It should come as no surprise that Dylan Hales and Ronnie Flynn’s newborn lounge is already the place to be. It’s the weekend before New York Fashion Week, during which the duo are expected to be equally packed with postshow gatherings, and Silver Lining Lounge, located inside the Moxy Hotel on the Lower East Side, is in full swing. The duo say hello to friends as they make their way through the space, before they go over to greet the night’s musicians (and put in a request for a cover of “Purple Rain,” to be played later).
Hales wears a hoodie from their first bar, The Flower Shop, which is covered by a cream shearling jacket Dennis Rodman gave him off his back following a night of shared cigar smoking at Little Ways (as one does). Rodman had been looking for a place to celebrate the wrap of his Uggs campaign shoot and The Flower Shop had opened its doors, which is how Hales and the NBA legend became acquainted. The Ugg coat was a bit too warm for the summer day Rodman had it on, but turns out it’s just the thing for a February chill.
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Flynn is more understated in an Aime Leon Dore Yankees hat and a plain T-shirt, but both can entertain one aplenty with stories of VIP guests who have become friends and celebrities who have become regulars. Though they’re obviously experts in their field, hanging out in Hales and Flynn’s orbit makes it easy to feel like you’re attending a party of a close friend.
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Hales and Flynn, Aussie expats who have been friends since high school in Sydney, are the force behind some of lower New York’s most in-demand nights out, including The Flower Shop, Little Ways and Loosies, and now Silver Lining Lounge, their most upscale venture to date.
Silver Lining Lounge is their second location in the Moxy LES, after they forged a partnership with Tao Group to do the nightlife spaces in the hotel. Loosies downstairs is a tried-and-true nightclub, while Silver Lining Lounge is sort of the grown-up older sister. It’s the latest in a trend of piano bars to crop up in the city, where most of the space is seated tables (there is some room at the bar, too) and a rotating set of musicians takes requests of covers the room wants to hear all night long.
Flynn landed in New York in 2005, after coming to the city on a trip with some skateboarding friends and deciding not to board his return flight home. A few nights of sleeping in McDonald’s turned into some couch surfing, which turned into him living in the city full time, becoming a student of New York’s nightlife. He began working in hospitality and promoting, with gigs at Acme, 1OAK and Butter. Hales relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2007, where he worked as the general manager of Ralph Lauren’s Rugby Café in Georgetown, before moving to New York and managing Ruby’s, the beloved Australian café. They reconnected in 2014 while working an event in Miami together and decided they might want to partner on their own venture.
First came The Flower Shop in 2017, followed by Little Ways on West Broadway in 2020 (right before the pandemic). Loosies opened last fall, and now Silver Lining.
The goal with each place is a word-of-mouth approach: they’ve never paid for celebs to come to their spots or asked them to post an Instagram, instead drawing their crowd back by offering what they hope is an authentic, no-frills, approachable experience. So if the desire for a martini and a couple piano ballads sounds like just the thing post-NYFW commitments, you know where to look.