Want to get into this Manhattan club? Bring your mom or dad

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We were on the guest list, but we still had to wait. The line outside the Manhattan nightclub Joyface was always hectic, but on Saturday night it was particularly mobbed. Word had gotten out that Olivia Rodrigo was inside.

The door swung open. It was the club's owner, Jennifer Shorr. ”Parent rule!” she called to the door person, Toby. Toby nodded and ushered in a pair of 20-somethings alongside a man who looked … well, old enough to be their father.

It was their father.

The ”parent rule,” I learned, was Joyface's policy to let anyone cut the line who showed up with their parents. Over the years, I've seen many things at nightclubs: objects entering bodies, fluids leaving bodies and bodies consensually defiling other bodies. Who cares? It's a party!

But this? Mom and Dad skipping the line? This was shocking.

What was I doing at the club? Well, a young friend was in town. It was her first time in New York. I was hell-bent on showing her a good time and showing myself that I could still stay out late and have fun.

As a teenager, I heard Chris Rock's ”You don't want to be the old guy in the club” bit from his 1996 stand-up special, ”Chris Rock: Bring the Pain”: ”Every club you go into, there's always one old guy. He ain't really old, just a little too old to be at the club.”

Since I entered my 40s, I have found myself wondering what, exactly, is ”just a little too old”?

”Too old” isn't in owner Jennifer Shorr's vocabulary. She opened Joyface in 2018 with the explicit mandate to play oldies and welcome olds. ”I used to give the DJs directives in the very beginning: ‘If your mom walks in at 2 a.m., she's going to stay,'” said Shorr in a call from her home in New York's East Village. ”And it's named after my mom because her nickname's ‘Joyface.'”

Shortly after Joyface opened, Shorr found herself telling the staff to let in guests who brought their parents. It soon became an official policy.

The ”parent rule” makes particular sense at Joyface. The place is designed to look like a 1970s rec room, complete with a waterbed, wood paneling and latch-hook art on the walls. The music skews toward nostalgic remixes of wedding reception oldies. The vibe is ”partying in my friend's dad's basement,” so why not throw in a couple dads?

Also, nightclubs are always full of young people spending their parents' money. Why not cut out the middle man?

”When they walk in, they'll be like, ‘Oh, I'm only staying for one drink,'” Shorr said. ”And then like four hours later, they walk out like sweating, and they're like, ‘That was the best time I've ever had.'” The club's Instagram account features a highlights collection called ”Parents at Joy” featuring dozens of photos and videos of older clubgoers partying.

Joyface also hosts Saturday dance parties from 5 to 10 p.m. that attract dancers ranging from their 40s to their 70s. ”I'll ID them because they love it,” Shorr said. Across the country, other dance events have popped up catering to older clientele, including morning raves like D.C.'s ”Daybreaker” and my friend Emily Mills's Madison, Wisconsin, femme-focused afternoon dance party, ”Hot Flash.”

Occasionally, Joyface's ”parent rule” presents problems. ”These kids abuse it where it's one mom and, like, eight kids,” she said. When that happens, she allows the mother with one younger guest. ”I always say, ‘Pick your favorite kid.'”

Shorr estimates that most nights attract between 15 and 20 parents, which is no small number for a club with a capacity under 100. But what if Joyface lost its young clientele and went full-tilt parent? Shorr says she'd welcome the change.

”I get mad when it's too young,” she said. ”Twenty-year-olds are the ones that are the biggest pain in the a--, but when they have their parents with them, they tend to be less annoying.”

There is historical precedent for intergenerational mingling in nightlife.

The guest list as we know it descends from Studio 54, the disco that opened in 1977. Co-owner Steve Rubell would handpick admitees from a mob of people outside. There were some nights when Rubell kept the disco nearly empty while people on the street clamored for entry. Who got in was as important as who didn't.

As the photographer and Studio 54 regular Hasse Persson wrote, Rubell ”called his secret formula a ‘tossed salad': homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals, famous movie stars, Brazilians, street kids from Harlem and the Bronx, and Eurotrash.”

The door policy quickly became legendary. It also inspired one of my favorite novelty songs, ”Dario, Can You Get Me Into Studio 54?” by Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

Celebrities often sailed in. But not always. According to Anthony Haden-Guest's (excellent) book ”The Last Party,” Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty famously tried to get in on opening night and gave up amid the chaos outside.

But you know who did always get in? A former lawyer born in 1900 named Sally Lippman who earned the nickname ”Disco Sally.” She was a regular at Studio 54, Xenon and other New York discos.

One of the (many) things I hated about the fictionalized 1998 movie ”54″ was the way Disco Sally was portrayed as a symptom of disco's terminal decadence. In the movie, she was a dotty old woman who died at the disco as a cautionary tale.

First of all, she didn't die at Studio 54. Second of all, judging from this clip, she would have loved it if she did.

Why do we get so weird about old people having fun?

A few weeks ago, a meme circulated from a German tourism company showing an older woman ”accidentally” getting in line at the famed Berlin techno club Berghain. The caption read, in part, ”we managed to get her away in time.”

I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but it's still irritating. The one and only time I got into Berghain, there was quite a bit of age diversity. And what's the worst that could have happened if this lady had gotten in?

Several years ago, I volunteered at a pride party for older LGBTQ people. They booked a boylesque performer. The crowd went wild as he began to strip, and I had a small panic. ”This is inappropriate!” I thought. But like … these guys had been watching go-go boys for longer than I had been alive. Why was I thinking of these grown men as children?

I kept this in mind when my friend and I were finally admitted to Joyface. We didn't see Olivia Rodrigo, but we did see a few people who looked older than me having a great time. We stayed out until 5 a.m.

Shane O'Neill connects the dots between entertainment news, internet fads, celebrity gossip and pop culture ephemera to sketch a portrait of how we live today.