No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999

No Sleep is a visual history of the halcyon days of New York City club life as told through flyer art. Spanning the late 80s through the late 90s, when nightlife buzz travelled via flyers and word of mouth, No Sleep. features a collection of artwork from the personal archives of NYC DJs, promoters, club kids, nightlife impresarios and the artists themselves. Club flyers, by design, were ephemeral objects distributed on street corners, outside of nightclubs and concert halls, in barbershops and retail shops and not intended to be preserved for posterity. Through the 90s, they became both increasingly prevalent and more sophisticated as printing technology evolved. Overnight, however, with the birth of the internet, the club flyer essentially disappeared, and despite it being common for promoters to print thousands of flyers for any given event, they now remain rare. DJ Stretch Armstrong and Evan Auerbach of UpNorthTrips unearthed the flyers presented here to create the most impressive collection of club flyers and concert bills compiled to date. What you will see in this book are the humble beginnings of now household names Mark Ronson, Moby, Sean "Puffy' Combs, Eminem, Funkmaster Flex, among others. These names were made after dark, and their reps grew bigger each time they were featured on a flyer.