Finger-snap applause began as a practical noise ordinance

Evidence

Only 110 patrons were allowed but Mitchell regularly crammed in more. Because sound traveled up the airshaft into the building’s residential floors, he instituted a practice by which, rather than applaud, appreciative patrons snapped their fingers—a new and further signifier of hipness! According to the poet Ed Sanders, the finger-snap applause was an arrangement worked out with police. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 46

Categorization

• CANDY: The origin of beatnik finger-snapping as a police-negotiated noise compromise is a light, shareable fact.
• XREF: Useful test case for the reader’s gentrification origin claim — spatial constraint (sound traveling into residential floors) shaping the culture’s signature gesture.