Nik Cohn with Ben Ratliff on 'Corner Boy' and Saturday Night Fever (Chatham)
Join ZE Books at the Crandell Theatre, where Nik Cohn and Ben Ratliff introduce a screening of Saturday Night Fever, the film made from Nik's 1976 New York magazine story. A book signing follows.
December 19, 7:00 PM ET • Chatham, NY: Crandell Theatre | 48 Main Street
In 1976, New York magazine ran Nik Cohn's "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," about a young man who lived for the dance floor at a Bay Ridge disco. Within eighteen months it was Saturday Night Fever, and disco went global. Twenty years later, Nik admitted he had made most of it up. He tells the whole story, along with six decades of writing about pop stars, boxers, hustlers, dreamers and nobodies, in Corner Boy: Loiterings New and Old, edited by Ben Ratliff.
Nik and Ben open the evening with a conversation about the book and the story behind the film, then hand over to John Travolta, the Bee Gees and Bay Ridge on the Crandell's big screen. Nik signs copies afterward, with books from The Chatham Bookstore across the street. Dwight Garner, in The New York Times Book Review, called Nik "a pioneering rock critic," and wrote that "his music writing was ardent, fond and knowing, and it had bite."
About the Author
Nik Cohn grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland; covered “Swinging London” in the 1960s; was a contributing editor at New York magazine in the ’70s, focusing on street cultures and pop life; lived and wrote in New Orleans, Paris, Shelter Island and, most recently, the Hudson Valley.
About the Editor
Ben Ratliff is the author of books including Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. A former music critic for The New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.
About the Venue
The Crandell Theatre has been showing films on Chatham’s Main Street since 1926 and is Columbia County’s oldest movie theater. Run today as a nonprofit, it screens new releases and classics through the year, and it is home to FilmColumbia, the festival that brings new cinema to Chatham every fall. crandelltheatre.org
“The best writer about pop music . . . an inspiration.” —Jarvis Cocker, BBC Radio 6 Music
The definitive, lavishly illustrated collection of music writing, memoir, and reportage from the redoubtable Nik Cohn.
Release: Oct 6, 2026
Hardcover ISBN: 9798988670148
392 pages
UK release: Nov 5, 2026 • UK Price: £25