2009

Young New Yorkers figured out the Instagram future before Instagram came along.

Andy Warhol’s habit of shooting party pictures with a Polaroid has gone global. Billions of people do the same with smartphones, documenting their social lives constantly. When this little story appeared, the young people who were taking all these pictures still had to post them on their own sites, or on the newish one called Facebook. A year later, Instagram launched, providing the ability to broadcast those pictures instantly, and anyone could try to become a Kardashian.

2015

You didn’t always need a club—a rooftop water tank would do nicely.

The artist N. D. Austin hosted this party, at an undisclosed location, surreptitiously. As Nell Freudenberger reported, “A ladder had been placed against the parapet, the razor wire shoved aside, and we climbed over to the neighboring roof, where a pair of water towers rested on 25-foot stilts. One was dark and quiet, but the other gave off an orange glow, along with the faint strains of Bessie Smith’s ‘Back-Water Blues.’ ” There had been no permits, and Austin seemed pretty cavalier about that. “Everyone says New York is over,” he said. “I actually don’t think that’s the case. It’s still possible to do this stuff in the middle of New York City.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY BENJAMIN NORMAN