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I was born in Canada to British parents. I’m one of the few people I know who doesn’t have a dysfunctional family.
They traveled around for work a lot and I got dragged around the planet. I lived in New Zealand. I went to England, got sick of it, and as soon as I left university I went traveling. I was in Kenya. Then I worked for a gold-mining company, so I was in Indonesia for a while.
After that, I came to Hong Kong. I’ve been here for 15 years now.
I moved here for a job. I used to be a civil engineer.
I went into nightlife because of boredom.
I met my wife here. She was organizing parties at the time and I helped her out with that. I came to the end of one job contract, and thought: “I’m having fun and making money, so why not keep going with this instead?”
Yumla’s 10th anniversary was fun. That was one of the longest weekends I’ve had in a long time. A lot of old faces showed up.
Yumla lives on despite the fact that things changed a few years ago. People still remember it. The spirit is still very much Yumla.
I would never change the name of Midnight & Co. to Yumla. You can look back and appreciate what’s happened but you move forwards too. Midnight is an opportunity to try new things, learn from mistakes and build something from there.
Believe me, there is no plan. I have no idea what I’m doing at the best of times.
I like keeping myself busy. I don’t care what it is. I need something to do.
I go to bed at 7am and wake up at around 11am. I work until about 4pm and have breakfast. I’ve been doing that for 10 years. I’m a nightlife person.
Every time I go on holiday, it pisses me off. I just want to get back to work again.
I DJ because I love music. Nobody else plays it—that’s why I play it. That’s literally it.
We have a great crew of kids at Midnight & Co. and I let them take care of it. I oversee it to make sure they don’t burn the place down or bankrupt me, but it’s nice to be able to hand it off in part.
Do I turn up as a surprise? Somebody has to get the red carpet ready.
People tend to jump on business opportunities here. Hong Kong is a great city for that. A few bits of paper, tick some boxes, submit it, and it’s done. As long as you know the process ahead of time, nothing is really that difficult.
There’s always been this undercurrent in Hong Kong of people wanting to do stuff. There just hasn’t been a framework for them to grow and evolve.
Underground music can’t survive commercially in Hong Kong, so you kind of have to do the warehouse thing. There’s just no other way.
The choice is: you either do it illegally, or nothing happens at all.
What land there is, the government controls. Maybe if the government relaxes a little bit over the zoning, if it allows music venues and art galleries to legally move into industrial space—that would be a help.
Everybody is aware of the shortcomings of Hong Kong. It’s when those things start to get too much that you want to leave. You want to have some space and not be looking into your neighbors’ windows every night. But everything else is so exciting here. You can’t have both.
The thought of leaving Hong Kong crosses my mind on a regular basis. But it’s a fast-moving city, so if you want to stay busy you might as well stay where all the activity is.
We spent all this time and energy building a business, just to have one outlet running seems like a waste.
I don’t want it to turn into a group. The quality and passion drop off. When people start making cookie cutter copies of one outlet, they’ve lost their soul.
If I get a bad review it does upset me for a few days.
I’m a creative person. I’m a sensitive guy—I’m not some asshole business guy. I’m not thundering around destroying people.
You have to listen to criticisms just to keep yourself in check. But you can’t really put too much effort into trying to fix everything, because that’s impossible.
I’ve probably made more enemies than I know about.
I hate social gatherings. I get invitations and I’m like, “Seriously? You want me to stand in a room with 300 people I don’t know?”
The world is overpopulated. They don’t need me adding to it. The government should reward people for not having children.
My greatest success? I’m still alive, and I haven’t killed anyone.
I don’t believe in God. I haven’t met him. I need proof. The Bible is pretty much just
	word of mouth.
If you have an idea in your head of how something should be done, that’s the right way of doing it. If you try to do it any other way, you’re not going to be happy with the result.
My advice is: don’t take advice from me.
I’m 37 now. We opened Yumla when I was 26. These years have gone by so fast—and I have so many plans for the future.


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Dan Findlay

Magazines

Dan Findlay more or less invented Hong Kong’s electronic music scene when he founded the legendary Yumla (now Midnight & Co.) in 2003. He’s also a DJ, the man behind cocktail crafters The Blck Brd and now the recently opened bar and restaurant The Black Star. He tells Andrea Lo about his roots, why he’s still celebrating Yumla’s anniversary, and why he just has to DJ.
