We’re taking it back to the days of Rent Parties. Cuz the rent + additional security deposit (as well as every other business expense + license) is going up! F4D owner and Fit4Dance would appreciate your help so that our small business can not just survive, but strive! Join us on New Year's Eve for 3 amazing classes taught by Laci Chisholm, Sanity (guest instructor from Jamaica), and Nado Jackson! A lite breakfast, and champagne toast will be provided. A donation of $25 is requested to support our efforts of raising money for the rent increase. Feel free to give more if your pockets can handle it. We appreciate your support as we enter into this new year. Come jam with us and help us keep these doors open.
Can't attend? No worries. We still appreciate your donations. We accept cash, Paypal (info@fit4dancenyc.com), Zelle (f4d@primusco.com), Venmo (@laci-chisholm), and cashapp ($LaciChisholm).
What is the history behind a rent party? According to the Brittanica, a rent party is a party thrown by African Americans who lived in urban neighborhoods during the early decades of the 20th century to collect money for rent. Rent parties were part of a solution to a growing housing crisis caused by swelling urban populations, which landlords responded to by raising formerly affordable rents. As urban rents rose, families found themselves paying exorbitant prices to cram into tiny apartments, sometimes several to a room.
Rent parties, referred to in any number of blues songs of the era, were boisterous, exuberant events. Printers traveled from block to block with notices, often with risqué epithets, that they posted in public places. The parties often attracted people who would not be found at highbrow social events, such as truck drivers, porters, cooks, laundresses, and other working folk who welcomed the chance to relax and let loose with friends. The writer Langston Hughes claimed to prefer the “nonintellectual” atmosphere of rent parties to the elite gatherings favored by some of his peers.Rent parties appealed so greatly that they were sometimes held on weeknights, and often several parties took place in the same building. The drinking, wild dancing, and flirting that took place at rent parties were a temporary escape from the harsh realities of daily life. They also benefited their hosts by raising rent money and served an important social role in urban communities by bringing neighbors together. While the most famous rent parties of the era took place in Harlem, they were also popular on Chicago’s South Side and in other large cities until the end of Prohibition.