Year 2000 crowd nightlife scene Auckland Photo: Aflickion Digital
Year 2000 crowd nightlife scene Auckland Photo: Aflickion Digital
Within weeks of each other, two Facebook groups have taken people from different generations of party-goers on trips down memory lane.
First up was long-time music-industry man and one of the biggest driving forces of Auckland's glittering nightlife in the 80s and 90s Simon Grigg, who, in less than a month has more than 15,000 followers for The lost nightlife of inner-city Auckland.
This has been followed by pop culture and music over-enthusiast Nick Collings' page, Auckland Nightlife Year 2000+, with 4500 followers.
Nick Collings circa 2000 Photo: Aflickion Digital
Both groups are filled with posts celebrating people, with amazing images and tales over 50 years in the Auckland social scene and have been bringing a lot of joy during these less social times.
Grigg started his page for two reasons, a personal sense of nostalgia and being stuck at home in lockdown.
"I have such great memories of the times, the people and the music. We were such a huge family, going back to the 1980s. Also, from an archival point of view, I was keen to see what images were out there. A lot!" Grigg tells Spy.
Both Grigg and Collings agree that the 2000+ page was a natural progression from Lost Nightlife in the Inner City, which has a strict timeline of only inner-city nightlife from 1960 to 2000.
"I'm a member at 2000+ and many people post on both pages," says Grigg. I'm friends on and offline with many of the key contributors there, especially the DJs."
Collings, who has been an active member and collector of nightlife and pop culture stuff ever since he was a teenager in the 90s, is an active contributor and fan of Grigg's page.
"I'd love to think Auckland Nightlife 2000+ picks up where Simon's stops for another whole generation of nightlife lovers and is open for future growth," says Collings.
Asked for the most memorable people from their respective eras, Grigg cites the great nightclub impresarios of the 80s and 90s, Mark Phillips and Peter Urlich and Tom and Anne Sampson, with whom he worked and partnered to bring to the club scene many of the DJs and musicians emerging at the time.
He particularly notes the incredible doormen, most especially from the late 80s onwards: Rosie, Soane, Tim, Pa, Puna, Oono, whom clubbers from the time will know well.
Collings, a 90s clubbing teenager, also cites an impressive list of DJs and also Tom Sampson.
So is there a battle of the generations? It is more a combined passion for the music and dance scene that grew and unfolds.
The biggest revelation from his page, says Grigg, is the sense of community and the way the supposedly cool kids of the time mixed so effortlessly with those they once deemed less cool.
"It all seems so silly now, we were all just young-ish people from Auckland having a good time. The page feels a little like High St or K Road used to feel on a Friday night at 1am," says Grigg.
Simon Grigg circa late 80s Photo: Darryl Ward
Collings' revelation is the connection from the scene that people still have.
"Effectively, it's the time that people of my generation grew up in as young adults, figuring out who we were, friendships, relationships etc … and our nightlife was often the soundtrack that pulled all that together," he says.
