"I situate nightlife in the city's shift to postindustrialism and the increased importance of services, culture, tourism, and creativity in its economic and social life. In New York, of course, nightlife has always been central to the life and image of the city and its neighborhoods as well as the identities of its inhabitants. I've argued that we can understand important urban changes--gentrification, identity, immigration--by looking at the city's nightlife spaces. Nightlife during the industrial era was always peripheral to the economic vitality of cities (like culture and consumption). But today this has changed, and things like nightlife are important for urban growth, or at least that's how cities treat it. Meanwhile with this nightlife culture has also changed, most epseically in the rise of nightlife for the middle class. There are still places for elites and the working class of course, but I think the urban middle class has become the target audience." --Richard Ocejo, Ph.D The speakeasy as a public and, as Prof. Ocejo argues, a nightlife space is integral to the development of urban culture. Particularly of note, the speakeasy is at a unique intersection of mediation that would seem to resist mainstream mediation. Drinking alcohol during Prohibition as well as at other times in our history has been considered transgressive. However, that transgression led to developments in the arts and social life that reverberate to this date as entrepreneurs try to recreate those space while either appropriating contemporary technology and culture or outright resisting it.