neighborhood: bed-stuy | space type: communal living | active: 2009–2015 | links: n/a

“We’re trying to make this a better city, a more livable city, together,” says Rebekah S., one of a dozen anarchist-focused denizens of MAs House, a close-knit community that supported a range of radical ideals like mutual aid, anti-authoritarianism, environmental and social justice, freeganism, and gender and sexual parity. Residents were very involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Mayday actions, and the People’s Climate March. Environmental-justice and anticapitalism activists working on projects like Bushwick City Farm, Time’s Up, the 123 Community Center, and the Brooklyn Free Store have lived there. Residents have distributed leftist magazines on cargo bikes, conducted anarchist study groups and prisoner letter-writing campaigns, and provided jail support for arrested protestors. They also hosted art shows, film screenings, and concerts, often to support progressive causes.

pix by Kit Crenshaw

“You can feed a lot more people with a lot less money, time, and energy if you make one big pot of food together, rather than a bunch of individual meals,” says Laurel L., who started the space. “The whole really is stronger than the sum of its parts, and it’s very inspiring to be one of those parts.”

Unfortunately, due to increasingly aggressive tactics by the landlord, the MAs denizens were evicted in early 2015, scattering to several other activist, anarchist, and communally focused living spaces across Brooklyn—although they are still fighting for the right to reclaim their home.

Want to learn more about MAs House, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

Update, January 2014:

No one expected 285 Kent to last forever, and news of its closing was just released. It’s not worth making any grand claims about the death of DIY or the condo-ification of Williamsburg; all those things have been said, and countered, and re-said, and re-countered. Whatever—the scene moves on, new venues will spring up, and the hyper-rich will galavant along the waterfront and probably not even know what went on there before they came.

285 Kent closing is kind of a big deal, though, even if only as a high-profile sign of the times. The space has been memorialized in some terrific oral histories over the last few weeks, from Animal New York to Village Voice to Fader, not to mention the one on Noisey made up of a pastiche of Yelp comments. They’re all worth a read if you want to get a little nostalgic.

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Original post, November 2013:

One of the hubs of North Brooklyn’s DIY music scene, 285 Kent is an all-ages venue for cutting-edge music across genres. On the Williamsburg waterfront, across the street from the about-to-be-demolished Domino Sugar Factory, 285 Kent neighbors several other underground stalwarts like Glasslands, Death By Audio, Ran Tea House, and Cameo Gallery.

Trash Talk, photo by Day After Day

The space has seen several incarnations; in the mid-2000s it was Paris/London/West Nile, focusing on progressive electronic music, and before that it was Bohemian Grove (not the Bohemian Grove in Bushwick), hosting progressive raves. PLWN was started by the Shinkoyo Collective, an ever-expanding group of artists and musicians who were also behind the original Silent Barn and many more spaces across the country. Along with other Brooklyn DIY promoters, the space has been run at various times by Todd P., Babycastles, and John “Rambo.” These days 285 Kent’s booking and curation is handled by Ric Leichtung, who is also cofounder of Ad Hoc, a quarterly zine and network of taste-making music blogs.

Candy From Strangers, photo by Nicky Digital

This is the obvious point at which to mention the awful hyper-gentrification of Williamsburg, and the fact that no matter how beloved 285 Kent and other similar DIY institutions are, it’s hard not to be cynical about the likelihood that they will last much longer where they are. I guess the least pessimistic thing to say is this: go see shows at 285 Kent, as often as you can; get exposed to excellent, cutting-edge music and support the last gasp of underground Williamsburg before all that’s left is horribly shiny luxury glass condos and preposterously upscale bars for bankers.

But first check out my Q&A with Ric & Kait, who oversees daily operations.

Friends, photo by Richard Gin

brooklyn spaces: Is it a tremendous amount of work to run a space like this?
Ric: Yes, definitely. When I first started working here I was also writing for Pitchfork and Altered Zones, and it really snowballed. When you start something it’s difficult, and usually the more you work at it the easier things get. But 285 just keep getting higher and higher profile bands more and more often, and I couldn’t do it all myself. I needed a partner, and I was really lucky Kait came along.
Kait: He was starting his days at 9am writing, and then running a show until 4am. For months and months.
Ric: Yeah, but now it’s amazing. Kait’s the backbone.

Rival Mob, photo by Lukas Hodge

brooklyn spaces: If you had to be a bit reductive, what would you say is the musical personality of 285 Kent?
Ric: We basically do whatever we think is culturally relevant right now. We do a lot of buzz-y, hype-y shows, but we also do a lot of hardcore shows and progressive dance and experimental music nights.
Kait: There’s such a crazy variety. I can show up on Tuesday and work a rap show, Wednesday a local indie band, Thursday a rave, Friday a hardcore show. And it’s always really cutting-edge, underground stuff.
Ric: The goal is to create a space where there’s a lot of exchanging of ideas and cross-pollination. Lately a lot of punk and hardcore kids have been coming to the dance parties, which you really don’t see anywhere else.
brooklyn spaces: Do they dance?
Kait: Yeah! They just totally love music.
Ric: But then we also recently had a string of a really great hardcore shows. We hosted this festival our friend Adam Weitz put together, New York’s Alright, and it was very comprehensive, everything that is next level in that community.

Sharpless, photo from Village Voice

brooklyn spaces: Didn’t you guys do a big show here for CMJ?
Ric: Yeah we hosted the Pitchfork showcase, which was really special. But it was unofficial; we didn’t have any CMJ shows here this year because we’ve chosen not to participate in the festival.
brooklyn spaces: Is that something you want to talk about?
Kait: I think it’s something we should explain. My personal point of view—not affiliated with Ad Hoc or 285—is that buying a badge and not being guaranteed entry to a show? That kind of sucks. I think if you really want to see a band, you should pay the cover and support the artist. We don’t make a profit from the door. We cover our PA and staff, and the rest goes to the band.
Ric: In my opinion, the real issue with CMJ and other citywide festivals is that money only goes to the top-tier artists. Bands that should be getting $500 to $1,000 a show, they’ll be low-balled into playing for really cheap, in exchange for publicity or the opportunity to play with a really big band. The best things that were going on during CMJ this year were our Pitchfork showcase, the Arcade Fire warehouse show, and the Fader Fort, and none of that was official CMJ. It’s bullshit. They don’t pull their weight, that’s why we choose not to work with them.

What Cheer? Brigade, photo by Tod Seelie

brooklyn spaces: Okay, tell me about a particularly fun or crazy show you’ve had here.
Kait: One of my favorite nights was the Mutual Dreaming Future Times party. The promoter Aurora brought in this huge army-surplus parachute, and we hung it up inside, suspended by the pipes in the ceiling. It took hours to set up, but the place looked really, really cool. Then it turned out that there was a blizzard that night, but we still opened up because why not? And people came and were kind of stuck here, so we just partied all night, everybody in this giant parachute, in our own little bubble. It was amazing.
Ric: One of my favorites was Dreams 3.0. It was just a super forward-thinking lineup, with Pictureplane, Grimes, and Arca, who’s now producing for Kanye West. We’d done a show with this guy Arab Music a few months before, and he had such a good time that he just came back for no fucking reason to this already bonkers party, and he brought A$AP Rocky with him too. It was insane. The show went all night, Grimes didn’t go on until 3am. That’s probably the show we’ll be remembered for; it was just everything that was really really sick at that moment, in 2011, all at once. But we still do really cool stuff now, in 2013!

Tearist, photo by Chris Becker

brooklyn spaces: In some ways you bear a real responsibility, as one of the people driving this scene; you have to not know just what music is important now, but what will be important tomorrow and next month. Is that a lot of pressure? Or is it just really exciting?
Ric: I think it’s really exciting.
Kait: It’s scary sometimes, too. Sometimes I wonder, “Am I totally off on this?” But then: nope. We just do what we think is cool.
Ric: There’s this guy DJ Rashad who we really love, we started booking him a couple of years ago and no one would ever really come to the shows. And then all of a sudden people start listening to his album, and suddenly he’s the #1 electronic album from Spin, he gets a top-10 on New York Times last year, all this sudden acknowledgment. That felt really good. Or one thing I really love about this space is that I feel like we’re bringing dance and electronic music to the DIY punk-rock demographic. I wasn’t really interested in that kind of music before, but then I had some kind of epiphany and I realized this stuff is amazing and progressive in so many ways. I would say it’s kind of a weird secret agenda of ours to make dance music cool again.

Ice Age, photo from Stereogum

brooklyn spaces: I think when a booker is at the forefront of some genres, there is often an assumption that you’ll know what’s at the forefront of all the genres.
Ric: That’s what we hope.
Kait: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. On the weekends especially, we get people who have no idea what to expect, they just walk up and check out the show. We get people dressed up like they’re going clubbing wander into a noise show. And they’ll stay!

Pictureplane, picture by Andrew St. Clair

brooklyn spaces: I wonder how much longer that juxtaposition will be possible, with the way Williamsburg is going. I know it’s a bit played-out to talk about the death of this neighborhood, but being right here, with the Domino Sugar Factory about to get torn down across the street, how do you guys feel about it all?
Kait: I think it’s kind of cool, actually. I’ve had many conversations with Todd about this, because he did lay the groundwork for the DIY music scene in this area in the last decade. He’ll get really philosophical about it, very nihilistic. But I feel like all of this is bringing back that fuck-all attitude, which makes it really easy for us to just do what we want, you know? We have no idea what’s going to happen in two months, so let’s just make this place as cool and as fun as we can for as long as we can. It’s empowering. We’re laughing in the face of progress or whatever.
Ric: It’s true. It does sort of feel like there’s a death clock, but it’s okay.
Kait: Yeah, it’s like, fuck it. Fuck your death clock. Because it’s not like we’re just going to stop, even if we do lose this space. I can’t imagine Ric not booking shows, and I can’t imagine not working in a space like this. I’m here all the time and it’s just where I want to be. Sometimes it smells bad, sometimes shit breaks, but the staff is amazing, everybody works really hard to keep it all together.
Ric: It’s like a little family—not to sound too trite. And we’re planning other things all the time. We’re putting on a show in a church in LA with Julianna Barwick and Mark McGuire from Emeralds. And there’s going to be some pretty crazy stuff during New Year’s Eve—stay tuned for that.
Kait: Oh, I don’t even know about that. Is it DJ Rashad?
Ric: Maybe. It’ll be good.

285 Kent interior, picture by Nick Kuszyk who did the murals

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Like this? Read about more DIY music spaces: Fort Useless, Death By Audio, Shea Stadium, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Bushwick Music Studio, Newsonic

For most of its run, Dead Herring—an apartment that sometimes doubled as a DIY music and occasional theatre space was fairly averse to any sort of press. That’s just part of the fun of running an underground apartment venue—some measure of paranoia is often called for. But Dead Herring closed Feb 1st, 2013, right after an amazing commemorative closing show, featuring the Immaculates (a band that was formed at a Dead Herring party), Moonmen on the Moon, Man (who broke up and then reunited just for this show), Necking!! (one of the Dead Herring creators’ band), and special secret guests.

Cuddle Machines, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Read my interview with housemates Liz, Nicki, Jeff, and Andrew, which took place on the eve of the end of Dead Herring, below. For more pix from Nicki, there’s a terrific six-year DH photo retrospective at Impose Magazine. And be sure to check out their new space in North Williamsburg, Cloud City!

show posters, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a quick history of how this all got started.
Jeff: Liz and I went to college together in California, and we both lived in this co-op called Cloyne Court Hotel in Berkeley that used to have shows in the kitchen, in the basement, wherever. The first time I went there Nerf Herder was playing, and I was like, “Whoa, this place is awesome! I’m moving in here next year!”
Nicki: My band played there once, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. There were kegs in the quad, there was a room no one could go into, there was the most disgusting bathroom I’d ever seen in my life, it was covered in graffiti, and just everyone going crazy and hanging off pipes. It was so cool.
Jeff: And then years later I wound up living across the hall from Liz and Nick in the McKibben Lofts.
Liz: Nick and I are the ones who started Dead Herring. We had a couple of shows at McKibben, and when we heard about this space, we thought it would be great place to continue to do that. Nicki moved in six months later, and Jeff moved in in 2008, and Andrew moved in two years ago, in 2010.

Bare Wires, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What was the first show?
Nicki: It was Maneguar, Pterodactyl, Golden Error, Marvel & Knievel, and Nonhorse.

brooklyn spaces: Do you all book shows?
Liz: I don’t. Nicki books all the music now, Jeff does the variety shows, and Andrew has brought some plays in.
brooklyn spaces: Nicki, is there a succinct way to characterize what kind of music you book here?
Nicki: No, not really. We used to have a lot more experimental noise shows when Nick lived here, because he was into experimental noise music and he booked that. I’m more into punk and rock and indie pop. I don’t know, it just depends on what comes together. If there’s a band coming through that we know, we’ll book around them. Or if we see a band we really like we’ll tell them to come play here. It used to be easier for bands to find us when we used the MySpace page, but that just became too much, we were getting like fifteen emails a day. None of us is a full-time booker, you know? When I have ten minutes I’ll IM people, like, “Hey, you want to play a show?”

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me either the coolest or weirdest thing about living in a place where there are shows.
Nicki: A funny thing is that people don’t realize that we live here. People come here for shows and then they’ll come over for a potluck and be like, “Oh, wow, it looks so different. I didn’t know you had a couch.”
brooklyn spaces: I think that’s part of the charm of these spaces, that you know while you’re watching this band you’re sitting on the roof of someone’s closet or washing your hands in their kitchen sink.
Jeff: Did you read the article about the new Silent Barn in the Village Voice? They were saying how most DIY spaces are illegal, like no one can talk about it, which has kind of been our thing. But now the Silent Barn is like “No, this is completely legal.” They’re going to get a liquor license and whatever. One of our old roommates, Joe, who’s part of Showpaper, he lives there now.
Andrew: I had a lot of conversations with Joe when he lived here about this whole thing, about how all these spaces are somewhere along a continuum, like how much are they a house, and how much are they a venue? Silent Barn has always been basically a venue, even though people live there. We’re really a house that has shows once in a while.

Golden Error, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Nicki: We have to tell people all the time that they can’t have their birthday party here, or their mud-wrestling party. We’ve gotten a lot of weird requests over the years. But overall it’s fantastic, this house pretty much made my life in New York. I met all these people, I found something to do and a community to be in. I had no idea there was a music scene that was this small and this amazing here. You have these moments where you realize this is happening in your life and you created it and you’re a part of it. It makes me so happy. It’s so great when you have a whole bunch of bands come in at the beginning of the night, you’ve never met any of them before, and at the end of the night they’re all giving you giant hugs and saying this was the best show they’ve ever played. It’s so amazing that we had the opportunity to do this.
Jeff: People really appreciate us just trying to make an awesome, fun night, and when everybody’s stoked on it, it’s a good feeling. It’s great when really talented, amazing people have a great time performing here.
Andrew: We just had a theatre show that did a three-night run, and It was like we were living in this little theatre that everyone was a part of. I don’t know if you could achieve that in any other setting.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you think that being in Williamsburg has affected the space?
Nicki: I really like that Death By Audio is so close, and 285 Kent, and Glasslands. It’s nice that there are still a few really good spaces around here. And I feel like living off the L and the J is convenient, a lot of people can come out to shows here. I don’t always want to go all the way to Bushwick, but people seem happy to come all the way out here, which is awesome. Jeff’s shows get put up on the Nonsense NYC list sometimes, and people come here from wherever because they’re like “Oh, I know where that is, I can get there.”
Andrew: For a performing arts venue it really makes a difference if it’s in a part of town that people want to go to.

Teenage Nightwar, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: And it’s nice to see that there are still places like this in Williamsburg. A lot of people think that all the creativity is gone from this neighborhood, but that’s not true. It’s just a little harder to find. Anyway, tell me about some of your favorite shows.
Nicki: My favorite “I can’t believe I actually pulled this together” show was when Forgetters played here, Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker’s band. So many people I know have loved his music since we were like sixteen years old, and he played in my living room! And we had this band called Leg Sweeper come, they played with our friends’ band Sleepies, and they were so excited about playing here, and we were so excited about having them play, and after the show we all hung out until 5 in the morning, and everybody slept over, and we made waffles in the morning, and it was magical. Or another one, after The Men played, we had a limbo contest with the guys in the band, which was so ridiculous and fun. I think the craziest show we ever had here was Calvin Johnson and Chain and the Gang. When I introduced Chain and the Gang, everyone just freaked the fuck out.
Liz: That show was my teenage dream come true. I was so thrilled, I couldn’t believe he was in our house. He got here early, and we were trying to set up, and our old cat was sitting on the bar, and he sang a song to the cat! It killed me. My other favorite moment was when Social Studies, our friends’ band from San Francisco, played last year. Right before they started to play my favorite song, someone cut in and said, “We just found out the Giants are going to the World Series.” The whole crowd was full of people from California, and everyone was so so so excited.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Andrew: I’m from Minneapolis, so when our friends’ theatre group came from Minneapolis to do their play, it was really exciting for me to get to share this space with them. They used to live in a space like this in Minneapolis, and one of them had a space like this in Baltimore before that where my theatre troupe performed, so being able to return the favor was really gratifying.
Jeff: I like all the variety shows, I guess. Oh and Reggie Watts, that was awesome. And Corn Mo.
Nicki: And the ventriloquist! And the magician who sawed a woman in half! And the guy from Cirque de Soliel who took all his clothes off and climbed all over the entire audience! And the lady who juggled with her feet! I know it sounds like we’re making this stuff up, but we’re not.
Jeff: Yeah, we’ve had some crazy stuff.

Hunters, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What advice do would you give to other people who want to do something like this?
Nicki: Be nice. That’s something we try really hard to do. Now we’re friends with all the bands and performers and other DIY spaces in the city. That’s why we’re not super nervous about going into the new space. We feel like we’re not going to be alone, because all these other people are going to support us. All the DIY spaces are kind of in it together.
Jeff: Yeah, it sounds cheesy but we really feel like we’re part of a community. And we’re good at welcoming people in and having a positive vibe about everything.
Nicki: That makes it a lot more fun for everyone. We want to have fun too!

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Like this? Read about more apartment performance spaces: Silent Barn, The Muse, Cave of Archaic Remnants, The Schoolhouse, Greenroom Brooklyn, Newsonic, Jerkhaus

Wondering Around Wandering is a huge, vibrant pop-up art gallery in a former iron-working factory in Crown Heights, run by artist and designer Mike Perry. Inspired by the publication of his monograph (also called Wondering Around Wandering), the gallery was funded through Kickstarter as a way to celebrate the book’s publication while also creating a fun, free space for people to appreciate art and make things together.

All photos by Alix Piorun

The gallery is open during the days—the permanent collection is Mike’s, and there have been several rotating group shows—and there are a slew of free events, like dance performances, drink-and-draws, and zine-making workshops. Coming up is an art salon with Moleskine, a collaging workshop, an animated-film screening, and more. But hurry! The gallery will only be around until November 20.

Braving wind & rain, Jillian Steinhauer of Hyperallergic and I went to hang out with Mike and talk about this crazy project on the afternoon Hurricane Sandy was supposed to hit. (We even made it home in time for last-minute grocery shopping!)

brooklyn spaces: What made you want to do this?
mike: Well when the book came out, it was really exciting and big, and I wanted to do something that was even bigger to celebrate it. I figured I should have a show, but then I started thinking about what expectations I would have for the space: I’d want it to be communal, I’d want it to be open, I’d want it to be free. A friend of a friend works at Kickstarter; her whole job is to find artists who don’t use Kickstarter but should.

brooklyn spaces: What an amazing job.
mike: Right? Just convincing artists that they should make money.
hyperallergic: Artists need that.
mike: Big time. And doing the project that way was brilliant, it really focused my ideas in a way that made this much easier to pull off, because it wasn’t somebody being like, “Here’s some money, figure it out!” I had a plan, there were goals and steps, I knew how to put it all together. When the Kickstarter ended, I walked over here and paid the landlord and started this journey.

hyperallergic: What was the space like when you got here?
mike: It was a total shitshow. I think they’d just been storing and dumping junk in here for like thirty years. So I hired a bunch of people, my brother-in-law came out, friends in the neighborhood, it was very communal. My friend J. is the architect, he makes everything happen. Kevin, who owns a candy store up the street, he’s like the neighborhood electrician, he came and wired everything. My friend Masha, I went to her and said, “I need a producer, someone who can line things up and cross them off the list.” Fiona, who works in the gallery now, first came to interview me for a personal project, and it was one of those days that was just so crazy, I was covered in dirt and I’d had so much coffee, and after the interview she was like, “You need help. Can I come help you?” We have so, so many people, it’s just a massively beautiful, heartwarming experience. We had this huge opening, I think we had 700 people in here. And the next day we came back and regrouped and said, “That was insane. This is just the beginning.”

brooklyn spaces: Does this make you want to find ways to do this all the time, or to never do something like this again?
mike: You know, I’m still not sure. It’s such a major commitment, but it’s so incredibly gratifying. Yesterday we had about a hundred kids in here for pumpkin-painting, and it’s like, this is why you have a space, this is what you should do! But at the same time, it’s really hard for me to go to my studio and do work. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t an artist because I can’t do both, I can’t be the advocate and the creator at the same time.

brooklyn spaces: The only other thing I can think of that’s like this is the Brucennial. Did you take a cue from other big collaborative art shows like that?
mike: Well there really aren’t a lot of galleries or institutions like this. Giant Robot was a great resource but that closed down. Some friends of mine run a terrific space in Greenpoint called Beginnings, but that just opened. There aren’t even that many zine stores anymore, other than Printed Matter. There used to be so many of them and they’ve all gone away because the audience doesn’t invest in them. Making art is really satisfying, and people love art and believe in it, but they don’t do enough to support it. Last year, every present I bought for anybody was art. Because then you serve two people: the person who gets the piece and the person who made it. If creative people don’t support each other, who’s going to support us?

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel that being in Crown Heights has an effect on the space?
mike: That was the exciting part about realizing that this was what I wanted to do: finding something that’s missing in the neighborhood and trying to provide it. I meet new people here every day. The neighborhood becomes more interconnected and more exciting every second. It’s going to be really sad when the project is done.

hyperallergic: Do you know what’s going to happen to the space when you’re gone?
mike: Me and some friends may actually try to keep it, but unfortunately this is not a self-sustaining business model. The space is perfect for right now, but there’s no heat, and we basically ran the electricity from a line off the building next door. In order to turn it into something that’s more than a three-month thing, we’d have to invest some serious cash, get the landlord to agree to different terms, all those things. Which, if it happens, awesome. If not, then you know what? It’s been a great time, and we’ll do something else somewhere else some other time.
hyperallergic: That’s sort of the beauty and the sadness of pop-up spaces.

brooklyn spaces: Anything else you wanted to talk about?
mike: No, I don’t think so. I almost teared up a few times during the interview, so I think it was good.

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Like this? Read about more art galleries: Invisible Dog, Monster Island, See.Me, Ugly Art Room, #Occupy Art Show, Gowanus Ballroom, Micro Museum, Concrete Utopia, Central Booking, 950 Hart

Photo from Monthly Brand

The Clockworks Puppet Theatre is in trouble. If they don’t receive a miracle in the form of a cash influx very very soon, the theatre will have to close its doors. It’s the same sad story, and one of the reasons I started this site: rents are rising, landlords are greedy, and the first casualties are always the artists—the very people who made the neighborhood an exciting place to be, and the reason for the soaring housing costs. Clockworks is an amazing, incredibly unique space that offers a home for experimental performance in a city going increasingly monocultural, and it would be such a shame to see them go.

photo by me

There’s one final performance of Das Wonderkammer Puppet Kabarett—Save the Clockworks Edition tonight (9/29), which I very strongly encourage you all to see, as it may be your last chance. If you have the means to donate to the cause, get in touch with Jonny Clockworks to help save an incredible piece of Brooklyn creativity from extinction. If they can keep their doors open for the next couple of months, Jonny promises a whole slew of amazing offerings, including a month of Halloween celebrations, more kids’ workshops, plenty of cabarets, and on and on. Help if you can!

Photo from Jonny Clockworks' Picassa

A bit more about the space:

The Cosmic Bicycle Theatre was started in Boston in 1989 by Jonny Clockworks, a puppeteer, director, and experimental musician. In 1995 he moved into a space in the East Village, on East 12th St., right across from Old Devil Moon. They were the only ones on the block, and Jonny says they formed a kind alliance, with the restaurant feeding him some nights when he was less than flush. In 1999 Jonny was forced out due to skyrocketing rents, and after several years of a nomadic existence, he moved the whole shebang to Red Hook in 2011, opening both the Cosmic Bicycle Theatre and the Clockworks Experimental Puppetry Studio.

Jonny Clockworks, photo by Hannah Egan for Brooklyn Daily

The new space was conceived as a home for experimental puppet shows and performances at night, and during the day a workshop space for children’s activities. The theatre has incredible events, such as the recurring Das Wonderkammer Puppet Kabarett, Kidz Vaudeville matinees, Junior Puppet Master workshops, and Halloween Hell Kabarett, as well as single events like Netherworld and a collaboration with Norah Jones set to her album Little Broken Hearts.

Photo from Jonny Clockworks' Picassa

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Like this? Read about more theatres: Bushwick Starr, Chez Bushwick, South Oxford Space, UnionDocs, Spectacle Theatre

Vaudeville Park is a plucky arts venue with wildly diverse programming. It sits right on the borderline (at least, the current one) between Williamsburg and Bushwick. Run by experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Colletti, Vaudeville Park has shows nearly ever night, including all kinds of music (from synth to neo-chamber to ladies of experimental music), literature, film (from Noir Night to avant garde), dance and performance art, gallery shows, comedy, discussions, workshops (from yoga to circuit bending), and more. The space has been active for almost four years, and is now starting to get a lot of attention from the media, including regular mentions from the likes of Time Out New York, Brookly Vegan, Artcat, and Rhizome. Ian is one insanely busy guy who is also incredibly passionate and enthusiastic about the work he does. Check out my interview with him, and then please, go see something amazing at Vaudeville Park!

Ian Colletti, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: How did you get started with all this?
Ian: I’m from New York, born and raised, and I’ve been an artist and a musician pretty much my whole life. It felt like the early 2000s were a dark time for counterculture in Williamsburg. I mean, there was a lot of cool stuff going on for artists, but that was when groups like the Strokes and Interpol and Ambulance LTD, and really high-fashionisa galleries were huge. It was an appropriation of mainstream, cookie-cutter ideals into counterculture. It was like everyone who was in a band really just wanted to be a model in a Levi’s ad. Now artists have a chance to really represent themselves through their own savvy with the internet, but at that point there were just a few labels and magazines that promoted musicians. I was living with this guy from Fader magazine, and he was like, “Man, if you want to start your own weird art collective, you have to kiss these people’s asses.” I was like, No way. I just didn’t want to be part of this phony, arrogant, silver-spoon kind of thing. But I was really worried about the culture here, so in 2007 I stopped playing shows and performing, saved up as much money as I could, and turned my recording studio into an arts venue. The first show we had was Dreamtigers, by Brian Zegeer, who’s one of my best friends. He just headlined the Queens Museum “International 2012,” along with two of my other good friends, Ben Lee and Rachel Mason, both of whom have been really involved here. There’s an extreme synergy here that’s really important.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Was it a nonprofit from the start?
Ian: Well, it was always nonprofit in its mission. We’re sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts now; they picked Showpaper two years ago and they picked us last year. NYFA is good people, but we need our own 501(c)3, which we just went for, and we need to get larger grants.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How do you pick your programming? Are you the only one who directs it?
Ian: Yes. Basically the mission of Vaudeville Park is to represent underrepresented artists of high craft. My goal is to pair the best minds and artistry and craft in music to the best visual and performance art. I really feel that people’s eyes have gotten bigger from constantly looking at things, but their ears have gotten much smaller. People don’t listen to records, they don’t really put effort into making records, and if they do it’s just ear candy, it’s less performance-based, there’s less heart and soul, it’s not as evolved. So I wanted to have a venue for counterculture music, like dark wave, coldwave, post-whatever, and new chamber and post-classical music. I felt that if I put the music in a gallery context, it would up the ante, like, “This music better be pretty damn good because these visual artists are so good.”

art by Alexander Barton, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: So all the shows are music plus visual art plus something else?
Ian: Well, no. We have several different programs, and sometimes we combine them. There’s a gallery art program, with one show a month, either a group show or a few specific artists. Then there’s an archival film program, which includes one of our most famous shows, Noir Night. We’ve also had cartoon carnival stuff, we’ve had optics, we’re now working with the curators at Millenium Theatre and Anthology Film Archives, and we’re starting to have closer ties with the Kitchen. Then we have a TV program on Manhattan Neighborhood Network with my good friend Scott Kiernan, who does ESP TV. Then we have a performance art program. There are only four galleries and art spaces in New York City that host performance art. We’ve done a bunch of performances in the past, recently Esther Neff and The Penelopes and Performancy Forum. And finally we have the music program. We do workshops too, we’ve hosted a lot of extremely successful workshops, the biggest one that everyone constantly asks for is the electronics in music workshop for circuit bending. But we just can’t do it again without funding.

circuit-bending workshop, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What about your own art? What kind of music do you play?
Ian: I do a lot of stuff, I’m a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer. I was the first featured soloist in the Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in November, and I made all these crazy handmade instruments and soundscape synthesizer stuff. I’ve done a lot of film scores, dance scores, music for fashion. I mostly do new works for chamber. The music that I’m doing now, the best way to put it is the orchestral coldwave height of pop that was never made. It’s like post-romantic coldwave blitz with eighteenth- to nineteenth-century post-classical music, and also a lot of Latin jazz and obscurities.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite shows here.
Ian: One of my favorites was a Crystalline Flux installation, because one of the things I want to push for Vaudeville Park is doing something totally new, something that’s almost like a trip back to Bauhaus, or Kaprow’s Happenings, which were installations and events where a whole art space was transformed into a stage full of specific performers. So a bunch of my friends—Ben Lee of Beta Copperhead, Brent Arnold, Anthony Johnson, Caleb Missure, and Naomi Rice, who’s in a band Next Wave Festival—we transformed the whole space into a stage that would specifically fit one performer, kind of like a static music video. That was one of the most special art events I’ve ever been to. Also Noir Night is one of my favorite ones, I really think it works with the intention of the space. And I really like the Dreamtigers and Avatar Atavistic, and Myra Brim’s gallery show “April Sky,” and Christy Walsh’s dance piece, this flamenco classical guitar thing. I like pretty much everything here, it’s kind of a blur.

[below, from Ladies of Experimental Music: Leah Coloff, Meaghan Burke, and Valerie Kuehne; photos by Maximus]

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk a little more about the neighborhood. Do you feel like being here on this weird cusp between Bushwick and Williamsburg affects the space?
Ian: Vaudeville Park is not a Williamsburg space, I’m not trying to make it “Williamsburg-y.” It’s the gateway to Bushwick arts, since we’re on the first block of Bushwick. During the last Bushwick Open Studios, the L train was down and we were the first place people saw. That’s a great festival, Arts in Bushwick works really hard.

brooklyn spaces: You’re getting a lot of attention from the media lately, but ultimately, this is a small space. Is there any worry you’ll get too well known?
Ian: No. Lots of shows here are really packed, but I’m trying to only do things that make sense in a smaller space. This is an arts venue, it’s done with no money but with the best programming and art possible. And by being good to people and treating artists well and believing in this community, you can go a long way. People who have run spaces like this, they do it for a couple years and then give up, and they have every damn right to, because it can be really hard and really frustrating. But what happens if you don’t give up? What happens if every time you think, “This is as far as I can go,” you’re like “Let’s go further”? What happens if we just keep expanding more and doing better? I’m really excited and happy to be doing this and to have all these special people involved. I’m really lucky.

***

Like this? Read about more arts venues: Chez Bushwick, Gowanus Ballroom, Bushwick Starr, Monster Island, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Fort Useless

It feels a bit trite to talk about the demise of Williamsburg cool, an inevitability that only the most obtuse and culturally unaware would still argue isn’t happening, but it would be impossible to write about Monster Island—one of the last of this wave of DIY art and music spaces to succumb to the changing neighborhood—without mentioning it. Monster Island held on longer than most. Although the building will finally be torn down in October (to make room for yet another shiny new zillion-dollar high-rise, presumably), all the space’s components will be relocating elsewhere, and all the members of the collective seemed cautiously excited for a new beginning.

art studio

The two-story former spice factory is home to a massive amount of culture and art. You could reasonably call it a super-space, in the music sense of rock supergroups. There’s the Monster Island basement, one of the early DIY music spaces in the hood, among those where Todd P got his start. There are the two not-for-profit art galleries Live With Animals and Secret Project Robot, there’s Brah Records, and Oneida’s recording studio Ocropolis, and Mollusk Surf Shop, and Kayrock Screenprinting, and dozens of art studios and practice spaces. There have been hundreds of multi-media art shows over the years, and countless Brooklyn bands got their start or found their footing here, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective, DUBKNOWDUB, Golden Triangle, Ex-Models, Knyfe Hyts, K-Holes, Xray Eyeballs, Hair Jail, Invisible Circle, Try Try Try, and Divine Order of the Blood Witch, just to name a few.

outdoor mural painting

One of the really beautiful things about Monster Island is how interconnected everybody is; everyone has been in a band or side project together, helped each other put up an art show, swapped studios, worked in one of the shops, lived in each other’s rooms, and just generally collaborated on everything. While I was interviewing Eli—a longtime resident, worker in the silkscreen studio, member of a couple bands, and artist with some pieces on display for the block party—he knew everyone who walked down the block, introducing me to them by listing all the bands and art shows they’d been involved in at the space over the years. It’s a really beautiful family atmosphere, and while I, like everyone, am disappointed that this Williamsburg institution is the latest to be killed off by relentless real estate development, I’m confident that all the artists and all their creativity and energy will find many more places to thrive.

[all photos by Maya Edelman, from the final block party & “Nothing Gold Can Stay” art show]

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Is there something going on here basically all the time?
Eli: Pretty much. The galleries have art shows up about three weeks of every month, and there are music shows in the basement usually four nights a week. If I hang out for more than an hour, something will start to happen. Before I worked in the building I was here almost as much as I am now, working in the galleries, hanging out, helping people with their art, listening to my friends’ bands practice.

brooklyn spaces: It’s amazing how interconnected everyone is.
Eli: One of the things that’s always been exciting for me about Monster Island is the synthesis of art and music. Nobody does just one thing, and there’s always collaborations. Everyone’s in each other’s bands and makes art together. Kid Millions and I put out a book through Kayrock’s book series, and Wolfy and Kid Millions are doing a silkscreen poem book thing. Some of the hardest-working and most brilliant artists I’ve ever met are in this building.

Live With Animals gallery

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about a particularly memorable art show.
Eli: These Are Powers did a record-release art show that was really exciting, probably 100 people had pieces in that. “Our Town” was the group show for the 2010 block party, and everyone built their portion of “our town.” I made a headshop with Sto from Cinders Gallery; Alison from Awesome Color and Call of the Wild and Red Dawn II made a leather bar, which was horrifying, this cardboard room with large-penised muscular men, and a glory hole and glued-down empty poppers bottles. Maya made a planetarium, Chris made a comic book store, Christine who works at the silkscreen shop made all these squirrels and pigeons and put them all over the place. It was an incredible show.

Man Forever

brooklyn spaces: Okay, now tell me about some amazing music shows.
Eli: The weirdest show was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ tenth-anniversary show. A lot of us have known those guys for a long time, so that show was kind of just for the fans. But it was so packed. Alex and I had to kneel on this ramp leading up to the stage and basically support the weight of the crowd on our backs for ninety percent of the set. And somehow that was awesome. Recently Oneida did a twenty-four-hour show, which was pretty insane. They played two-hour sets all night, and then at 5 a.m. they played their new record live during a pancake breakfast. Half the people had been up all night drunk, the other half were just waking up. It was one of the strangest shows I’ve ever been to.

K-Holes

brooklyn spaces: How about some good parties?
Eli: Every year Kayrock and Wolfy did a thing called Holly Jolly Sabbath the Sunday before Christmas. All the lights would be off, and they hung a Christmas tree upside-down and painted a pentagram on the floor below it, and we’d just sit around, drink mulled wine, get stoned, and listen to every Black Sabbath record back-to-back. Oh, and the first block party I ever came to, it was pouring rain and everything had been moved inside, and it was chaos, people packed in everywhere, just sweaty, giant craziness. I wandered from one place to another and band after band would start playing. It’s still probably the best party I’ve ever been to.

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Williamsburg, or Brooklyn in general, has influenced the space?
Eli: There’s some strong Brooklyn pride in this building. No one ever wanted this place to be something you could have in Manhattan. But at this point, being a space in Williamsburg has become a fight. When Monster Island started, there was no one on the street. There were prostitutes and people trying to pick up prostitutes, and that was it.

Monster Island basement

brooklyn spaces: So how does everyone feel about leaving?
Eli: It’s the same feeling as when you move out of an apartment, like “Oh man, I’m not going to live here anymore. But I get to live in this other place!” I mean, everyone’s sad that it’s ending, but nothing is really dying. This won’t be a place to hang out anymore, but that just means you’ll have to go to Secret Project’s new space in Bushwick or Mollusk’s new spot in Williamsburg. But still, I’m definitely keeping my keys to this building, or maybe we’ll have a key-melting ceremony or something.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any comment about the transformation of Williamsburg, all of that?
Eli: I’m sure I have a lot to say about that, but it’s old and it’s what happens. It will keep happening everywhere until some global catastrophe. To some degree, on some level, Monster Island brought it on ourselves. You do something that helps make the neighborhood cool, and the neighborhood will get cool, more people will start showing up, and then people with money will come in and ruin it. The cool thing is always going to precede the thing that is the cause of the destruction of the cool thing. There was a long time that I was saddened by the change, but at this point I’m kind of resigned to it.

Secret Project Robot

Like this? Read about more art & event spaces: Swimming Cities, Gowanus Ballroom, The Schoolhouse, Flux Factory, Vaudeville Park, Rubulad, HiveNYC

The Trinity Project is a fantastic, pioneering nonprofit organization working to integrate artists more completely into the communities where they live. It’s an alliance between East Williamsburg artists, the Most Holy Trinity–St. Mary’s Parish, and the Saints Joseph and Dominic Catholic Academy, wherein artists are given subsidized studio and rehearsal space in exchange for community service, whether tending the grounds, staffing church events, or teaching art to the students at the school. It’s a fantastic rebuttal to those who think artists insulate themselves within their neighborhoods, and proof that community alliances are possible across racial, economic, and even religious lines.

To get involved with them (they’re always looking for volunteers), email info@thetrinityprojectbk.org. But first read my interview below with Monica Salazar, who co-founded the project with Megan Tefft.

The lead photo is of Janice Purvis’s studio, taken by c. bay milin. For more from c. bay (who took many of the photos below as well), check out cbaymilin.com.

Trinity Project artists at Most Holy Trinity sanctuary

Bike-In Movie, photo by c. bay milin

photo by James S. Rand

brooklyn spaces: What gave you the idea for this project?
Monica: I read an article in the New York Times about the Church of the Messiah in Greenpoint, which rents out their basement for events like F.E.A.S.T., and their choir lofts for band rehearsals. I also knew St. Cecilia’s was doing something similar. I’m a musician and I have a background in theatre and dance, and I just thought that was so cool. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for years, and I’d always walk by this church, although I’d never been inside. So I emailed the friars and asked if they had any extra space, and they responded immediately and were really interested. So we decided to come up with a barter program, and just started filling up the space. We have bands practicing at the empty church, we have twenty visual artists in this building, we have a rehearsal room for different dance and theatre groups. We threw a benefit on the roof, we built a gallery upstairs.

Pre-K students in a Halloween mask-making class

brooklyn spaces: What do the artists do in return for the space?
Monica: Lots of different projects. A lot of them maintain the buildings or the grounds, or for example there was a parishioner centennial birthday at the church and we had some artists do the decorations and make a video montage. We also found out that the school on the other side of the church—Pre-K through eight grade, 260 kids—had zero art education. So about ten of the visual artists have been helping out there, and that’s where the program is working the best. At this point we’re actually braided into the curriculum; we aren’t an after-school program, we’re actually there during the day with the kids. It’s really cool.

photo by c. bay milin

brooklyn spaces: How do you decide who’s going to do what? Do you have artists with teaching backgrounds?
Monica: Some do, some don’t. As we’ve progressed, we’ve come to realize the type of people we’re looking for, which is a hybrid of high-caliber art and commitment to community service. This isn’t a coddling artist’s residency; everybody does all the dirty work.

Lotte Allen, photo by c. bay milin

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the events you’ve had. You were involved in Bushwick Open Studios, right?
Monica: Yeah, for the last two years, and we had our own open studios last fall. We’ve done face-painting booths and such at street fairs. Last summer we had a series of concerts and movies at Saint Mary’s.

photo from Trinity Project's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: So it’s all been really successful?
Monica: Definitely. But this is a funny time. The church is being sold, and we’re going to be out of this building, so we’re majorly condensing everything we do. We’re going to refocus, distill what we’ve been doing into what’s working the best, which is working with the kids. We’re going to reduce it to four visual artists and four theatre, dance, and performing arts groups.

Spring FUNdraiser, photo from Trinity Project's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to cut down the artists?
Monica: Yeah. But we’ve always been very honest, they always knew it was only a month-to-month arrangement. There’s not really a precedent for this kind of program; we’re just making it up as we go along. It’s exciting that we’ve been able to be in this building for fourteen months; that’s longer than we’d anticipated. And we’ve definitely secured our relationship with the church, with the school, and with the diocese, and we’re working on leasing a building of our own.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a favorite event that you’ve done?
Monica: Well, one of the challenges of this project has been that we’re not a religious organization, so the religious community and the artistic one are not always easy to bring together. But one really successful event was a holiday concert we had in the sanctuary. It was a mix of church performers and artists. Friar Timothy sang, one of the other friars emceed, this awesome church organist played, and the mostly Dominican church choir performed—they were incredible, they blew us all out of the water. On our end were mostly experimental bands doing their take on traditional Christmas music. There was one psychedelic band that was jumping around the altar, whipping stuff around their heads, and at first I was nervous, but the friars were into it. It was such a bizarre night, but really wonderful.

Trinity Project founders at St. Mary's Cathedral

brooklyn spaces: Have there been any problems between the two communities?
Monica: Well, we’ve been extremely emphatic with our artists about being respectful to the community that’s hosting us. I know young artists can be over-bold with their strokes, but this is just not the place for certain kinds of provocative art. I don’t mind it personally—I’m always intrigued by things that push the envelope, and I think that’s part of what artists are here for—but if it’s overtly anti-religious or über-sexual, we’re just not the home for it.

Pia Murray, photo by c. bay milin

brooklyn spaces: Are there other neighborhood organizations you work with?
Monica: We work closely with Chez Bushwick and Center for Performance Research. We also have relationships with the Pratt Center, Graham Ave Business Improvement District, El Puente, Saint Nick’s Alliance, and OurGoods.

brooklyn spaces: Had you been looking for an opportunity to bridge the gap between the artists and the neighborhood community?
Monica: Yeah. I lived on Broadway and Graham for six years, and I think it’s always been a little easier for me because I’m ethnic, but my roommates would complain about feeling uncomfortable, or that they made other people in the neighborhood uncomfortable. It just seems so silly to me, but it’s valid, there’s fear on both sides. So this was an awesome opportunity. I also really love church architecture, even though I’m not particularly religious. Plus, artists and the church have a very long, complicated historical relationship, so it wasn’t anything new to combine them. This church happens to be Franciscan, which is very liberal, philosophical, super educated. And the friars that we work with are the best. They’re really, really cool guys.

Like this? Read about more community groups: Trees Not Trash, Bushwick City Farms, Brooklyn Free Store, Body Actualized Center, Time’s Up

950 Hart came relatively late to the Bushwick gallery scene, but they were incredibly busy. In their first nine months, they put on seven shows in their space, plus one off-site at Life Café. The gallery spanned two floors, with the basement holding their permanent collection, featuring work from three of the space’s four founders: Michael Kronenberg, Antoinette Johnson, and Mikki Nylund. Sean Alday, the fourth member of the team, is a writer, blogger, videographer, and unofficial gallery historian. When I went to the opening of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” it was pleasantly busy, and several of the artists were there to talk about their work. Everyone I met was welcoming and warm, and eager to share their excitement about the project.

Due to skyrocketing rents in the neighborhood, 950 Hart closed their doors in July 2012, along with several other pioneering Bushwick galleries, including Famous Accountants and Botanic.

Q&A with Michael and Sean

brooklyn spaces: Do either of you have any prior curating experience?
Sean: All I’ve really done is construction and gardening; I learned how to make things lovely through construction, and then with gardening I learned how to put things in the right order. I did a lot of Zen gardening, so my first curating experience was making a little garden on the side of a hill. Then I got here, and I realized it’s another little garden on a hill, and it just needed to be cultivated.
Michael: Sean’s being modest; he’s actually been a godsend. He’s incredibly brilliant and very motivated, and super at coordinating and reaching out to people. He also has a really good idea of what he wants to do and a great eye for new talent.

photo by Sandee Pawan

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to start a gallery?
Michael: We’re acquainted with a pretty large circle of creative, talented artists, and we wanted to try to get more exposure for them. We started talking about starting a gallery when we were all hanging out. Mikki and I were making art, and Sean was writing and video-documenting everything.
Sean: And Antoinette went out and got four panels and started meticulously crafting the checkerboard pieces that are now in the permanent collection. She worked on the piece for about a month straight. Every time I came by, she was working on it. It’s a very good vindication of the enthusiasm we had about doing this, and it kind of became the reason we were doing it, because everyone was so excited about it. And we all fed off of the excitement; there was no way not to.
Michael: I also want to give a big shout-out too to Grant Stoops, from Bushwick Project for the Arts. He’s the one who talked me into actually showing my stuff for the first time, and now we’ve got some of his pieces in our permanent collection, too. It’s great synergy.

E.V. Svetova and her model in front of her art

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your favorite artists you’ve shown?
Sean: We love all of our artists, but some who come to mind are Raquel Echanique, Teddi I Rogers, Eisig Frost, Irena Romendik, E.V. Svetova, Sandee Pawan, Worm Carnevale, Jarvis Earnshaw, and Dan Victor.

permanent collection

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the different shows.
Sean: The first show was called “950 Hart,” and just putting it up was big for us. The second one, “Broken Hearts,” was even more exciting, and the responses from both of them were so different that it pushed us to do the third show, “The Garden of Eve.” For that one, we wanted something that was going to push us to be more creative than we had been, and also be unique enough that it would draw more artists and more people who appreciate art spaces.

photo from 950 Hart's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: Do you prefer a certain type of art?
Michael: We like to encourage figurative and abstract art to a certain extent. We like to give enough of a leading narrative so that people can either take it and run with it or reflect back or come in with something completely off in left field. But as far as a criterion for what we show, if we respond to it emotionally, we show it. It doesn’t matter what your name is. We’re not particularly interested in pedigrees; we look for people who are sincere and generate an emotional response from the viewer. We’re looking for positive, energetic, upbeat pieces that are made in Brooklyn—and certain other places as well, as the octopus spreads out his tentacles.

brooklyn spaces: Are you a part of the greater Bushwick art scene?
Michael: Yes. This year we did a show for Bushwick Open Studios, which allowed us to interact more with the community, and let them know we’re here. We had a really good response from the organizers; they were so supportive.
Sean: After that, we did a show at Life Café. Actually, we put up three different shows over the course of a month, framed as art battles.

"Bloom" by Michael Noel

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Michael: To have as many shows as possible, and to eventually expand outward and upward.
Sean: For me, the main thing is progressing the community. We want to leave behind a roadmap for the kids who come after us, because eventually there’s going to be curiosity about what happened here in Bushwick. That’s why I’m videoing everything and blogging as much as I can about what we’re doing. It’s an easy way to feel like you’re doing something for the community of the future.

***

Like this? Read about more art galleries: Ugly Art Room, Wondering Around Wandering, Concrete Utopia, See.Me, Central Booking, Micro Museum, Invisible Dog

Egg & Dart was a social club just off the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Ft. Greene run by Alita and Angie, service-industry veterans who are well connected to the Brooklyn creative scene, regularly bartending at places like the Red Lotus Room and Rubulad, and involved with the fantastic Nonsense NYC. At Egg & Dart, they hosted a slew of events, including weekly poker nights, barbecues, live music, craft parties (bonnet making!), gardening classes (terraria!), gay brunches, film screenings, and more. They collaborated with Flux Factory, Swimming Cities, DJ Sticker Guy, Bonnie Montgomery Trucking, applewood, Alan Lomax Archive, Quince Marcum, and Lamia Design. They closed their doors in the summer of 2012.

photo from Egg & Dart's Facebook

The first time I went was for the Rooftop Sprinkler Slushie Hootenany, a potluck barbecue with music sets by the Home for Wayward Drummers. It was a beautiful night and the party was lovely, mellow and relaxed. The few dozen people were of all ages, with a handful of dogs running around underfoot. The music was awesome, the food was great, and everyone was incredibly welcoming.

Q&A with Alita and Angie

brooklyn spaces: How did you pick the name?
Alita: The space used to be a social club, in the seventies, and they had egg-crate foam all over the walls because of the sound. I think it was called the Egg Drop Space, so Egg & Dart came out of that.

photo from Egg & Dart's Facebook

photo from Egg & Dart's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to start a social club?
Angie: We’ve been talking about it for a really long time, and looking at spaces, and when we found this one, we decided to go for it.
Alita: Angie and I both work in the service industry, and we’re interested in bringing the skills we have from that—like getting people together, and creating a special space and occasion—to meet the amazing weird art projects we work on the rest of the time, and the people involved. I’m a bit of a matchmaker and a people collector, and I love nothing more than introducing some of my favorite people to other favorite people.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: Is there a division of labor between the two of you?
Alita: We work really well together. The labor falls kind of naturally between different things that we’re inclined to do. We pretty much do it all together.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: What’s your favorite event you’ve done?
Angie: Oh, there have been so many good ones! We get such a great crowd, it’s always really mellow, nice people, very friendly, a very good vibe. I can’t pick a favorite, they’re all so good.

photo from Egg & Dart's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What made you pick this neighborhood?
Angie: Our studio is really close, just a couple blocks down. And I love the neighborhood, I’ve spent a lot of time here. There’s metalworkers over there, our next-door neighbor has a vintage shop; it’s just mechanics and nice people all around. We were lucky to find something here.

photo by Rachel Eisley

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Alita: I’d like to have more people doing more stuff. We have a theatre director coming to look at the space, and we’re trying to find someone to help us book music, and someone to build up the gardens. There’s a lot of possibilities for collaboration.
Angie: We love people who want to work with us, because that makes it more fun. That’s really the point. It’s not just our thing; we like everyone else’s ideas too.

photo from Egg & Dart's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: Has anything about doing the space surprised you?
Angie: It’s kind of like an organic thing that changes and goes in different directions, but that’s what makes it fun and interesting. We don’t know who’s going to come to us next!

***

Like this? Read about more collaborative event spaces: Page Not Found, Hive NYC, Greenroom Brooklyn, The Schoolhouse, Bushwick Project for the Arts

I love apartment galleries. I’m always struck by the neat intimacy of leaning on someone’s bed or sitting at their kitchen table while looking at art.

Experimental apartment gallery Concrete Utopia ran for a year, showcasing a diverse array of art in different media. The show “Spork Used as Knife” featured video art, photography, and installations. “I’m Not a Good Enough Feminist” was an ambitious undertaking that included twenty-four artists and a companion book of interviews, historical and contemporary texts, artistic pieces, and images.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Q&A with Melanie, Concrete Utopia’s founder, director, and chief curator

brooklyn spaces: How did you pick the name?
Melanie: I was doing a curatorial fellowship in Philadelphia last year, and it came from one of these curatorial statements I was looking at when I was learning about different kinds of spaces around the world. It’s from a man named Ernst Bloch, the director of the MAK Center in Vienna, which is devoted to contemporary making and is a also museum, so it’s both art and design. They’re really devoted to not just showing things that are past, but making possibilities for new things to be made for museums, which is something I’m really interested in, giving people I love a reason to make things. I was seeing so much stagnation of so many people whose work I thought was amazing, and I wanted to encourage them to start making things again. So “concrete utopia” as I reformalize it is a perpetual state of being actualized, or deciding that utopia is where we are right now, it’s not something to be made in the future. It’s about being a certain age when you’re like, “Wait a second, I get to take life by the balls! How do I want to do that?”

brooklyn spaces: How many shows have you had?
Melanie: We had “MANIFEST-O” in October, and then we had a night of performance in November, “Food Party,” featuring a storyteller and the proverbial campfire, which was really sweet. And then we did “An-Architecture,” which was a collaboration with Recession Art, a young organization that does shows at the Invisible Dog. It was a two-person show with Caroline England and Ian Trask.

brooklyn spaces: How long does it take you to put a show together?
Melanie: It depends on the scope of the project. “An-Architecture” took three months. The storytelling show, since it was just a one-night event, was really a month or two. This show I put together in a month, although I should have given it more time. We’ve been working on “I’m Not a Good Enough Feminist” for a really long time now; we were planning on putting it up in January, and then March, and then at our first staff meeting—I am lucky enough to have some amazing, amazing, amazing women who decided to help me out—we realized we still needed more time for it. In the end that one is going to take almost six months to put together.

brooklyn spaces: Do the pieces stay up when the gallery isn’t open?
Melanie: Yeah, each show stays up pretty much until the next one. I’m really lucky because it’s kind of like I’m renting art for free.

brooklyn spaces: Why did you pick this neighborhood?
Melanie: When I moved back to New York, I said, “I’m not going to live in Williamsburg, I’m not going to live in Williamsburg, I’m not going to live in Williamsburg.” And then my best friend moved to Williamsburg, my brother moved to Williamsburg, my two other best friends moved to Williamsburg, and suddenly it was where everyone I knew was living. So it was a personal decision to move here, rather than a gallery decision, but it’s turned out to be a really good place to be.

brooklyn spaces: Do people in the building or in the neighborhood know there’s a gallery here? Is there any interaction?
Melanie: It’s a funny thing, and I think it’s a funny thing that’s inherent to any neighborhood that’s in the midst of this kind of gentrification: this building is half twenty-something hipsters and half Hispanic families. We have a nice relationship with the families, we all smile and say hi, but as much as I want to share what I’m doing, I’m nervous about pushing it into their lives. It’s a gallery, but it’s also often a party, you know? So that’s a difficult relationship that I’m learning how to navigate. We did finally start flyering in the neighborhood for this show, and the neighbors next door came to the walk-through we had last week. So that’s promising.

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Like this? Read about more art galleries: Invisible Dog, Ugly Art Room, Central Booking, 950 Hart, Wondering Around Wandering, See.Me

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Newsonic was terrific. It was way way out at the edge of South Williamsburg, virtually unmarked, and a complete shock when you walk in. Just an absolutely vibrant space, full of découpaged furniture and great art and twinkling lights and  linked televisions playing crazy video montages and a bookshelf made from a hollowed-out Coke machine. It had a lovely chill vibe and good music and just incredibly nice people.

Over the years, it was inhabited by about twenty different people, primarily musicians and artists, and they just quietly threw amazing shows and parties for over a decade. With hardly any web presence, they were totally underground, spreading the word through NonsenseNYC and a handful of party lists. Check out  my interview below with Brian and Seth Misterka, who was there from the beginning.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of the space.
Seth: We found it in the back of the Village Voice classifieds, and it was just an empty warehouse. It was really a blank canvas; the landlord gave us totally free reign to create whatever we wanted to. My original partners were a fellow named Massa, who was working for Francis Ford Coppola as an assistant, and my friend Jeremy, who worked for MTV and played in bands, and I was working at Miramax and playing in bands. We were all musicians, and we were all involved in either film or television, so we built the space out to be a music venue from the start. It’s the perfect environment for music, because our neighbor on one side is an auto mechanic, the other is a grocery store, and below us is an office, so we can play music basically any time without bothering anybody. There could be a raging party in here with a hundred people or more, and from the street it’s as if nothing’s happening at all. So it’s like this little secluded artist colony in the middle of the industrial part of Chasidic Williamsburg, this really mystical neighborhood.

brooklyn spaces: Were you putting on shows from the very beginning?
Seth: From the very beginning. The space had a built-in stage from its days as a factory, so we framed it out and started throwing shows, and they immediately were so much fun and so successful that we just kept doing it.
Brian: In the three years I’ve been here, I’ve never been to a party where there hasn’t been just a completely good vibe all around. Everybody loves it here; it’s impossible not to enjoy the space. It brings out the best in people, it really does.
Seth: It’s kind of an out-of-the-way destination, it’s a place that you have to hear about it and then make a point of coming to, and so because it’s not the kind of space that you’d just be passing by, it gives it a kind of a special nature.

brooklyn spaces: So why are you guys moving out?
Seth: The landlord just wants to shuffle things around. It really reflects the broader change in the northern part of Williamsburg, with its expansion of real estate and population; that’s also happening down here. This building is going to be turned into offices. You know, money talks and the artists walk.

brooklyn spaces: But you’ve definitely nurtured a lot of artists through here.
Seth: Absolutely, yeah. There’s been so many different phases of the place, and everybody has brought a different vibe. We’ve found so many great, creative people over the years, and they’ve all contributed different things to the space, which has allowed it to take on the character it has. In addition to the parties, I’ve also had a recording studio here, and I’ve recorded all sorts of bands. My band is Dynasty Electric, and we’ve also recorded a lot of big indie bands from the 2000s, like Battles, Parts & Labor, Shy Child, and El Guapo, as well as a lot of jazz records.
Brian: Seth also recorded two records with Brian Chase from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and they’re planning on recording a third with a jazz duo they have, Brian Chase and Seth Misterka Duo.

brooklyn spaces: How would you describe the kinds of shows you put on?
Seth: Usually it’s a laboratory kind of show, with four or five bands and DJs. It’s a good platform for people to play, a good opportunity to play in a more relaxed environment and for a bigger crowd than would just be hanging out at the clubs.
Brian: Seth makes very eclectic picks. You’ll have a dance band, then you’ll have an indie band, then you’ll have a raga band, and then you’ll have these old guys who play for, like, what band was it?
Seth: One time the drummer from Saturday Night Live, his band came down.
Brian: And they had so many instruments! It was insane. There’s always a different atmosphere, a different thing, and it’s all connected into one night.
Seth: The thing with Newsonic—which is also the name of my record label—the idea has always been about the spectrum of sound, new sound, whatever it is, regardless of genre. Because I’ve been a working musician and have that access and connections to so many great musicians, the parties have become this secret party for musicians. Great musicians just want to come here and play, not for the money or whatever, but for the experience, just to be part of this energy that’s happening down here. We’ve always kept it on the lowdown because it was kind of amazing that we were able to throw parties for ten years without any trouble from the neighborhood or anything, and we didn’t want to jinx our run. But now that it’s ending, we just want to celebrate and show off the space while we have it, and to document it. We knew something cool was happening here, so we want to capture it like a time capsule and share it.

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Like this? Read about more underground party spaces: Rubulad, Red Lotus Room, The Lab (Electric Warehouse), Bushwick Project for the Arts, 12-turn-13, Gemini & Scorpio loft

The Jerkhaus is an incredibly lived-in communal-housing and punk-show space. They’ve had almost sixty roommates over the seven years the house has been active, plus hundreds of crashers and couch-surfers and short- and long-term guests. Not to mention the bands that come through to play shows, and all the people who stop by for parties and gatherings of all kinds.

It’s housed in a fancy-looking brownstone, and in fact I was worried that I had the address wrong, until a couple of pierced boys with torn shirts let me in. It’s a terrific mess in there, full of bikes and records and ashtrays and posters and busted chandeliers and foam-leaking sofas and sagging stuffed animals and speakers and graffitied subway signs. It’s, in other words, an incredibly loved space.

Rudi and Kever, two of the Jerkhaus’s founders, were super nice and welcoming, and they chatted with me for a couple of hours.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the Jerkhaus.
Kever: Well, it’s a punk house in Brooklyn. Tons of people have stayed here. It’s like an old-fashioned step on a bum’s path, like a hobo travel point. There’s a sign with a little picture of a chick rocking out with a guitar, a dude with a bindle, some space cleared out on the floor.
Rudi: People stop by and say, “Someone who used to live here like three years ago said we could stay here.” When we moved in it was really cheap, and we had plenty of space for people to sleep on the floor. Right after we moved in, the RNC took place, and there were all these people nobody knew staying here. We had all this soundproofing foam from the people who lived here before us, so we just laid it out and had pretty much one floor as a giant bed.
K: I like the idea that we were housing people who were going to the RNC to fuck it up, to protest.
R: It was cool being a part of that. At that point I didn’t have much of a mind to protest, so I stayed home and gave people towels and directions to the beer store, or I called my roommate’s mom to be like, “Dave’s in jail again, just letting you know. Don’t worry, he’ll have a vegan sandwich when he gets out, thanks to the Anti-Capitalist Kitchen,” which is what Food Not Bombs was called then.

brooklyn spaces: Has there been trouble over the years? Has anybody come in and fucked shit up?
K: Yeah, there’s been pains in the ass, but nothing too crazy. There’s been no theft of property, to my knowledge. No violence, really. It hasn’t been bad enough that I think people should be afraid to have a house like this.

brooklyn spaces: Did you set out from the start to have a space like this?
K: Yeah. But our landlord and the neighbors are a big reason that it’s been able to go on for so long.
R: We’ve always paid rent, and there’s always been someone the landlord could go to and say, “Don’t let your friends sleep on the roof,” or “No live music. Have a party, but don’t have live music.” Of course we’ve had live music anyway, but if there wasn’t a complaint, it didn’t really matter.

brooklyn spaces: How about the running of the space, like buying toilet paper or cleaning the kitchen. Is it all collective?
K: It is all over the place. We had house meetings for a little while, but they were the worst fucking thing in the world.
R: It just kind of became whoever buys toilet paper buys toilet paper.
K: The pains and joys of communal living.
R: I’ve left many notes, but I gave up. I have a different outlook on it now than I used to.
K: You learn to expand your comfort zone.
R: It’s not a bad thing. You know when you walk into a room where there’s cigarette butts all over the floor and beer cans everywhere? That means someone had fun. Probably ten people had fun.
K: Beautiful, Rudi!

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship with the neighborhood and the community?
R: I’m very proud to be a punk kid who has lived in southern Brooklyn for a long-ass time. I didn’t move here because there was a cool café or a hip bar nearby. I’ve seen the neighborhood change a lot; there’s not a lot of hipster-driven stuff here yet, but it’s coming. I’m glad that I lived here when I did because I think I got a much better feel of living in Brooklyn, like Brooklyn Brooklyn, not just an offshoot of the Lower East Side. I don’t know if that’s an asshole thing to say, but it does give me a sense of pride. I’m also glad that I lived in a place that had so many people being creative, even if they were just making a zine or trying to change the world by not bathing. A lot of weird people have lived here and had a lot of unsavory professions and made a lot of weird art and music, and I’m glad that they had the space to do that.

brooklyn spaces: So why is the Jerkhaus ending?
K: Our landlord’s selling the place.
R: The building is in considerable disrepair. A couple of months ago we were having toilet trouble, and when the landlord and the repair guy came in, they were like, “We have to fix the toilet right now because the floor is rotting out under it, and if someone sits on the toilet, it might fall through the floor.” The place was cheap when we moved in because the building was not in the best condition, and we obviously didn’t care. We just keep paying rent anyway. We’ve had bedbug infestations and all this other stuff, and the landlord has just been like, “Well, tough noogies. You’ve got horrible roommates.”
K: Right after we moved in, one of our roommates was like, “Hey guys, look what I found! Just lying in the street!” It was a mattress. So from the beginning of the whole thing we had bedbugs.
R: At the time you had to go to Washington Heights to get bedbug-specific killer, because bedbugs weren’t such an epidemic yet. Of course, since then, everyone and their mother has them.

brooklyn spaces: So you’re saying you had them before they were cool?
R: Pretty much, yeah. We pretty much started the trend.

brooklyn spaces: Is anyone going on from this to create the next incarnation of the Jerkhaus?
K: Fuck no. Others because they don’t have the ambition, and Rudi and I because we’ve already gotten all the love and joy we can get out of this place. We sucked it all right out. The burnout rate in this job is pretty high. I’m surprised I held it for as long as I did.
R: You’re the patron saint of Jerkhaus!
K: I’m the biggest jerk!

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Like this? Read about other communal living spaces: Hive NYC, Treehaus, Dead Herring

Update October 2013: The story is still coming to light, but as of October 9th, 3rd Ward is closed, with the owner having absconded seemingly in the middle of the night with no warning, leaving members, teachers, and small businesses that run out of the space completely in the lurch. The story was broken by the New York Observer here, and there has been an outpouring of frustrated rage since then.

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3rd Ward is kind of a no-brainer, since it’s a wildly popular, well-publicized space, but as a pioneering skillshare, community, and event space, they definitely warrant covering here. And it’s an incredible place, with so much to offer. There’s no interview in this post, but please click through to learn all about this fabulous space!

3rd Ward is primarily a skillshare, and while membership isn’t cheap, it comes with great perks (a free bike!) and access to a whole host of facilities. (Non-members can also access many of the offerings, but it costs more.)

Their facilities include massive metal shop, a wood shop, a jewelry studio, and a textile studio. They’ve also got a bicycle shop that is available for drop-ins, a cavernous gallery space with rotating exhibits, and several studios for events. Plus they offer a vast array of classes, in everything from digital media to welding to pottery.

They also do tons of events, including myriad gallery shows, live drawing events, music performances, presentations, crazy parties, craft fairs, fundraisers, festivals, and so much more.

It’s a terrific gathering place, and has something awesome happening basically all the time.

Also check out this great interview (not done by me) with 3rd Ward’s co-founder.

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Like this? Read about other skillshares: Pioneer Works, Time’s Up, Urbanglass, Brooklyn Brainery, Arch P&D, Bushwick Print Lab, Gowanus Print Lab, Ger-Nis, Exapno

photos in this post by Rachel Lefkowitz

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: art & event space | active: 2009–2011 | link: website

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The Bushwick Project for the Arts—affectionately (and often pejoratively) known as the Bushwick Trailer Park—is a collective of mostly visual artists, housed in a former nut-roasting factory in an industrial corner of East Williamsburg. The cavernous interior space—an ever-changing work in progress—is used for all different kinds of events, including parties, plays, film screenings, classes, art exhibits, and more. Tucked into corners are a silkscreening studio, a metal and wood shop, a ceramic studio, and even a couple of kilns.

Bushwick Project for the Arts is around the corner from Shea Stadium, Werdink / Ninja Pyrate, 3rd Ward, The Archeron (which used to be Bushwick Music Studios), and House of Yes, among other great spaces.

Like this? Read about more art collectives: Swimming Cities, The Schoolhouse, Monster Island, Hive NYC, Silent Barn

update: I am really sad to add an update on the closing of this terrific space. In March of 2011, the Brooklyn Free Store—along with the apartment building next door—were burned down. Arson is strongly suspected. The New York Times has an article about the blaze, and kind souls wishing to can donate to the group’s efforts to rebuild.

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Started by a diverse group of anarchists and activists, the Brooklyn Free Store is an alternative to capitalism. In an abandoned Bed-Stuy lot, the group has assembled a cornucopia of cast-offs, including clothes, books, jewelry, furniture, tools, toys, and more, all gifted by the community. The Free Store is never closed, so anyone can take or leave anything, anytime.

The Brooklyn Free Store at its grand opening, 8/09/10, photo by Alex Maubrey

The Free Store also hosts events, including movie screenings, music performances, and skillshares, which always feature dumpstered snacks for all. The space got a lot of media attention in the few months it’s been active, including articles in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, The Awl, and the Brooklyn Paper.

Due to the results of recent unkind weather, the Free Store has been taking steps to make the space more permanent. They’ve held several “roof-raising” days, and the new structure looks amazing.

photo by Erica Sackin

Q&A with Laurel, one of the founding members of the Free Store

brooklyn spaces: What made you guys start this project?
Laurel: I think everyone had different and overlapping motives. The Free Store is about environmental issues because it reduces waste. It’s about mutual aid and building community because everything is free and the store is open to anyone and everyone. It’s about anti-capitalism because there’s no money involved. It’s about anarchism because no one is in charge. This may sound like a contradiction, but it’s also about leadership, because everyone is invited to take on any aspect of the project—we don’t seek a world without leaders, we seek a world full of leaders.

brooklyn spaces: What made you want to get involved?
Laurel: To me the Free Store is a proactive positive solution to some of the things I dislike about our society. It’s a participatory example of one alternative to capitalism, a gift economy. We shy away from terms like “donation” or “barter” or “trade”; a gift economy means giving what you have to give, and taking whatever you want or need. On paper this may seem problematic, because the assumption is that people are greedy and will just take and take, but as we’ve seen over the last few months with this project, that’s not the case at all. There’s never a lack of new items in the space.

brooklyn spaces: What has been the response from the community?
Laurel: Better than we could have imagined! This is an anarchist project, so we didn’t want to be “in charge.” And the neighbors immediately embraced the Free Store as their own. People come and tidy up, take out the trash, decide what should be put where and what should be discarded. I often hear people saying that the neighborhood feels much better now that the free store is here. Even the guy who technically owns the land has been by to say what a great thing we’re doing.

brooklyn spaces: So does the space run itself?
Laurel: For the most part it does. For the day-to-day maintenance, my friends and I don’t have to do much of anything, unless we feel like it. But for larger issues, we do sometimes need to step in. When the “roof” (which was just a tarp) collapsed during the blizzard, it was clear that there was a major problem that was bigger than an individual could or would fix. So we got a group together to come in and build a permanent structure out of wood from pallets that were gifted to us by Home Depot. More than a dozen of us came out in the freezing snow for the “roof raising,” and several more people we didn’t even know came in off the street to help, motivated only by their common belief in the project, which was a really empowering thing. This whole project has been extremely educational and personally fulfilling, watching my philosophies come to life, and it gives me great hope for humanity and the future.

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Like this? Read about more activist spaces: No-Space, #OccupyWallStreet art show, Time’s Up, Trinity Project, Trees Not Trash, Books Through Bars, Boswyck Farms, Bushwick City Farms, Film Biz Recycling

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: music venue | active: 2009–2010 | links: myspace, facebook

Bushwick Music Studios was an underground music venue in the heart of the East Williamsburg Industrial Park. It was totally unfussy—just a tiny bright blue windowless room in a nondescript warehouse, with a handmade balcony for the soundboard, DIY lighting, and a makeshift bar selling Four Loko and PBR. But during its yearlong run, it became one of the staples of Brooklyn’s underground music scene, packing in over a hundred sweaty kids on most nights. BMS’s early shows were block-wide, all-night affairs, with music blasting from several adjacent unoccupied warehouses.

Tito, who started the space, ran it with a very socialist attitude, encouraging anyone who wanted to get involved to come by and book a show or help with promotion. The space was highly illegal, with no liquor license, no fire-prevention system, and serious over-occupancy issues on most nights.

BMS was only a few blocks from some other great Brooklyn spaces, including Werdink / Ninja Pyrate, Shea Stadium, House of Yes, 3rd Ward, and Bushwick Project for the Arts. When Tito left town, the space changed hands and became The Archeron.

photos by Maximus Commissar

Like this? Read about other music spaces: Silent Barn, Shea Stadium, Death By Audio, Newsonic, 285 Kent