BASEMENT NYC Smart Glasses Ban: Why Techno Clubs Are Taking On Camera Glasses
BASEMENT in Queens will ask anyone carrying smart glasses to leave, even if they are in a bag. How the ban compares with Berghain's sticker policy and other venues in 2026.
BASEMENT, the techno club beneath Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, has taken dancefloor privacy a step further than most. In an Instagram post on 27 August, the club said anyone bringing smart glasses inside, “whether wearing them or carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and may be permanently banned.” Within a week the BASEMENT NYC smart glasses ban had run through DJ Mag, Mixmag, EDM.com and PetaPixel.
A no-photo policy meets a camera you cannot see
BASEMENT has run a no-phones rule since it opened in 2019, and the club framed the ban as a simple extension of it: “Devices that allow discreet recording are incompatible with that policy.” The trouble is practical. A raised phone is obvious on a dark floor. A pair of Ray-Ban Meta frames looks like any other pair of glasses, and the small white LED that signals recording is easy to miss under strobes.
Meta has admitted the workaround exists. In July it said cameras would stop working if the light was covered mid-recording, and on 1 September it confirmed it had disabled the cameras on thousands of pairs, fewer than 0.1% of users, where owners had tampered with the indicator.
Berghain’s sticker, BASEMENT’s bag check
The template is Berlin. Berghain’s phone policy is famously low-tech: door staff cover your phone cameras with stickers, and a missing sticker gets you thrown out. It works because it is social as much as technical, which is why so little genuine footage from inside exists. The rare Berghain hidden camera clip or leaked footage becomes a story in itself, as our look at images taken inside Berghain shows. A sticker does nothing for a lens built into a frame, though, which is why BASEMENT is checking bags rather than handsets.
Where other venues stand
BASEMENT is not alone, but it is the strictest. In Aarhus, Radar asks guests to put Meta glasses away, with director Martin Aagaard Jensen pointing to the volunteers who staff its bar. London’s Body Movements festival announced its own ban in August. Beyond clubland, Wetherspoons has told customers in its 800-plus UK pubs to switch the cameras off, and ATG Theatres ask audiences to remove them. Demand for the opposite is growing too: Eventbrite data cited by DJ Mag shows phone-free events up 567% since 2024.
The TA view
No door team can reliably spot every pair of smart glasses, and BASEMENT knows it. The ban works the way Berghain’s sticker always has, as a clear statement of what the room is for. As camera glasses become more common, expect the club no-photo policy to move from the phone to the face, and more venues to write glasses into their house rules.
Read more: what the Clubcommission study means for Berlin clubs, Berghain in the DJ Mag Top 100 Clubs 2026, and more techno club and New York coverage.
Sources: BASEMENT NY (Instagram), DJ Mag, PetaPixel, PetaPixel (Meta), Radar, Hypebot, PetaPixel (UK venues), The New York Times via Herald Review.
