. Boys hanging out with boys, pleasing other boys, impressing other boys, one-upping other boys, taking other boys’ girls, chasing boys. The intensity with which it happened in NYC was attractive to me, and the world that they all inhabited didn’t seem lightyears away from mine. I was in Cleveland, not too terribly far from New York, and I got to see a lot of bands as they made their way across the U.S., so I felt like I was in a farm team of sorts. Maybe, to a degree, NYC felt inevitable.
Nik and Jacques Renault by Ruvan
“I was pleased to be part of something that felt messy and ridiculous and free-wheeling. We had this under control.”
NY: What do you remember of April 2009, the month you settled full-time in NYC?
NM: Being extremely lost. My girlfriend at the time was patient and sweet with me, and I remember leaving her hanging at least a few times because I couldn't figure out how to get to midtown, where she worked. Took the F the wrong way for way too many stops. That sort of thing. And cell phones were everywhere, but none of the stuff we have now, like Google Maps, was. So it was still quite challenging to navigate around. We had BlackBerry phones, and I remember those damn read receipts creating so much trouble for me. Or, rather, me creating trouble for myself via those read receipts. Seeing things and not responding... being petty like that. I was a real joy all the time!
NY: Any specific place you remember of that Spring 2009?
NM: I went to Bedford Cheese Shop most Saturdays or Sundays, and I always would get a baguette and some fancy, stinky, dank cheese. This made me feel so sophisticated and cultured. (Ironically, while I do like cheese just fine these days, I don’t eat it much, and I’m convinced I've made my body borderline lactose-intolerant.)
NY: Not going out to parties?
NM: This all happened a little thereafter. I remember seeing [NY DJs] Justin Miller and Jacques play something Charles Damga put together in East Williamsburg or Bushwick. I can’t remember where. I remember parties at the Inventory store that Mike Townsend ran. I remember going to a lot of what I imagined to be important meetings with folks I met through the magazine I worked for, Anthem. Basically, I remember feeling very important. Self-important, I should say. That took a while to grow out of.
NY: You spent most of the 2010’s in NYC and co-founded the music label Let’s Play House with Jacques Renault. That decade has seen a revival of house and dance music in NYC, and for sure a rebirth of nightlife, and you were an actor in that revival. What is the first great memory of those years that come to your mind?
NM: You’re too kind! On a personal level, I remember being so happy to have made a friend. Jacques was my first close, intimate friend in New York. I felt very lonely when he wasn’t around. I remember the first time he left for a tour after we had become an item, so to speak. I was crying on the street to a friend I was talking to on the phone. In terms of more professional considerations, I was just happy to feel wanted and a part of things. Confessing this now makes me see how immature I was in certain ways; being so desperate for validation is bad for the soul and only gives the illusion of the agency we need to find fulfillment in life. But that’s where I was then. Every time we had one of our parties that popped off, I just felt so over the moon, like I had accomplished something of great significance. I was pleased to be part of something that felt messy and ridiculous and free-wheeling. We had this under control.
“New Yorkers are inherently wild and a little manic, and I think the New York spirit cajoles them into staying that way.”
NY: Kathy Grayson just told us “Movies and music have really shaped the myth of New York, and shaped what we, as New Yorkers think we are doing here. It is a bit of a collective dream.” How does your own experience fit in that vision?
NM: Feedback loop, huh. I would agree with that. I think a lot of what we do in New York is done simply out of some sort of primal, instinctual need to feed the beast. New York isn’t New York unless it has activity in it, and if you consider the activity you put into it, you probably won’t do as much. A sort of demonic mania fuels the place, and if you step back and ask why anyone’s doing anything, it’s easy to get sort of cynical and just say screw it all, forget it all, nothing really matters. So I think New Yorkers are inherently wild and a little manic, and I think the New York spirit cajoles them into staying that way. Rinse and repeat. On and on it goes. It never ends unless you step outside of it. Even if you choose to not participate in all the nightlife culture or go to all the museums or sample all the restaurants, you’re still tacitly buttressing the ecosystem. Isn’t that wild? Like, there’s no opt-out option in New York. You’re the beneficiary of all New York has to offer, good and bad, whether you take it or don’t, you're complicit. By being in New York, you define it and it defines you. I find that both intoxicating and really alarming.
NY: How did those years in NYC shape the 30 something Californian entrepreneur you are today?
NM: I found my voice. Someone once told me that New Yorkers are “fake mean” and Angelenos are “fake nice”, and while I think that’s reductive and unfair on a micro level, it’s true on a macro one. New York helped me grow a thick skin and become tough, and yet it also helped me become nice and cheerful and generous, both with myself and with others. Funneling that into “fake nice” L.A. creates a spark that motivates and inspires me. New York is a great place to be when you don’t know who you are, and L.A. is a great place to be when you do. L.A. didn’t stick when I was younger because I didn’t know who I was. I thought I did. I didn’t. NYC gave me so much to look at and jump on and engage with, even if a lot of my time felt lonesome and depressing. L.A. is perfect now because I have intention in a way I didn’t before and focus in a way I didn’t before. I know how to achieve what I want without all the filler and chaos and noise and inertia that keeps the clock ticking one New York minute at a time.
“New York is a dream, but indulging in the fantasy is hollow.”
NY: Please describe your ideal NY day trip.
NM: Being in the city [Manhattan]. Only when I started coming back to NYC to visit did I start staying in the city. For a decade, I stayed overnight—as in I actually slept in a bed—maybe five times. That seems unfortunate. I never got to really commune with the New York we're all conjuring when we speak of “New York.” I should’ve given myself that opportunity when I was still there. Coulda, shoulda, woulda! But, yeah, being in the city. Poking around in the East Village, dipping into second-hand bookstores and plant shops. Spontaneously calling friends, asking them to coffee or wonton noodles. Morning runs along the East River. Crawling through galleries and traipsing through elegant and pretentious boutiques. I love going to Times Square and lingering in the quieter crannies of it, like the Midtown Comics shop on 40th Street and the Ootoya a block or two away. I love calm within turbulence, solitude within crowds, and spaces like those help me achieve just that. Relatedly, there is nothing better than getting on trains with a loose destination in mind and then getting there without even thinking about it. Riding the trains like a bicycle is a talent few of us have, and it’s so very special.
NY: You’re organizing a NY dinner. Which 3 New Yorkers, dead or alive, would you invite?
NM: I mean, after all this Strokes and DFA talk, two of them have to be James Murphy and Julian Casablancas, no? Not to be a sap, but it might be people close to my heart I’ve lost touch with or didn’t have the confidence and patience to stay connected to when I should’ve. New York is a dream, but indulging in the fantasy is hollow. Much as I know I’d have a ball kicking it with Thurston Moore and Legs McNeil and Glenn O’Brien and all those nutters, my heart would feel the fullest if I could spend a night with people I haven’t seen in a long time for reasons I could’ve done more to prevent. These are people I am not meant to be with now, and that likely won’t be in my future, but to give us all a shot at putting a bow on things with cheer and compassion and curiosity rather than silence or, worse, antagonism... that would be magical.
NY: Can you describe the first perfect Let’s Play House party post-Covid in NYC?
NM: Like the old days, I’d invite everyone by text. I’d actually personally call or message everyone. I’d pound the pavement, shake the trees, get everyone out. For so long, I did these things sort of to the side of my social life; whether or not our friends came wasn't important so long as we were getting bodies on the floors and making money. What a sour, apathetic, entitled way to behave and to approach something that’s ostensibly about connection and communion and camaraderie! So the first one... I think I’d be less pressed about the lights, the decor, the size, and all that, and more focused on making sure everyone I love and care about showed up—and that I showed up for all of them, too.
Nik Picks Five New York Classics
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
“Ben Katchor has been doing these strips about oddballs and outcasts and in-between people in NYC for decades. When I was growing up in Cleveland, I devoured his strips. Strange, intense, heady stories that exemplify how New York might be identified by what is projects most boldly first, but it was built and is sustained by smaller and quieter voices.”
The DFA Remixes
“A lot of kids born in or around '87, when I was, found DFA and the Strokes simultaneously—and became deeply obsessed with both. When I was in high school, I kept a running list of all of James Murphy’s productions, written in pencil in a little Rhodia notebook. I’m sure I have the sheet somewhere. I was transfixed by the notion of the producer's voice somehow being more powerful than the musician’s (though this was, I eventually realized, at least tacitly what characters like Murphy wanted me to believe; it was a myth that helped prop up his own career and magnify his own creative platform). This informed a lot of my professional ambitions; rather than associate with one single unit, I wanted to color and affect as many as I possibly could. Probably why I wanted to start a label rather than a rock group or get into the DJ circuit.”
The Daytrippers
“A sharp, wry road-trip film of sorts. NYC is so often seen as Manhattan and whatever exists in its immediate proximity, like Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Dumbo. Once you’re there—and, particularly, when you have a car—you realize none of this exists without Long Island, East New York, the Bronx, Newark, and other regions that are, at least outwardly, ho-hum. That is, NYC isn't fun and thrilling without the mundane and ordinary that comprises so very much of it. The Daytrippers speaks to this in a very Gen X way, a very 90s way. The twist at the end is a shock, a delight that reminds us of how assumptions lead to trouble and that this world is as bright and joyful as it is heartbreaking and tormented.”
The April Fools
“Overlooked. A romp through the city with a strange couple—Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve. It explores the fact of New York being a playground for all of us, whatever our gender, age, backstory. So often, these late-night tales are myopically preoccupied with youth (After Hours?), and this story is wholly occupied with middle-aged “normal” folks having a good old time, staying up late, partying. It's full of joy and a reminder that, if you’re whole and content and intentional, you won’t outgrow NYC and it won't outgrow you. Don’t become cynical.”
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
“I'm a big fan of hardboiled detective fiction, particularly that which is from the late 70s into the late 90s. Ed McBain, Michael Connelly, Richard Stark/Donald Westland, Jim Thompson—these are some of my authors I’m devoted to from that area. Perhaps of number one of the NYC crew is Lawrence Block, whose Matt Scudder is a private eye with a dark, pained heart. And while this series explores depravity and sin and corruption, it isn’t cynical. Perhaps it’s because Scudder is a recovering alcoholic; he finds meaning in the confusion and the terror and the trauma that is life. And the loneliness that is the majority of life. While happiness is fleeting, it is our eternal quest for it that makes life worthwhile.”
