The Days & Nights List
Alana Heiss
I write the Days & Nights List, a weekly report on art, culture, and party-type things happening in and around New York City. Days & Nights was born in San Francisco in January 2023, and I moved it with me to New York when I relocated back to my hometown in the fall.
🔹 Context and goals
Each week, subscribers get a digestible, curated report on art and culture-related happenings, like gallery openings with free champagne, lectures with after parties, and book events with cool people you can be friends with.
Our goal is to do three things for ourselves, our friends, and anyone who subscribes:
1. Have more fun.
We sincerely believe that every day should be fun, and that fun is far from trivial. “How we spend our days is…how we spend our lives,” wrote beautiful weasel-loving writer Annie Dillard. If there isn’t enough fun in your day to day, how will you ever be able to say “that was dope” on your deathbed?
2. Be more IRL.
Social media is boring at best and shepherding the apocalypse at worst. We feel better, saner, more loving, and more creative the more time we spend in the world with our friends, our dates, or just ourselves. Plus, we love an opportunity to put on an unstoppable outfit and see what other people are wearing at cool events.
3. Make it easier to have a supremely good time.
We grab the crème de la crème of fun happenings from hundreds of newsletters and social accounts from galleries, artists, event spaces, and more, plus intel we acquire ~*through the grapevine*~, and present it to you as a simple, day-by-day list so you can make plans way easier.
✨ Results and proudest moments
- Amassing an incredibly active and engaged readership (~70% open rates every week compared to industry average of ~20%) of everyone from established tastemakers (including Blackbird Spyplane, my favorite writing duo in the world!) to art school party kids
- Publishing a 3-part Days & Nights Love Letter Awards for the Best Things In and Around San Francisco as a final act before moving back to New York
- Publishing this piece of juicy intel—that the best club in the Bay Area is an old Italian restaurant in Sausalito
- Taking the Days & Nights community and IRL-oriented vibe by curating an art show at Your Mood Gallery, where I sold artwork and helped secure solo shows for two of the artists at other galleries
