SLIST was born in Mexico City in June 2021. A native New Yorker on a solo backpacking trip started an anonymous blog listing and reviewing the darkest raves in CDMX. The concept was simple: where is the S-tier dark shit?
The CDMX chapter
The origin was pure introversion workaround. A DJ friend told me my Spanish was terrible and I needed to bring tourists to parties if I wanted to play. I was not social enough to do that in person, so I started the account. Instagram opened doors that being social in person never could.
Started by sharing every single flyer to grow followers, then pivoted to curated recommendations after a community poll. The curation made cortesias — guest list spots — easier to get from promoters. Built a private account as a digital guest list where members got followed by the account. Quality-controlled personally. Target: fashion-forward dark culture people, wholesome dark DJs, scene organizers, regular faces.
The CDMX account was growing by 100 followers a day at its peak. The brand existed for three years before the first event. Most of SLIST’s early existence was community-building without events. The flyer-sharing, the guest list exchanges, the WhatsApp group with 600 members — all of it was infrastructure built before a single ticket was ever sold.
The crossing
Returned to NYC in early 2023. Started a local chapter. The brand had baggage from CDMX drama — death threats from xenophobes who did not like a foreigner running guest lists, cancel campaigns, a forced de-anonymization when someone tried to get me cancelled over old shitpost stories. All of that became an asset in New York. Controversy attracted attention. Old head promoters who were disgruntled with scene politics started reaching out.
First NYC event had 60 people with one week of promotion. By the third event, attendance was 180. The data-driven scaling approach was present from the first events — collect data at the door, track conversion, project the next one higher.
What transferred and what did not
The curation sensibility transferred perfectly. Dark music only. No compromises on sound. The flyer-sharing-to-guestlist funnel that worked in CDMX worked in NYC with minimal adaptation. The WhatsApp community model translated directly.
What did not transfer: the language advantage. In CDMX, being a foreigner who spoke bad Spanish was charming. In NYC, being a South Asian promoter in a scene that skews white, queer, and Colombian meant navigating a completely different political landscape. The same directness that earned respect in CDMX triggered cancel campaigns in Bushwick.
The solution was the same in both cities: outlast them. Build the infrastructure. Let the growth speak louder than the critics. SLIST crossed borders not by adapting to each city’s politics, but by refusing to. The brand is the same in every city. The darkness is the constant.