Jun 16, 2022

Diana Mora is best known to the borough as half of the team behind Crown Heights hotspot Friends and Lovers, which is “dedicated to curating moments where musicians, DJs and life-lovers come together and celebrate as one.”

The opening of Friends and Lovers in November 2013 helped transform Crown Heights, hooking area hipsters back into their own locale and away from Friday night sojourns to then-trendier Williamsburg. With Mora refusing to settle for only weekends, Friends and Lovers set out to become Crown Heights’ first haunt with live entertainment every night of the week. It certainly helped that Mora is a professional communicator who has worked to devise solutions in cutting-edge categories like cannabis, having led digital marketing communications and social impact initiatives in her freelance work for brands like Aspen-based CBD company Toast.

As the pandemic took hold of Brooklyn’s nightlife scene, Mora translated her knack for creative problem-solving into community-based solutions. In March 2020, for instance, she founded NYC Nightlife United, an advocacy and action coalition created by and for the city’s nightlife community in response to the Covid crisis.

Rolling Stone and other outlets reported on the NYC Nightlife United Sessions Vol. 1, a series of digital concerts spearheaded by NYC Nightlife United and featuring local acts like Monday Blue, Scienze and Brass Queens — all airing live from Friends and Lovers to raise funds for shuttered music venues and other nightlife locations left to languish with little help from the city or state government.

Here in the new normal, Friends and Lovers is back up and running with weekly events ranging from comedy to music and a little magic.