Sam Smith & Alicia Keys Played Julius For Pride

On a normal night, the West Village dive Julius is a relatively chill place to have a few beers; but when Sam Smith hosts a Pride party there, the place becomes electric. On June 14, the bar was shoulder-to-shoulder with guests ordering vodka sodas and a selection of cocktails from Super Gay. A server inched through the crowd with a tray of burgers and onion rings. Noticeably, there was an empty stage set up with just a microphone and a piano — it didn’t take long for attendees to put two and two together and hope for a performance.

But the evening wasn’t billed as a Sam Smith “concert.” In fact, the person who seemed to be enjoying Sam Smith’s party the most was Sam Smith, who towered well above the crowd in a cutoff Julius T-shirt and kilt. For most of the night, the stage remained empty while Smith and some friends hung out in the rear of the space dancing to a DJ set from Lady Bunny. Kim Petras was also spotted snapping photos with friends, while Dylan Mulvaney breezed through the crowd and made her way to Smith’s group. Photographer and downtown fixture Hunter Abrams came in his own glittering Julius shirt.

“Julius is the best bar in New York, it’s a national treasure,” Abrams tells NYLON. “Anytime something happens here, I will be here. I had my birthday here, we celebrated my friends getting engaged here. It’s just the best bar.”

Around 11 p.m. Lady Bunny grabbed a microphone to try and clear people from the stage, signaling that Smith was about to come on. The crowd didn’t dissolve at all, but excitement raced through the room. Just after 11 p.m., Smith took the stage as Lady Bunny’s voice sounded out from the DJ booth explaining that Smith would have another friend play piano for him: Alicia Keys. Keys (fittingly) is an excellent pianist, and together, the two performed a duet of “I’m Not the Only One.” At the final chorus, the crowd broke into a rhythmic clap and sang along. Long after the pair absconded back behind the curtain, all anyone could talk about was their performance.

“Sam Smith and Alicia Keys are icons,” artist Wes Aderhold says. “The fact that they showed up for the gay community here is absolutely amazing.”