No One 2
Delivered to Stack subscribers in Jun 2025

by Steve Watson in July 2025

Each issue of No One magazine sets off for a different destination and reports on the queer nightlife it finds there. For this second issue, editors Việt and Jeremy Raider-Hoàng travelled to Vietnam to report on the overlapping scenes and subcultures in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.

Join our magazine club

Names
Việt and Jeremy Raider-Hoàng

Job titles
For No One, we’re both editors-in-chief and creative directors. Outside of No One, we each work full-time; Việt as a strategy director and Jeremy as a design researcher.

What is No One?
No One is a cultural platform celebrating queer nightlife around the world, with a print magazine at its heart. Each year, the magazine focuses on a different city’s LGBTQIA+ scene, sharing locally written stories of individuals and collectives who are organizing spaces and movements for their communities to build identity and connection through electronic music. Inspired by the magazine and the places it connects, side projects like events, offshoot zines, short documentaries, and other creative experiments help those interested experience distant scenes beyond the print.

Whether a queer kid in the suburbs, an elder (re)finding their community, or an ally who appreciates and wants to learn more about queerness, No One exposes the beauty in each individual and inspires the courage to discover more of oneself and those around them. With each project, No One hopes to bring the global LGBTQIA+ community closer, sharing challenges, celebrating victories, and ultimately opening up this whole world to us: the dancing queers.

What makes it different from the rest?
Nightlife is vast, ever-shifting, and truly global. To guide our work, No One focuses on five editorial themes that bring depth to our nightlife:

Music, arts, and their intersection
Exploring how electronic music, creativity, and queer culture inspire each other; highlighting emerging genres and artists shaping local nightlife.

Self-expression and aesthetics
Spotlighting the wide range of courageous expressions through style, movements, and performances that challenge and reimagine social norms.

Venues, spaces, and ambiance
Entering venues, squats, and other places that facilitate queer gatherings in featured cities to learn from their experiences and challenges.

Physical and mental health
Discussing how nightlife can positively influence queer communities’ well-being, from affirming identities to sharing harm reduction strategies.

Nighttime politics and policies
Emphasizing the importance of involving queer communities when developing legislation to ensure a more equitable and safer nightlife for everyone.

Who makes No One?
With every issue, No One highlights local stories written, photographed, designed, and/or illustrated by people who live in the featured cities. Local consultants are also involved to ensure accurate representations and cultural integrity.

For issue two, our team involved:

Editorial Design: Duy Nguyễn
Proofreader: Tom Biddulph
Local Advisors: Nhung Đình, Dan Ni, and PH00000NG
Contributors: Mắt Bét, Iori Pinklady Mizrahi, Jonathan Poirier, Minh Anh Nguyễn, Trần Tín Nghĩa, Khoa Vo Dang, Thy Đào, Vũ Nguyễn Uyển My, Mưa, Kat Joplin, Hohish Hồ, Vũ Hoàng, Khánh Phúc Nguyễn, Bư Nguyễn, Hồng-Khang Phan, Kai Nguyễn, Xuân-Tùng Lê, Nguyên Khôi Vũ, Long Nguyễn, Nhung Đinh, Minh-Anh Nguyễn, and Gio Dionisio

Who reads it?
No One is read by a wide spectrum of people connected to nightlife, club culture, queerness, and/or culture at large, each engaging with the scene in their own way. Some are deeply immersed — DJs, promoters, club staff, and bookers — who live and breathe the music scene. They follow key figures, care about underground movements, and seek out stories that expand their understanding of queer nightlife and the evolving etiquette of going out. For them, No One is both a mirror and a guide.

Others are regulars on the dance floor but take a more casual approach. They have their go-to nights where they enjoy a social buzz. While they aren’t always looking for deeper insight, they may be curious to learn more about certain topics. No One draws them in with its ability to reveal unseen corners of the scene and introduce communities they’ve yet to meet. It’s also a symbolic artifact — something to hold onto, not just consume.

And then there are those who go out occasionally or not at all. They might not be familiar with the nuances of queer nightlife and may come to the magazine by chance — through a friend, before a trip, or on the way to a night out. For them, No One can be an entry point into a broader world, sparking reflection or challenging assumptions.

Why do you work in magazines?

Much of today’s nightlife is promoted online, in fast-moving spaces where one moment you see something, and the next it’s gone. There’s rarely time — or the right medium — to explore why a party, collective, or initiative came to be. From the beginning, No One was meant to take up physical space, demand attention, and invite deep engagement with every page. It aims to be an antidote to the fleeting nature of digital media and the ephemerality of nightlife itself.

Aside from the magazine, what else are you involved in?
Beyond the magazine, No One hosts cultural programmes with clubs, festivals, bookshops, bars, restaurants, and more — whether for the launch of an upcoming publication or to unpack relevant topics within sub-communities. So far we have hosted panel talks at club nights, screened films at bookshops, facilitated roundtable discussions at Indiecon (the publishing festival), and coordinated performances at balls, as well as drag/queer club nights.

To accompany this second issue, we’ve created two connected projects. The first is an original short documentary, “How’s Your Night Ho Chi Minh City & Hanoi?,” which premiered at our launch events in Amsterdam and New York City. It offers global audiences a glimpse into this issue through the voices and scenes of its story contributors — setting the stage for the deeper narratives found in the magazine’s pages.

The second project is still to come — an exploration of the sound of Vietnam, which we hope will become a recurring feature in future issues. We’ll be sharing more on this soon. In the meantime, if you’re curious, we recommend signing up for our mailing list and following us on Instagram.

What would you change about No One if you could?
We wish we had the resources to make No One a bilingual magazine, featuring both English and the native language of each place we cover (while still keeping it affordable for readers).

Where do you see No One in five years?
In five years, we hope to have reached five continents with five issues of No One. By then, our dream is to create a documentary about global queer nightlife. If any queer producers or directors are interested in collaborating, please get in touch.