Parti Recap: BOUNCE has its 4th Pop-up Ping Pong Party at Jean’s

What could girl group Katseye, writer BJ Novak, actor Jaeden Martell and US Table Tennis National Champ Kai Zhang possibly have in common?

Friday, September 5th, 10 miles west of Arthur Ashe stadium, they were all standing around a ping pong table watching twenty-somethings hit ping-pong balls back and forth while house music played and someone sold puff bars outside the bathroom. Why take the 7 all the way to Flushing when there’s a new event to bob your head while eating french fries out of a coffee cup and mingling with a scene-y downtown crowd?

All photos by @marc_giuffre xxxxx

BOUNCE is the party-tournament-chimera spawned by Musician/DJ siblings Blu and Rex DeTiger and Actor/Musician Giullian Yao Gioiello. They decided to combine their love for Table Tennis with their love for throwing parties and the result was hundreds lined up in NOHO to get a chance to see a tournament, hosted this time at Jean’s Lafayette, as part of the fourth installment of the BOUNCE party series.

Complete with a surprisingly stacked guest list and “Bounce” branded balls (the first branded item I have actually seen used at an event), the party adapted everyone’s favorite garage staple to be not just the centerpiece of Jeans’ typical upstairs phenomenon but an extension of it. (Prior BOUNCE locations include East Village’s Nightclub 101, ACME, and various DIY spaces).

The crowd was exactly what you’d expect from a downtown ping-pong tournament. There was no shortage of Paloma Wool pants, patchwork tattoos, and micro bangs in attendance. The tournament made modest concessions to the lounge’s obligatory mood lighting and overly foggy atmosphere by installing fluorescent tubes on the perimeter of the table which fought through the haze and barely illuminated the table tennis court (a darkness that still allowed you to flirt aimlessly with the multi-hyphenate creative behind you).

Games were played to 5 (have to win by 2) and matches were won best of 3 with players switching sides between games. This made for fast games that allowed even the drunkest of the bunch to keep attention as party goers were packed tightly around the ping-pong table while player WAGS proudly filmed their mans and casual onlookers picked favorites.

I experienced flickers of the same emotional turmoil boys who wear backward hats experience watching Sunday night football as the rounds continued. But Blu and Rex DeTiger broke up my agony and invoked a sense of nostalgia moving from dreamy bubblegum pop like Milky’s 2003 “Just the Way You Are”, to deep cuts like Otto Knows’ 2012 hit “A Million Voices” that brings the tongue-in-cheek competitive spirit of warming up for a high school state championship soccer game.

The MC whose voice carried us through the night, Gioiello (whose Partiful bio self-describes as an “actor and musician obsessed with ping-pong”), unified the crowd and illustrated the perfect hero cut for Bounce champion, local pong aficionado Max Ivry. As the tournament neared its end, the newly minted Bounce #4 Champion lifted his trophy and in the midst of the hollering crowds, songs I had saved on my iPod nano, and Canal Street sports commentary, it felt less like a club and more like boxing ring filled with the city’s most fun and actually slightly self-aware.

The Bounce party series has triumphed in the landscape of cool, unseriously-serious themed parties that you actually want to go to. It is a welcomed departure from a typical Friday night at Jean’s. Brava.

PARTI SCORECARD:

• Immersion: 9/10 The live commentary, foggy over cloud, and music transported you into a ping pong party womb. Deducted 1 point here for the missed opportunity of incorporating ping pong bounce sounds into the DJ’s set.

• Coefficient of Restitution: 0.92 Can confirm, bounce was very bouncey.