Club chair

Photo: Aaron M. Cohen

Every Saturday night for the last couple of months, observant Lower East Siders may have noticed a conspicuously unproductive bunch loitering on the seating in front of American Apparel on Houston and Orchard. Meet “The Bench,” possibly the nightlife hot spot of the summer. The allure? Nothing. As Max Glazer—Brooklynite, Bench cofounder and DJ who recently returned from a tour with Rhianna—laughingly observes, “People don’t believe me when I tell them that the Bench is just us literally sitting on the corner. They ask, ‘Is it a club? How much does it cost to get in?’”

Actually, longtime friends Glazer, Matt Goias, Ari Forman and “Fancy” are simply repurposing the term “slacker,” though on July 21, the crew decided to be uncharacteristically proactive: They helped their friend, 2007 Fulbright Scholar Stephen “Espo” Powers, as he hawked T-shirts in front of his art space in Coney Island. Powers also spent the day belittling passersby—mostly hipsterfied Siren Festival attendees—on his PA system while simultaneously trying to sell them his self-designed wares. After limited success, Powers admitted, “I may need to rethink my business plan.” Goias hastened to assure TONY that “we strictly do nothing as a nonprofit venture. This isn’t usual—it’s too much work!”

After Coney Island, the group took up their usual place in the LES for a night of hanging with producer Dante Ross, who brought along the 1999 Grammy (in a shoebox) he’d won for his work on Santana’s Supernatural. Other attendees included graffiti artist Eric Haze, Hot 97’s Cipha Sounds, former child star Mason Reese and any other passing layabouts wanting to take a load off. “This whole thing started,” Goias explains, “because we realized one night that sitting here, we saw all the people we would’ve seen had we gone to all the parties. This way, we could just stay in one place.”