Antoni Porowski, Dave Chapelle, and Gigi Hadid walk into a bar.
Wait, did you think I was cracking a joke? A) I m not funny enough to nail that punchline and b) this is a real-life scenario, and the bar in question is Ray’s, the au courant New York celebrity hangout on the Lower East Side.
What attracts these starry patrons to venture beyond a red awning that advertises “Liquor-Beer,” and throw their entire body weight against a wooden door only for it to crack open just a smidge? A glamorous milieu with mirrored walls, plush velvet banquettes, or magnum champagne bottles accompanied by sparklers? No—a space that, instead, looks straight out of Main Street wherever, its chief elements comprised of a pool table, a jukebox, and a whole lot of beer on tap.
Since opening this summer, Ray’s has become a bona fide hotspot in a city crammed with places claiming, failing, and clamoring to be. Part of this is due to the powerful team behind it: Actors Justin Theroux and Nicholas Braun (aka Cousin Greg from Succession) are partners, as are Jon Neidich (Acme, Tijuana Picnic), Carlos Quirarte, (The Smile, the Jane Ballroom), Taavo Somer (Freeman’s, The Rusty Knot), and artist Matt McCormick. But although buzzy names help with publicity, they don’t always guarantee success: look no further than the cautionary tales of Britney Spears’s Nyla, or Scott Disick’s RYU. Ray’s allure lies in its nightclub normcore: at a time when bars and restaurants are increasingly designed to be geo-taggable and Instagrammable, it’s an intentionally divey destination. “We wanted to create something that was a great hometown hangout—a place for people to go without any pretension,” Neidich tells Vogue. Theroux adds: “We re not where you want to go if you want to go and get a cucumber martini with a coffee bean, or something.”
Today, they’re officially doubling down on that divey ideal with the opening of Downstairs at Ray’s.
As the name suggests, Downstairs at Ray’s is a speakeasy-like space underneath the original bar. But this is no swanky secret club or luxurious lounge. It’s a basement that. . . looks like a basement. There’s a faux rock wall, tartan carpeting, and a black leather coach that overflows with a random assortment of throw pillows. A static-screen television sits in a corner, antenna askew. One end-table holds a lamp with a giant cognac bottle base. The bathroom is painted an offensive shade of yellow. The lighting sucks, and so does the cell service.
It’s diminutive to call it a dump—Spring Collective, of Frenchette fame, designed it, after all. But it takes notes from dumps of decades past: Quirarte describes the vibe as “Elvis’s man-cave.” Theroux goes with both “suburban grandparent’s basement” and “if Greg Brady moved into a garage.” If Ray’s proper is owned by a fictitious whiskey-drinking, car-fixing guy, then the downstairs, with all its divorced-dad energy, is his homebound haunt.
Downstairs at Ray’s has many functions: it can be a private room for parties–Rodarte just held their New York Fashion Week after-party there—or a hangout for Theroux and Co. to open up when upstairs gets busy. You may even be able to do karaoke. “Basements are the best places for karaoke! Your voice can just ring out!” Braun says.“This has good carpeting for sound absorption, too!” His song of choice? Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.” He assures me that, yes, he can hit those notes.
Theroux emits a laugh-groan combo when, a day later, I share Braun’s vocal pipe-dream to him over the phone. “We already have our first huge disagreement,” he says. “Karaoke is like when someone brings a guitar to a party—it s like, oh man, don t do that!”
But here’s one thing they can agree on: they just want a place where they (and everyone) can just hang. Where you stick your phone in your jean pocket and forget about it for awhile. Where you don’t have to think about being seen or what you social.
“I struggle with where to go in New York,” Braun says. “It’s hard to find a place where you’re not screaming over other people, or it s so loud that you can t even have a conversation—where you re just sort of looking at people, wishing you could talk to them.”
“But this?” he says, wildly gesticulating around the room in all its dimly-lit, shag-carpeted glory. “I’ve never seen a room like this.”
