What's actually happening over the 72 hours?
Refuge's floor doesn't stop from Friday afternoon through Sunday morning. Deep Dish, the house duo of Dubfire and Sharam, open the marathon alone with a 12-hour set on Friday, September 25. Saturday belongs to the house: co-founders John DiMatteo and Craig "Shorty" Bernabeu take turns behind the decks alongside Ragie Ban. By Sunday, Victor Calderone, a fixture of New York house since the 1990s, plays into sunrise, and the marathon closes with A-Trak and Dave 1, the Brothers Macklovitch, best known together as half of Chromeo.
Why no VIP tables, no bottle service, no phones?
The policy isn't new for the marathon, it's the house rule. Refuge has run without a VIP section, without bottle service and with phones banned at the door since it opened, cutting directly against the tables-and-bottles economics most Brooklyn and Manhattan rooms lean on to cover rent. There's no LED wall either. The bet is that a 500-capacity room can survive on ticket and bar revenue alone if the sound and the booking are good enough that nobody needs a table to feel like they got their money's worth.
Is this genuinely a first anniversary?
The math looks off at first glance: Bernabeu and DiMatteo spent seven years scouting before they landed the building on Ten Eyck Street in August 2023. But securing a lease isn't the same as opening the doors. The pair ran a 13-event test phase through late 2024 to dial in the room, and Refuge only officially opened for business in September 2025. That makes this September's 72-hour run a genuine first anniversary of the finished club, three years after the address itself became theirs. In that first year, Refuge says it drew visitors from more than 1,300 cities across 73 countries.
"It's full, relaxed and easy on the ears, with a tremendous amount of impact. It's a musical system with a lot of attitude and authority.", Craig "Shorty" Bernabeu on REX
What makes the REX sound system different?
REX is a custom four-point analog rig: four 10-foot speaker stacks surrounding the dance floor instead of a single wall of sound facing the crowd. Bernabeu, who previously built systems for Nowadays and Stereo Montreal, engineered it with acoustic designer Al Fierstein of Acoustilog, whose credits stretch back to Studio 54, Paradise Garage and Sound Factory. The room sits inside a 150-year-old industrial building with 35-foot ceilings and a floating wood dance floor, built to let a system like that actually breathe.
