Rockland Used to Have a Thriving Night Life – Can It Be Brought Back?

Growing up in Rockland, you sometimes hear stories, when the adults forget you’re in the room, of what your parents got up to in their young adult lives here. Bars and clubs like “The Marshmellow” or “Maxiumus” get name-dropped in the context of some wild night out. Not just in Rockland, but up and down Bergen County as well. A New York Times article published in 1972 remarked on how many young people flocked to bars in Rockland from Jersey, even as far south as New Brunswick. By the time you’re old enough to go out yourself, you half expect to find a thriving scene just minutes from your house, only to discover that the closest dance club is in Hoboken. Something changed between then and now. Though many factors have contributed to the decline of nightlife in Rockland, infrastructure and affordability are the two prime examples.

In the 70s and 80s, when the nightlife scene in Rockland thrived, many things were different. For starters, the drinking age was lower, drunk driving laws were lax, and the alcohol was cheaper. Now, the drinking age is 21, getting caught driving drunk could ruin your life, and it’s well above $5 for a bottle of beer and well above $10 for anything stronger. A night out used to be something spontaneous; now it’s something you have to budget for. Young people who can’t find jobs, who can’t move out of their parents’ house, and who in general can’t afford anything aren’t interested in a $7 beer at the bar surrounded by strangers, when a 6-pack or two in the backyard with your friends is far cheaper. Remember though, it’s not just the price of alcohol, but also the price of the taxi or Uber service you take to get to the bar/club and to get home. The ToR buses don’t run after midnight, with few services running even that late, with around 9 pm being the cutoff time for many routes. The key to a successful night out is to get home safe, and if people can’t reliably do that, then they won’t go out in the first place.

In researching this problem, I was able to catch up with Marianne Olive, who owns Olive’s, a bar and music venue in the heart of Nyack. I asked her about Rockland’s nightlife and its decline. She blames much of it on the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “There was a lot of isolation during that pandemic, and I think it affected a lot of the young people. Young people weren’t going out, and when things opened up, initially, you had to put these dividers all over the bar. These plastic dividers in between every customer, and that was not really a workable situation. It wasn’t social. There was no way to socialize. So, in my case, I closed the bar again after reopening during the pandemic to wait until they lost the restrictions on all those things with the masks and those plastic contraptions we had to have all over the bar. It definitely affected business. It still is not where it was years ago.”

Another factor is that young people also have no real reason to remain living in Rockland en masse and especially not to move here from somewhere else. Of course this isn’t a rule, but New York City has the most jobs in the region, so cheap rent and reliable access to the city are often non-negotiables for 20-somethings looking to start their careers. Unfortunately, Rockland County has neither of those things, making it an unattractive place to live for someone trying to find their feet in the adult world.

Since the pandemic, young people don’t see a night out as appealing. The price tag and the inconvenience don’t make the prospect worth it. In Rockland, you pay New York City prices to have a suburban night out. All these issues and more are what contributed to the decline of clubs and late-night hangouts in Rockland. If people can’t see themselves living their day life in Rockland, they’re not going to spend their nightlife here either. That, coupled with the rise in cost of a night out and the unreliability of getting home, makes it a miracle that Rockland still has bars open past midnight. If we want to see a resurgence in the nightlife that used to dominate Rockland County, we need to invest in walkable infrastructure, affordable housing, transit to and from job centers, and maybe get rid of the vice tax (one can only dream). The key to bringing back the nightlife that was once here is to make Rockland an appealing place for young people to live, and an affordable place.