neighborhood: bed-stuy | space type: living space | active since: 2000 | links: n/a

In a Brooklyn that gets more sanitized every day, there are still a few wild holdouts, and the Chicken Hut is one of the last men standing. “This is our reckless abandon studio,” says Greg H., who started the space with fellow woodworker JPL in the attic of what was then a working feather-processing factory. “It’s our home and the place where we’ve done every crazy fucking thing we’ve ever thought of.”

Chicken Hut bedroom [pic by Alix Piorun]

Chicken Hut founder Greg H. at Bike Kill 2014 [pic by Alix Piorun]

Filthy Savage plays a wild party [pic by Walter Wlodarczyk]

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

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: home | active since: 1989 | links: facebook

“The ‘collection’ in House of Collection is both a noun and a verb,” says Paige, a bookkeeper and belly dancer, who has called this refurbished bookbinding factory home since 1989. “We see collecting as a practice, a pastime, and an approach to the world.” In this marvelous jumble, there is as much appreciation and reverence shown to a cluster of rusted gardening tools as to the antique Chickering & Sons piano that Paige’s partner Ahnika inherited from her great-uncle. “The goal is to honor something for what it is, as well as for the value of all the stories that went into it,” says Ahnika.

pix by Patricia Malfitano and Kit Crenshaw

Paige and Ahnika have collections of taxidermy, kitchen utensils, postcards, figurines, Easter eggs, toys, hats, trunks, even plants, of which they have more than 100. There’s an antique hip-replacement piece, which inspired Paige’s original name for the space: The Hip Joint. There are tiny glass bottles pried out of the sands of Dead Horse Bay, earrings Paige made from discarded crack vials she found in the neighborhood, fake greenery from an early-1990s party at the Williamsburg Immersionist warehouse Old Dutch Mustard Factory. There’s a box of nails from one of Brooklyn’s great lost treasures, the outsider art sculpture Broken Angel House.

Something else Paige and Ahnika collect is intensely creative people, using their home as a platform to showcase and celebrate the talents of their friends, from St. Eve’s Elixirs to the Schlep Sisters. They’ve hosted Burning Man fundraisers, daylong draw-a-thons, spoken word celebrations, fire spinning, belly-dancing, magic rituals, art salons, and sacred circles. Amanda Palmer and Kai Altair have shot music videos, and the Science Channel show Oddities has filmed a segment there. For the impetuous traveler, a room in the loft is available on AirB&B.

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

Art party space 12-turn-13 sits in a huge industrial building dating back to the 1930s, one of only two remaining structures from the MH Renken Dairy complex (preservationists are working to designate the other as a historic landmark). For the last sixteen years—an incredible lifespan in today’s deliriously shifting Brooklyn underground—this beautiful loft has hosted all manner of DJs, gallery shows, and complex performance events, from Wolf + Lamb and Mister Saturday Night dance parties to exotic honey tastings and elaborately themed fêtes.

all photos courtesy of theARTcorps

Read on for plenty of reminiscences and fantastic stories from owner Steve R. about sixteen years of underground Brooklyn brilliance.
[n.b.: this interview took place in September 2013]

brooklyn spaces: This space is just gorgeous. What was it like when you got it?
Steve: Oh, it was an absolute sty. There were these huge hinged industrial windows that weighed about fifty pounds, they had bars on the outside and the inside. There were strips of fluorescent lights hanging from the dropped ceilings, which were curling at the edges from water damage. There were all sorts of wire conduits everywhere, and there was a concrete bunker in the corner that functioned as a bathroom—it consisted of a toilet, about enough space for a toilet paper roll, and on the outside, literally hanging off its pipe, a sink that didn’t work. That was it.

brooklyn spaces: So it was love at first sight?
Steve: Well, I’d looked at about sixty different places, from Sunset Park to Greenpoint—leaving out Williamsburg, because I knew I didn’t want to go there.
brooklyn spaces: Even in 1998 you didn’t want to go to Williamsburg?
Steve: Well, I was living in the East Village at the time, and an Urban Outfitters had just moved in across the street from me. I knew what was going to happen in Williamsburg, and I just couldn’t do that again. Anyway, I had a car at the time, so I drove here, and when I walked in, this place was so disgusting, but I could see the beams, the wood floors, the perfect lighting, I knew it had the bones. So I immediately said, “Yes, I’ll take it!” And then I drove back to the East Village and thought, “Oh god, is there a subway? Is there any food?” I had no idea. So I had to come back and walk the neighborhood. Luckily there was a post office, a supermarket, a few amenities. So yes, love at first sight, and then a lot of work. We ripped out the drop ceiling and exposed all these beams—that took about nine months on a twelve-foot ladder, scraping it all by hand with a little brush. And then carpenters, electricians, plumbers; we basically built everything from scratch.

brooklyn spaces: And the goal was always to make a living space where you could throw parties?
Steve: Yes. My East Village apartment was 600 square feet, and I had parties there for years. My scene was DJs and downtown artists, performers, and fashion people. We did First Friday salons every month, where people would come over and share what they did, creatively. It grew to the point where we had a keg in the bathtub and people lined up and down the stairs smoking cigarettes until 4 o’clock in the morning, and I just realized my neighbors hated me and I had to move.

SPANK party, photo by Jemma Nelson

brooklyn spaces: You had no resistance to coming to Brooklyn?
Steve: There was only Brooklyn. Where else could we go?
brooklyn spaces: What about your guests—was there resistance for them to come to Brooklyn?
Steve: Oh god, yes. This is back in the day when we had to actually print invitations and handwrite the addresses and put them in the mail. People didn’t even know about the G; back then we called it the Ghost Train. One friend came out for a salon here and didn’t have my phone number; he was banging on the door but we didn’t hear him, and he went back home and that was the end of our friendship. He was so upset about how far he’d had to come! Nowadays of course it’s no big deal, but then? Yeah, it was tough.

Blue Dinner Party

brooklyn spaces: What was the neighborhood like?
Steve: Well, Myrtle Avenue was called Murder Ave. There was a double homicide right up the block, there was a brothel across the street; once they threw a television out a fourth-floor window—what a spectacular crash. There were no gays, not many white kids. But what I loved about it was that it was Brooklyn, it felt so real to me. And I knew all my neighbors, they would all come to my parties. Now everybody looks alike and I hardly know any of them.

brooklyn spaces: How has it been, watching that change?
Steve: Well, I can actually eat in my neighborhood now. I can buy coconut ice cream at 4 in the morning, and there are boutiques and a yoga studio; but now I have to be concerned about how much noise I make. So it’s not the same but the neighborhood has retained a lot of its character, and I think it’s changing with some integrity. But we’ll see how it goes.

Midnight Magic

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk about the parties. Tell me about some great ones or awful ones or really memorable ones.
Steve: Oh my, sixteen years. Let’s see. In probably 1999 we threw a series of parties called “b_list.” The price to get in was $3—the graffiti tag “$3 too much” is still in my hallway. We had breakdancers spinning on cardboard boxes, go-go dancers, the DJ atop the booth with his pants around his ankles; people were having sex in the bathroom, sex in the water-heater closet, sex in the corner—it was crazy. Someone shat on my couch in the supposedly locked storage area.

Halloween party

brooklyn spaces: Wow. Were all the parties that intense?
Steve: No, no, that was something of an anomaly. When I moved in here it was to make a playground for a variety of artists, and every party had basically two criteria: it had to be multi-disciplinary, and it had to change the space, so that every time you walked in here you went “Ooh, it’s totally different!” We did a series of “Art Inspired By Nature” parties that were very involved: from 6 to 9 it was a proper art gallery, from 9 to 11 there were performances, and then the lights would go down, the DJs would start, and, you know, my parents and all the neighborhood kids would vacate and it would turn into a real party. Those parties were so much effort! First we curated about 30 artists around a nature theme, and then I found an environmental nonprofit partner—for one about water, we partnered with Riverkeeper and they did a lecture for us on the New York Watershed; we also went to the Coney Island Aquarium and got a behind-the-scenes tour of feeding the sharks and propagating jellyfish. For another, about air, we partnered with Earthpledge. So it was about six months of work and planning leading up to a one-night event, and it was like BOOM, crescendo! And then massive depression afterward. It became very difficult to maintain that momentum.

Art Inspired By Nature party

brooklyn spaces: How did you keep from totally wearing yourself out?
Steve: Well, around 2005 I met the Wolf + Lamb guys and started throwing parties with them, which was much easier: all I had to do was set up and clean the space. They had a following, so they’d promote to their people, I’d promote to my people, and everyone would come. There was suddenly this thing called email, which made it all so much easier! So I’ve been doing mostly DJ parties ever since then. We’ve been doing the Mister Saturday Night parties for about five years now, with some Mister Sunday parties in the winter months. They’re the most magical parties, full of a diverse group of people, and even children. We really deck out the space with fun décor and art installations; we’ve been partnering with Jeffrey Ralston, who does amazing inflatables that make everyone smile.

Mister Sunday party

brooklyn spaces: So DJ parties became your main focus.
Steve: Yes, but I do still host smaller, more intimate and creative salons. We’ve had supper clubs and wine tastings and salsa dancing lessons and a jazz concert. Oh, and one of my favorite recent parties was for my birthday, a Bee-Day Party, because I’m now a beekeeper. We had flowers everywhere, there was a honey tasting, we had a little photo booth with Astroturf, a real log, a flower-ringed arbor, sky, clouds, and a kite. Jeff did these gigantic nine-foot inflatable flowers. It was wonderful.

Mister Saturday Night

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about one more really memorable party, where everything just worked perfectly.
Steve: A few years ago we did one called “Dante’s Inferno” in collaboration with the theatre collective Augenblick. It started in the city and went through the Nine Circles of Hell on the way here. The first and second were in Union Square, the third was on the L train platform, the fourth and fifth were in the Lorimer station, the sixth was on the G train at the Classon stop, and then on down the hill. When people approached 12-turn-13, we had all these performers out on the street: fire throwers and twirlers and a nine-foot monster. And then you came inside and the entire space was decorated to be Hell. People walked in through a green screen, and their images were projected in flames elsewhere in the space. It was incredible.

Dante's Inferno party

brooklyn spaces: Having come from the East Village and been here for so long, what do you think is the influence of Brooklyn on 12-turn-13—or the influence of 12-turn-13 on Brooklyn?
Steve: I came to Brooklyn at the right time. I think at this point, finding a space like this, it’s kind of too late unless you have a lot of money or you’re venturing much farther out. But I think there are still pockets all around. I have friends in the Rockaways who bought the Playland Motel, which is an amazing space, and I know there’s the whole industrial complex in Sunset Park that’s going to explode. There’s still that pioneering spirit, and there’s still space if you look for it. During the Red Bull Music Academy, Justin [Carter, of Mister Saturday Night] and I went out to Knockdown Center, and walking into that courtyard, seeing that massive building, I felt like it was 1996 again, this feeling of discovering something new and different and grand and ambitious and magnificent.

Salon Selects Supper Club

brooklyn spaces: Knockdown Center is one of my absolute favorite new spaces.
Steve: Architecturally, it’s astounding. It reminded me of the Lunatarium, this incredible space that was in Dumbo in the 2000s [ed note: check out Jeff Stark’s great piece on the closing of the Lunatarium], or the Fake Shop in Williamsburg, which was a huge warehouse where they had amazing inflatable installations and dark sensory-deprived crawl-space mazes you went through on your hands and knees. Knockdown Center for me was like, “Wow. It’s still happening.” There are always people who want to have an adventure, that craving for discovery. 12-turn-13 is the same, it’s a destination. You need to want to come here, but we’re going to throw such a good party that it will be worth the journey. At least, we hope it will.

***

Like this? Read about more underground party spaces: Rubulad, Gemini & Scorpio, Red Lotus Room, The Lab, Egg & Dart Club, Gowanus Ballroom, Newsonic

By now everyone probably knows the storied history of the Silent Barn. The band Skeletons started the DIY venue in their Ridgewood apartment in 2005 (which I profiled back in 2009), and until 2011 it was a raucous, dingy, rollicking good time—and then they got ransacked. Around $15k worth of equipment was destroyed, and then the city came in and evicted them. That probably should have been that, but the Silent Barn launched a Kickstarter, which brought in more than $40k. So they decided to start over, but this time, to be as legit and legal as they could be.

the Husk; photo from Showpaper

Fast forward to early 2013, and the Silent Barn 2.0 opened its doors in Bushwick. The new incarnation is definitely a continuation of the Husk (which the original space is now called), on a much bigger scale. The building itself is a lot lager—three floors and a yard, with eight bedrooms, thirteen roommates, three stages (or more, as needed), an art gallery, a dozen art and recording studios, and on and on. The scope is bigger too; in addition to music shows nearly every night, there’s the Babycastles videogame collective, science art, Aftermath Supplies artist reuse shop, multimedia video art events, a supper club, piñatas, theatre groups, and a whole lot more. And the community involvement this time around is huge: there are about 150 people participating, in various degrees, in the conceptualizing and running of the space. Administration is framed on the metaphor of a kitchen, and there are about 60 Chefs, each responsible for keeping a small aspect of the Barn going. It’s all volunteer, all consensus, and all making it up as they go along. It is, I think, pioneering a new way to do DIY—intentional, flexible, transparent, and innovative. (Want to join in the fun? Go here.)

Here’s a short Q&A with Katie, the Press Chef, and below that I asked two questions of a dozen different Barn members: 1) What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here, and 2) Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

brooklyn spaces: From the structure of the collective to the special vocabulary to all these working groups—did that evolve spontaneously as you figured it out, or was there a model you were working from?
Katie: We’re making it up as we go. We have weekly Kitchen meetings with all the Chefs, and part of that is Stew, which is all our discussion topics, whether it’s what murals are coming up or how to deal with conflict resolution; everything goes in the Stew and we work it out together.

all pix by Alix Piorun unless noted

brooklyn spaces: I love that. I feel like this space is really breaking new ground in a lot of ways, sort of changing the meaning of DIY in Brooklyn.
Katie: Well, there’s a responsibility here. Places come and go, you know? When the Husk was ransacked, we had such a huge reaction from the community, so it was our responsibility to do things the right way. After the Kickstarter, we could have re-opened the next day—and then probably gotten shut down again. So we decided to focus on longevity. I think we’re really on the right path. People always try to define DIY; we’re still doing it ourselves, we’re just doing it differently. It’s not like we’re trying to change the model for other spaces; this is just what we have to do. Plus look at this! This place rules! This never would have happened if we hadn’t taken the route we took.

Martha Moszczynski’s painting and piñata studio

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on the neighborhood? What’s it like being in Bushwick now, especially after having been in Ridgewood?
Katie: We’re really trying to make ourselves an asset to the neighborhood. We go to community board meetings every month. We want people to know us and recognize us, to know that they can come to a show or book a show or play a show or put up some art. We really want to find new ways to integrate with the community and make our presence a positive thing.

***

brooklyn spaces: What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here?

Katie: I like the ones that seem to be holistic Barn, like when there’s a house show and a complimentary show downstairs. Like the Modular Equinox, which took place in every single room. It was really neat to have that kind of foot traffic everywhere, even in the “private” areas.

Tricia: Lani’s birthday party. We had been holding our breath waiting for a liquor license for so long, and I think that was the first show where we’d really come into our own. It was this giant wild night, everyone went crazy, just the whole Barn partying.

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): This question never gets easier. I’ve seen / thrown / taken part in easily over a thousand shows at Silent Barn! My favorites are those that come out the blue from old friends, the ones that have strange challenges, the ones with moments that feel like magic, the ones that somehow discover a new way to use a place that thousands of bands have been playing with for years.

zine library

Mila (website): I trust that if I show up on any given night, I will see something intriguing. One evening that stands out is the Public Meeting we had in May,“Women in DIY.” It was amazing to see the room filled with women who have done really extraordinary things. It felt supportive and positive, inspiring and motivating, to be a participant in this community.

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): The Wild Boys Immersive Party, which had performances, dream machine, food, piñata, art, community costumes, etc.

another living room; sometimes transforms into the Hawkitori Dinner Club

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): No offense to the events (and I’ll give another shoutout to that Modular Solstice night when there were three completely different events going on simultaneously), but it’s the times in between the events and the things that happen because events are going on that I most remember.

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): My favorite events are the ones I don’t show up for on purpose. I’ll be working in the shop or my studio and there will just be someone singing their heart out or the most nasty thrash band totally destroying. I stumble into the show room with total awe and appreciation of what’s going on and that I happen to be there to witness it.

Deep Cuts (barber shop + record shop)

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): On the one hand, I really love the Modular Synthesizer Solstice and Equinox shows I curate here, because I always include so many individuals who are part of the community and have such crazy visions about weird electronics. On the other hand, I really love our weekly administration meetings because it’s crazy how much we get done for a group with no traditional top-down hierarchy. Both “events” speak to the possibility of surprise still existing in such a dead, predictable, monotonous society.

***

brooklyn spaces: Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

Brandon: I used to do house shows in Michigan, and the intimacy and humanity of that scale of cultural happenings was really important. When I moved to New York I was so depressed, going to all these crappy clubs where they tally at the door how many people paid for your band. It just sucked. And then I found the old Barn and it was so different. It’s a way to exist in New York and interact with other people on a much more human level.

Gravesend Recordings / Future 86 Recording Studio

Katie: I think that’s what a lot of our answers are, actually. I’m from a small town in Mississippi, where there aren’t any clubs or bars or anything, so it’s only DIY stuff, jamming with your friends, playing in someone’s basement or on the beach or whatever. And I was so depressed when I moved to New York too; I got stuck in this dorm with these people I didn’t get, and the Husk was the first place I felt at home. It’s home and family, that’s why we do it.

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): I love working toward the future of Silent Barn along with all these other pretty incredible people who all have such different talents and viewpoints, knowing that I might never had the change to even meet them otherwise.

backyard during Warper blockparty

Tricia: I’m here because I can be. I can’t think of anywhere else that would say, “Hey neuroscientist, come have a space!” Not only can I learn about art and music and DIY culture, but I can collaborate with artists. It’s just amazing to do science and art in the same space. And to show it to people who want to see it!

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): Being here lets us work with a bunch of people who are good at things we’re not good at. For a recent show, Martha made a huge dick piñata for us. It would have taken me ages to figure out how to make a dick piñata! There’s so many skillsets here. You can just email the Kitchen saying, “I need this weird thing. Does anyone have it or can anyone do it?” and you get three emails back saying, “I can do that!”

another living room; paintings by Devin Lily, photography by Nina Mashurova

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): The constant friction and motion of interacting with people, art, life, and general day-to-day bullshit, like emptying trash cans or drinking coffee and sharing “that time I puked” stories over a taco. Navigating a place that is a whole made up of parts, and all the interesting drama that brings about, while ultimately having a community of people who’ve got your back. A second place to call home, to take creative refuge in.

One the living rooms; art by Lena Hawkins, Lani Combier-Kapel, Jen May

Lani (Volunteer Chef): It’s easy to get wrapped in bar culture here, or to just go to a show and leave to go home, fall asleep, and go to your 9–5 job. That’s not the life I’m interested in; I want to be immersed in the art and music that happens here. Being involved in Silent Barn satisfies a part of my personality that helps me grow as an artist and musician.

Eli (Art Chef): Silent Barn is an excellent experiment in joining art, life, and politics. We’ve managed to corral so many brilliant people and force their conflicts and concordances into creating something with the potential to be truly new and exciting.

Nina (hosts Phresh Cutz): It’s this great community environment that really supports experimental ideas or any kind of creative thing. My whole life, the events I’ve really enjoyed and been inspired by have been in community-based creative art spaces like this, so it’s really great to support that and help facilitate it by giving people space to do what they want to do.

Phresh Cutz, photo by Meghan O’Byrne

Kunal (Babycastles): The thing that’s important is the promise of this strange experiment actually producing something of immense value to the world. Once we get all the pieces solidly in place, a massively successful mechanism of including participation from almost anyone interested, a successful “community-building” pathway for any new voice interested in gathering and growing any piece of culture inside of a stew of culture, successfully extending the value of all this community, strengthening the celebration to our direct neighbors and thereby to the city as a whole as a truly exhaustively functioning projection of the social ecosystem that the world should be, the potential for the thing to be so strong that it continues to channel and nurture and organize new voices in art and communication almost entirely, and finally, some sort of flowering and seeding aspect, where the energy is too much for the small space, and the vision encompassed inside starts to blow up, fly with the wind to surrounding areas, and just take over life in the city itself, and the ideas propagate strongly and successfully. Stuff like that.

Hieroglyph Thesaurus performing

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): Silent Barn acts as an artistically inclined autonomous zone, where we get to make the rules and share the work we want and are excited by. I don’t think it’s too different than the DIY ethos of other collective art spaces in Brooklyn and around the world throughout history, but I happen to live here and want to be able to participate directly in the culture I consume, and this is as solidly sustainable a way to do so, on my own terms, that I’ve found in New York.

Mila: The Barn is a place where my ideas about what I can and can’t do are constantly challenged. I am constantly forced to reexamine how I think and how I do things, because infinitely more is possible, permissible, and at stake. Plus it feels like family.

Title:Point theatre company’s desk/workspace.

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): I participate in the Silent Barn because it’s giving vitality and substance and life to the concept of constructing our own world—a concept that I find hyper-American but strangely near extinct in this country today. I love experiencing the art and ideas that all these diverse individuals create and, in a broader sense, I love helping to create the space that makes that human freedom possible.

***

Like this? Read about more collectives: Flux Factory, Monster Island, the Schoolhouse, Hive, Bushwick Project for the Arts

This article was written for Hyperallergic. See the original here.

Most of the coverage you’ll find about the Broken Angel, a handmade architectural marvel in Clinton Hill, begins the story in 2006, when there was a small fire that started all the trouble. That’s the year the tale switches from one about brilliant bohemian artists building their crazy dreamhouse to one about an eccentric old man overwhelmed by legal troubles, shady business partners, and the strangling bureaucracy of the city.

Before I delve into a little history of this incredible space, here’s the time-sensitive part: there’s a block party tonight to say farewell to the Broken Angel, which was originally organized as a small, ten-person gathering but has ballooned to an enormous, two-part spectacle, with over 900 people planning to attend. The festivities begin outside the house itself (4–6 Downing St.) for a family-friendly fête, and will then move to the Irondale Center for a fundraiser turned Brooklyn underground extravaganza, filled to the brim with dancers and performers and tall bikes and DJs and many, many surprises.

And now please read on to learn more about the mad genius whose work is being celebrated.

Arthur Wood has been likened to an American Gaudí. The Broken Angel has been compared to LA’s Watts Towers and Austin’s Cathedral of Junk. Borough President Marty Markowitz called it “a Rubik’s Cube of a spaceship.” It’s been termed vernacular architecture, folk art, outsider art, and—naturally, by some—a frightening eyesore. In its heyday, the Brooklyn Angel was surely the most strikingly unique sculptural works in all of New York. Tragically, much of it has been dismantled in the past decade, and what’s left is not likely to last much longer.

Arthur Wood (who is now 84) and his wife Cynthia (who passed away in 2010) bought the former Brooklyn Trolley headquarters at a city auction in 1979. They paid a mere $2,000 for the four-story, 10,000-square-foot building. And then they began to turn it into art.

Cynthia & Arthur in 2005

According to Shannon Kerner, a close friend of Arthur’s, the Woods began by tearing out the walls and floors and creating many different-sized rooms, some four sweeping stories high, others only five feet. The main staircase was a series of ladders and bridges. Most of the wood and other materials used were salvaged from the streets and garbage dumps, and the space was filled with handmade stained-glass windows Cynthia created from found glass and bottles. In the basement Arthur built a hot tub with a waterfall. And the best-known element of the Broken Angel was on the roof: the Woods constructed a spectacular forty-foot wood-and-glass sculpture on a mirrored platform, which made the whole structure seem to be floating in the clouds.

Shannon describes the rooftop sculpture:

The roof structure branched into two towers. The front one had a huge camera obscura which gave a 360º view of the neighborhood (seven flights up!). You could see blocks and blocks in great detail on a huge white linoleum table scavenged from the street. There was a sweet wooden deck up there too, for stargazing (Arthur loves inventing star-gazing equipment) or hanging out or making art. The back tower was a cool sculpture; you couldn’t hang out on it so much, but you could tangle yourself in its branches (I use the term “branches” metaphorically). In the back there was also another deck that was all stucco, it was like being in the Southwest U.S. The house was an amalgam of all kinds of amazing environments!

Brandon Stanton from Humans of New York, who interviewed Arthur in 2011, said, “Arthur’s sparkling ideas were built with other people’s trash. The concepts were towering and glistening. The realities were made of plywood.” The Woods spent decades creating their masterpiece, finishing major construction in 2002. On their son Chris’ Flickr page (from which all the photos in this post are taken), he said his parents “creat[ed] a home which brought mystery, magic and magnificence to a small cul-de-sac in Brooklyn.” The Village Voice deemed it the “Best Urban Folly” of 2001. In 2002 the New York Times wrote: “Depending on the angle, Broken Angel may resemble a blimp impaled on a church or a laboratory from which some mad scientist might launch a pedal-driven flying machine.” In 2004, Michel Gondry used the Broken Angel as the backdrop for Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. It represents the kind of fantastic treasure that revitalizes your excitement about your neighborhood, that renews your faith in art triumphing over everything—up to and including reason.

And then in 2006 there was a fire. It was small, on one of the top turrets. There was minimal damage and no one was hurt, but that was the point when things began to go downhill. The firefighters on the scene deemed the building unsafe to enter, and the Department of Buildings was notified. They immediately ruled the place unfit for occupancy and evicted the Woods, who were arrested a few days later when they refused to leave. To bring the building up to code—including tearing down the forty feet of additional structure on the roof—would cost around $3 million.

The community rallied around the Woods, including Pratt architecture professor Brent M. Porter, who, along with seven of his students, tried to prove that the building was, in fact, structurally sound. When that didn’t work, the Woods partnered with real estate developer Shahn Andersen to bring it up to code and convert it into condos and art studios. This was a hopeful moment, where it seemed that Arthur’s full vision for the Broken Angel would finally be realized, saving the fantastical space and even opening it up to artists and the community.

On Brownstoner, a commenter named phyllyslim recently talked about having considered joining the project, and the plans Arthur had for it:

The building was [going to be] transformed into a “museum of light” as he termed it… There was to be a parabolic dish in the cellar where light from a prism in the then existing cupola would be directed… There was to be the “cathedral of light” in the front addition where schoolchildren would come to play with interactive exhibits in light, and much more.

In addition, Brownstoner reported at the time that Arthur planned to cap it all off by creating a huge whale out of an old helicopter and hanging it from the building.

Arthur's blueprint for the finished project

After the fire, the Chris Woods wrote, “Many of you wonder what the hell my parents are doing with that building. They have always been building an outline of a dream.” And sadly, as with most such spectacularly unlikely dreams, this one was not to be. There followed three years of complicated legal and financial troubles, with loans defaulted on, trusts broken, promises unkept, and money gone missing. Shahn and Arthur went from collaborators to litigious enemies, and the property was foreclosed upon by the lender, Madison Realty Capital, in 2009. By then Broken Angel had been mostly gutted, the majority of its superbly unique elements removed. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, Cynthia lost her long battle with cancer. Arthur has been in and out of the building ever since.

Many feel that Arthur has been unfairly treated by the city and its emissaries. Arthur himself believes the Department of Buildings started the fire in order to come in and condemn the building. In 2007, Brownstoner noted “the intense level of scrutiny and apparent lack of straight dealing [Arthur and Shahn] received from both DOB and the courts,” and Chris wrote: “The department of Buildings and the City of New York should drop their campaign of harassment and recognize that Brooklyn wants the building that Arthur Wood envisioned, not another boring box of bricks. Why is our building under such scrutiny while other buildings in NY have actually collapsed?”

And the fight to goes on. Says Shannon, “This type of structure belongs in New York, in Brooklyn. We need places like this! Instead of tearing it down the city should have worked with him to preserve it, make it safe to their standards, sure, but make it better.” Shalin Sculpham, another friend of Arthur’s, told the New York Daily News, “It’s one of the weirdest, most beautiful buildings in New York—and his life’s work. And it’s being taken away.”

Now the city has given Arthur one more final notice, so barring another stay of execution, March 30th, 2013 will be Arthur’s last day in his home of nearly thirty years. Shannon says they chose to have a block party to give people a chance to say farewell to Broken Angel, “to wish Arthur well and maybe sing him a song or dance him a dance or do something to show their support of the situation. They could bring all their favorite memories of the space, shake his hand, share some cookies…” Chris has said that they would like to put together a time capsule to hide in the building, so people can bring something small to contribute to that. Ever hopeful, friends have put out an open call for (pro bono) legal help (contact brokenangelbk@gmail.com to get involved!), and a donation page has been set up, in the hopes of raising $50,000 to keep on fighting.

the Woods' stove

So this could really be the end of Broken Angel, but people have been saying that for nearly a decade—if not longer. Arthur is old now, and tired, but he’s still feisty, and he has support from many different corners. And after all, for someone who created the miraculous Broken Angel out of salvaged bottles and boards, would it be so unreasonable to hope for a few more years to keep creating miracles within it?

***

Like this? Read about more historic buildings: Brooklyn Lyceum, Brooklyn Historical Society, Bushwick Schoolhouse, Breuckelen Distilling Co., South Oxford Space, Trinity Project

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!

***

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

Like Red Lotus Room’s Shanghai Mermaid, Page Not Found is best known for one of its recurring events: Chaos Cooking, “A continuing social experiment where up to 60 people cook 60 recipes in one kitchen, four burners, one oven. All dishes must be finished in four hours while everyone is drinking wine, socializing, and putting delectable food in their mouths.”

all photos by Maya Edelman

It’s every bit as fun—and delicious—as it sounds. The last time I went, I ate: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola, pork & Brussels sprout shooters with pickled cauliflower chasers, nachos, Persian-spiced truffles, edamame hummus, tiramisu, beer & cheese soup, winter melon salad, and dozens of other delicacies—all made on the spot, all at once. I made endive stuffed with goat cheese, raisins, and an amazing sauce from the Brooklyn Salsa Company. The event, of which there have been more than twenty in a couple of years, draws all kinds of people, from all ages and demographics, including hipsters, foodies, neighbors, Burners, Couchsurfers, and the generally curious. Everyone is invariably kind and courteous and can’t wait to hear what you’re cooking.

my dish

Page Not Found is home to Joe and Margaret and their two cats, Baloney Gabba-Goo and Eddie Tuna Cupcake Mohawk Feather Teddybear Pancake Weezer Haiku (says Margaret: “We usually call her either Pupcake or Fatty Tuna or Haiku”). They used to host some wild parties, but these days they’re more likely to have art shows, modern dance performances, and bands in their space. But Chaos Cooking is still their pride and joy, and they’ve just launched a website to spread the word, and to encourage people to host Chaos Cookings in their own city, town, or backyard.

Joe & Margaret amid the chaos

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to do this?
Joe: It started out of a longing for that feeling you get when you’re with your family during the holidays and everyone’s in the kitchen cooking at the same time, chatting and gossiping and catching up and laughing and asking each other, “What can I do to help?” It’s just a great feeling. So we tried it once, with eighteen friends, and it was wonderful. I think the second one had twenty-five, and we thought that would be crazy, but it still seemed to work.
Margaret: People kept asking, “Can I bring my friend to the next one?” And we were like, “Next one?”

brooklyn spaces: I first read about Chaos Cooking on Nonsense NYC. What made you decide to open it up to the community?
Joe: We like people, and we figure if someone want to come to an event like this, they’re probably someone we’d like to meet. Nonsense is an amazing list, it kind of changed my life. But listing there was a bit of a controlled experiment, because not everyone’s reading it.

brooklyn spaces: What are some really memorable dishes that people have made?
Margaret: One time Ryan did this seven-day marinated pork. David once made lamb with yogurt-truffle sauce.
Joe: There was this one guy, I wish I could remember his name, who was traveling in India, and there’s a certain type of tea that you can only get on this one mountain there, so he hiked the mountain and picked this tea and brought it back and made this chai concoction that was just amazing, like nothing else I’ve ever had.
Margaret: One time my brother and his girlfriend made chocolate lollipops with Pop Rocks in the middle.
Joe: There was chocolate-covered pomegranate, that was really good. I save all the sign-in sheets, which list what people made. There’s some incredible stuff. Baklava, peaches and pancetta, coconut-curry lentils… What we really like is that the concept is so simple, and people are so self-reliant. The more we got into it, the more we realized that anybody could do this. There are already Chaos Cooking communities that are bigger than the one in New York.
Margaret: There’s one in Winston-Salem, I recently learned. I think they most likely heard about it from the New York Times article that was written about us, or the NPR piece. Theirs seems a little different, more families, with a down-home kind of feel, but it looks like they have a great time.
Joe: Chaos Cooking is an idea that spans gender and age and really any sort of demographic, because everyone loves to cook, and most people love to do it together.
Margaret: Especially with people you don’t know very well. It’s really easy to get to know people through cooking.
Joe: It makes people feel comfortable, and I think one of the things that makes it work is that everyone has something to do and be proud of, something to share and something to receive, and something to talk about. It’s like all social barriers are resolved.

brooklyn spaces: I’m always struck by how calm and kind the vibe is. How did you manage to make these events where everybody’s just happy and wants to talk to each other?
Margaret: Everybody’s eating!
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s the trick. Also, if you’re a complete jerk, you’re probably not going to go to a cooking event.
Margaret: I think if you’re a jerk, you’re probably more of a taker. And if you come to a cooking event, you’re expected to do just as much as everybody else.
Joe: I never thought about that, that’s a really good point. I think you’re right, the people who are drawn to it are givers or contributors. But you’re definitely getting a lot also. You’re eating a lot.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Bushwick has anything to do with the way this came about?
Joe: Well, we really like having it here. It’s great when the neighbors come over and cook with us. There’s a Puerto Rican family next door and the mom is really into it. And our neighbor Manny, a middle-aged African American woman, she brought a couple of her girlfriends once and they all cooked with us. I think that’s really cool. There’s a feeling of frontier here in Bushwick, and there’s a little bit of risk. But our neighbors love us, and we love our neighbors. We don’t hold ourselves in. The neighborhood around here is a little rough, but the neighbors are awesome.

Like this? Read about more food event spaces: Egg & Dart Club, Ger-Nis, Breuckelen Distilling, Treehaus, Grub at Rubulad

Self-described as “Brooklyn’s underground launchpad for performing artists,” Greenroom Brooklyn is run by violinist and dancer Johnny Arco, with help from Ryan Alexander and several friends. They’ve thrown nine parties in the last year, primarily on their roof, and they bring in lots of musicians and DJs to keep everyone dancing and to foster impromptu and spontaneous performances throughout the night.

the first party, photo by Dylan Hess

They invited me out to a party in September, and I got there as they were putting the finishing touches on the rooftop decorations. It looked amazing, full of lights and art, with instrument clusters in three corners. And then it started to rain. I watched the assorted crew go from skeptical to worried, and then, once the decision was made to move the party downstairs into the loft proper, I was privy to (and a small part of) the most organized, polite, un-frantic overhaul I could have imagined. With fewer than a dozen people, in less than an hour, everything was brought inside down makeshift ladders and through half-functional windows, all the furniture in the loft was rearranged, lights and amps and mics were all wired and hung and assembled throughout the space. By the time they opened the doors to a slightly restless and sizable crowd, it looked like they’d planned on an indoor party all along.

Check out this video they made to introduce their space, and then read on for my Q&A with Johnny!

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Johnny: It evolved pretty organically. We had our first party last July; it wasn’t planned very well, but all these awesome people came. I’ve been an active musician my entire life, so I got together with some other musicians and started doing jam sessions, which turned into live music and DJ parties. We started getting better at seeing what was happening, how to get a quality crowd.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: So what, in your opinion, makes the party?
Johnny: The music’s super important, and the crowd. We make sure we have really terrific performers and DJs. And we invite people who are trying to do something, whatever it may be. That way, the ultimate goal of the party is to help people find other people who are doing things that could help them in their life, you know? People come to the party and become friends and start doing projects together.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the bands who have played here?
Johnny: They haven’t been set bands. We invite lots of musicians and they come together and play. It’s always kind of impromptu. I just make sure to invite people I respect, and say, “Oh look, there’s a microphone! There’s a guitar! What if we shine a blue light on you…?” and see what happens.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: Why did you pick this neighborhood?
Johnny: Oh man, this neighborhood totally picked me. When I first came to see the space, I had already put down a deposit on a place in the East Village. But I came here anyway, just to check it out. It was massive, with nothing built out, completely open, two walls of windows. I got here at sunset, took one look around, and pulled out my violin. I was like, “I need to play in here right now.” And it was like the most chambery, echoey, cathedral-like tone I’d ever heard in my life—well no, that’s not true, but in my home for sure. Anyway, I had to live here. And it’s been incredible. I don’t have an expensive life, I get to play music all day long, and I’m surrounded by other artists and entrepreneurs who are doing what they love and want to do. Bushwick rocks.

Johnny Arco, Reuben Cainer, & Jeff Miles, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: As an artist, are you inspired by being in Brooklyn?
Johnny: I’ve been an artist and a performer for my entire life, but I definitely feel lucky to be in Brooklyn and have this type of space. It makes it seem like every time I pick up my instrument and play, I’m doing something special. Even if it’s just some friends hanging out, I feel like I’m performing in New York City, like I’m living and making it in the hardest place for a performer to make it. It’s not “I live in Brooklyn, now I’m inspired to be an artist.” It’s “I live in Brooklyn, and I am an artist. This is what people fucking dream of.” I think that’s what everybody here feels, whether they’re doing sound or lights or just hanging up a piece of art in an apartment. It feels so real, because it is real, the Greenroom is real, we’re really doing this. And there’s also a real responsibility, because we’re living in Brooklyn, being artists in Brooklyn, being inspired by Brooklyn. There’s an obligation to make something of quality, something we’re proud to have in Brooklyn.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Johnny: We want to set up a system so that the Greenroom isn’t just the loft space itself, but something portable that we can take with us. We want to do a loft tour throughout the country, to get in touch with other people and say, “Hey, we have a cool loft space where we can do this stuff, you have a cool loft space where you can do this stuff, can we bring our crew and our equipment over and have a good time?” We’ve already got people onboard for Philly, D.C., and Boston. We’re trying to do the whole thing next March, from Montreal down to Austin. That’s the goal.

photo by Alix Piorun

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Like this? Read about more apartment party spaces: Bushwick Project for the Arts, Hive NYC, Egg & Dart Club, Dead Herring, Jerkhaus, Newsonic, The Schoolhouse

According to The Bushwiki, PS 52 was built in 1883 and served as an arts-intensive elementary school until 1945, when it was sold for use as a manufacturing space.

I couldn’t find any information on what happened to it over the next fifty years, but the New York Times steps up to fill in the space’s modern history: in 1996, a twenty-something artist named Erin McGonigle found it listed as a rental in the Village Voice. The building was decrepit and overrun with debris, and Erin and some friends took five months getting it into livable shape. When they started living in the refurbished Schoolhouse they called themselves ORT, an acronym for “organizing resources together.” In 2002 the second floor opened, ushering in the second wave of the collective.

Some artists who passed through in those early years include: photographer David Linton, Yale drama critic Sunder Ganglani, poet Ariana Reines, composer Keiko Uenishi (who works with Issue Project Room), Grace Space director Jill McDermid, video artist Tia Dunn, Smithsonian dancer Samir Bitar, costume designer Kaibrina Sky Buck (who has paintings in the Museum of Sex), trash and performance artist Gertrude Berg, journalist Erika Yorio (who wrote for Nylon), musician Toshio Kajiwara, artist Elliot Kurtz, filmmaker Derek Deems, blogger EV Bogue, and artist Mariette Papic, who gave me a ton of information to help with this piece.

In addition to serving as home for a revolving cast of artists, the Schoolhouse (also sometimes called the Old Schoolhouse or the Old Red Schoolhouse) hosts plenty of events. A small sampling of the musicians who have performed there over the years: Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Magnum, Verbal Graffiti, Spanish Prisoners, Madame Beak, The Christopher Complex, Zachary Cale, Revival Times, The Asteroid #4, Hollow Jones, and DJ Polarity. Todd P has even put on some shows there.

The artists currently living in the Schoolhouse (there are about twenty spread over three floors) consider themselves the third wave of the collective. They run the gamut of creative pursuits, including photography and visual arts, musicians and DJs, fashion design, jewelry making, screenprinting, and even mobile art. One of the benefits of the space is of course how freaking huge it is, and though many of the bedrooms are kind of tiny, the vast common areas make up for it. I sat down with Justin, Chris, Willy, and Dave to talk about their experiences living and making art in this incredible space.

brooklyn spaces: Were you guys drawn to this space specifically, or to Bushwick in general?
Willy: The space. I’d never lived in Bushwick before, I didn’t really know much about it. I’d been to a few different spaces that were built out and thought they were cool, but I’d never seen anything like this before. You walk in here and you just feel the creative energy. And now I get to come home to it.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being here has affected the way you do your art, the choices that you make thematically or physically?
Dave: Absolutely. A big thing about this space is having people bounce off each other, and inspiring each other to be greater and to dream bigger. How could you not be affected by other creative people? You’d have to be an alien.
Justin: We all have our more and less productive periods, but for the most part, most of us are always working on something. So you go into Chris’s room and you get inspired by what he’s doing, or you go downstairs and see the screenprinting and get inspired by that. And then the building itself, having artists living here for so long, it has this energy that just resonates. It’s a give and take; the more you put into the place and the more you’re doing, the more it really gets energized. But there’s definitely always something going on that you could tap into.

brooklyn spaces: I know in the space’s early years there were some robberies and trouble with community integration. Do you feel like you guys have overcome that?
Dave: Yeah, when we started throwing the block party. Block parties are incredible, every community should do it.
Chris: The block parties are a lot of fun. We do that every summer.
Justin: Everyone in the neighborhood comes out and contributes. This year they roasted a pig.
Willy: There was a giant inflatable water slide. We had the ball-throwing machine where you get dunked.
Dave: We put speakers on the roof, there was a live mariachi band, and then we played old funk records, hip-hop, salsa, Brazilian music, for the block, you know? To show the love and appreciation we have for all art and music. It really makes it safer for the artists who live here.
Willy: Now we know everyone, everyone looks out for each other.
Dave: You have to be a part of the community. You can’t just narrow-mindedly walk past the people who live right next to you. During the block party we open up our home and show people that we’re cool, that we’re in the same struggle. Artists ain’t making a lot of money, you know what I mean? So now everybody sees each other as human beings, and that’s beautiful.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get it started? Did you just go knocking on people’s doors?
Chris: We actually did have to go door-to-door to get the petition.
Dave: Yeah, but it started before that, once we made friends with Sonny. There’s always a hawk on the block who watches, a grandfather spirit, and that’s the person you have to meet and be friends with. It was actually his idea to do the block party. And then we took our strength and went and got the permits to show that we were serious, that we were taking an initiative in the community.

brooklyn spaces: Are you involved with the greater Bushwick art community?
Dave: Yeah. Jason Andrews, who does Norte Maar and Storefront, he stumbled in on one of the music shows here and he scooped me up, and then he showed Justin’s artwork at one of his galleries, so it just all started being interconnected. I performed for the first BOS show at the Collision Machine three or four years ago. I think Arts in Bushwick really started to connect the different spaces, because everybody could come and see everybody’s space and meet each other. We do shows at the McKibben Lofts now, and they come do shows over here. It’s an ongoing artistic explosion.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any thoughts about being an artist in Bushwick these days?
Dave: I don’t think anybody can take credit for what’s happening; I think it’s universal, I think it’s a sign of the times. This area is just part of that shift. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a greater world, a new belief that we want to get together and be creative again, to be dreamers again. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everybody’s cut out to be on Wall Street, not everybody’s cut out to be a doctor. Some people just like to fucking paint, some people want to beat on a drum. And we should let that live, not stifle it with overpriced rent and over-gentrification.
Chris: As far as art in Bushwick, I think it’s awesome. I think things like Bushwick Open Studios are brilliant. We need to get more recognition out here. Manhattan’s boring, nothing’s really going on in Manhattan. People still sometimes look at Bushwick and think dangerous, like Bed-Stuy, dangerous, and I think it’s just ridiculous. People hear about us and go, “Oh, a bunch of white kids in the ghetto making art.” Not really, we’re hanging out with our neighbors, we’re doing our thing, everybody’s doing their thing, and we’ve got this beautiful space to show for it.

***

Like this? Read about more art collectives: Flux Factory, Swimming Cities, Monster Island, Hive NYC, Arch P&D, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Silent Barn

During this year’s Bushwick Open Studios, I had an ambitious roster of spaces to hit, and by a fortuitous chance, one of those was Hive NYC, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art space that is home to a collective of musicians, visual artists, writers, actors, photographers, and aerialists. There was fantastic art on display, by Jewel Lim, Tamar Meir, Our Guy, Sigal Arad Inbar, and Fumie Eshii. And the artists who were there—Yula, Isaac, Kate, and Melanie—were just amazingly warm and welcoming.

Yula, Isaac, Kate, and Melanie, photo by Maximus Comissar

They showed us all around the space, then brought out a lovely little impromptu lunch: salad and couscous, hummus and boiled eggs, avocados and cheese and coffee. They were bubbling over with excitement about their space, their projects, their bands, and the life they’re making for themselves. In addition to art and music, they have plas to green their home with a rooftop garden, compost, a water accumulation system, and doing more buiding with salvaged and reused materials. They even have their own living metaphor: an actual beehive on the roof.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How did the space get started?
Kate: There was a group of us all playing music together, and we were all into different forms of art as well, like I write, Isaac does theatre productions, we have a saw-player who paints, our trombone player is working on a rooftop garden, stuff like that. So the idea was just to bring in as many people as possible and give them a place to create whatever they wanted to create.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How did you find the space?
Yula: It was so amazing, it happened really fast. About a year ago, I told a friend, “What I want is to have a little sanctuary for the people I know and love, so they could do whatever they want to do.” And in no more than a year, the Hive started coming together. All these people started being drawn in, our friends brought more friends, and each one of them were geniuses in their little ways. So we were like, “Okay, we need a home.” And a month later, I found this place on Craigslist. Isaac came here, and he was like, “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing!” The landlords are awesome, they’re artists, they said, “As long as you don’t burn the place down, you can do anything you want.” And so we moved in and started doing things. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s also really rewarding and fun.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What was the last show you had?
Yula: We had a show last night, and our band The eXtended Family played with Dolchnakov Brigade. There were so many people here, it was ridiculous.
Kate: It was so overwhelmingly positive too, everyone was just having a great time. I think there’s a mutual understanding that this isn’t a club, this is a place where people live. We had so many people dancing, and all this artwork all around, and nothing got disturbed, there were no problems at all, there was just a really beautiful, positive energy.

Yula and the eXtended Family, photo from streetcredmusic

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the other projects people here do?
Yula: The eXtended Family is the heart, it’s all of us. The music is very eclectic. We call it ro-punk, romantic punk, but you can’t really define it, it’s a mix of a lot of shit thrown together with a kind of punchy attitude, but in a positive way. And then Dolchnakov Brigade is just like a megalomaniac onion, an underdog-ish, fascist kick in the face. There are several other bands who work with us too, there’s Crooks & Perverts, Gato Loco, This Way to the Egress, Torcher Chamber Ensemble.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Kate: We have a website that features writers, artists, music, sustainability projects, and humor, as well as allowing members to barter for goods and services.
Yula: There’s also a Philly Hive. They’re doing events in a place called BookSpace, with aerialists and circus-ish type stuff and book readings and poetry.
Kate: One of our members is the editor of Helo: The Crisis Story Magazine. We’re also in the middle of a Kickstarter to try to raise money to get our roof garden off the ground, ha ha.
Yula: We have bees on our roof now. Thirty thousand little sweet bees! I never thought I would be so comfortable around so many bees. But you can be one foot away from this huge swarm, and they don’t bother you, they just mind their own business.
Kate: Didn’t you name them all Deborah?
Yula: Yes, Deborah the Hive. It’s one organism made of many little things, which is a perfect metaphor for us.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like Brooklyn has influenced the way you conceive the space, or do you think spaces like this are having an impact on the way that Brooklyn is right now?
Yula: I think the second. For us at least. You can do pretty much anything you want here if you respect everything else. And if you set that tone, people respond to it wonderfully. Little by little, if you just spread it slowly, you might be able to make a difference in a larger way. As soon as Bushwick Open Studios started and I started walking around the neighborhood, I was like, “We’re not the only people doing this!” It’s wonderful. We just need to make some connections and make this trust circle bigger, broader, and stronger, and then who knows what can happen? I’m hoping that this is just the beginning, that everybody’s going to pick up from this and just do more and more.
Kate: There’s been a pretty big snowball effect since we’ve started. We’ve been picking up more and more people and having a great time. This space has definitely come together very quickly.
Yula: If we can just continue to do what we do and enjoy it, that’s all we really want. Just don’t bother us doing it. World, don’t interfere. If you have any bad intentions, just stay out.

Like this? Read about more communal art spaces: The Schoolhouse, Swimming Cities, Arch P&D, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Flux Factory, Bushwick Project for the Arts

Treehaus is a collective home centered around sustainability, open communication, respect, and cooking. There are thirteen members of the collective sharing a lovely four-floor brownstone, along with two cats and three chickens. Many of the housemates are artists, filmmakers, and crafters—a few are working on a documentary about the space, and one is in the middle of conceiving a performance art piece centered around a mermaid-egg piñata full of frozen shrimp. They often have parties, music, and other cool events, including craft swaps, dances, and an annual Pie Social.

They were all incredibly low-key and warm and welcoming, offering me any of their communal food, as well as some awesome homemade Treehaus Tea. During our interview, housemates wandered in and out, cooking and sharing and laughing and talking. It was a great picture of happy domestic coexistence, and a strong argument for the benefits of communal living in our huge, often lonely and alienating city.

Interview with Aimeé, Jackie, and Dave below!

brooklyn spaces: What’s the reigning ethos here? What unites you guys?
Jackie: I would say there are two basic things. First is that the idea of cooperative living is working together toward a higher ideal, trying to build something greater than any of us could do on our own. And the second is food. We all share food, we have a lot of things that we try to avoid buying, and we like to do things like supporting local farms by buying into CSAs. We do a lot of our cooking from scratch, which keeps our cost of living down and encourages people to be resourceful, and it’s a great way to ensure that we’re shopping with lower impact.
Aimeé: It’s much less waste when you buy a fifty-pound sack of rice or beans, instead of a million cans.
Dave: I think one thing that we all have in common is we all want to be part of something. Everybody here is a social person. You can’t just go in your room and shut the door when you come home.

brooklyn spaces: Are you involved in projects together outside of the house?
Jackie: A lot of people here are artists, and sometimes they collaborate with each other, but in terms of what we do as a collective entity, the house is the project. A physical manifestation of that is our monthly house workdays. The kitchen shelves were built at a house workday, and so were these tables and the chicken coop in the backyard. It’s about adding value to the house.
Aimeé: It’s also a way of seeing what we collectively have as resources. Steven and myself and a few others are developing an organization called Co-op NYC. We want to bring together the large number of people who have each other at their disposal, for skillshares, art, whatever. We’ve been doing events for that—we did a panel at the Anarchist Book Fair, talking about what it means to live in a community, and how you can start a community for yourself. There’s a lot of talk about taking responsibility and intention. In New York people think that if you’re living in these sorts of circumstances, it’s just because you’re young or poor, not that it’s something you’re choosing, but that eventually you’ll get over it, or you’ll get money and you’ll leave. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll live here the rest of my life, but the idea of intention and having a community and being responsible to them is one I hope I won’t abandon.

brooklyn spaces: What lessons have you learned, or what advice do you have, about how communal living can work better?
Aimeé: Last year we went to NASCO for the first time, and it was really fun to see this whole world of people choosing to live cooperatively. For me the lesson is always just respect, respect, respect. You often don’t think about the ways you interact with people unless you’re forced to do it constantly, in a space where you’re really responsible and accountable. The times when you have problems are when you feel you’ve been disrespected and the person won’t acknowledge it or take responsibility for it, or even talk to you about it.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have an accountability process if something goes wrong?
Jackie: We have a couple things in place that are minor, mostly about chores and dishes and mess.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Aimeé: Some of the stuff we touched on, like anti-oppression training, talking about what it means to be a part of the community in a positive way. Also reaching out to other co-ops, and being more invested in Treehaus as an entity. We’ve all been thinking a lot about what it meant to be here. I think moving forward as a house is about making it into something more meaningful than just a place where a bunch of eclectic people live because it’s inexpensive and we like each other.
Jackie: Recently we’ve had a lot of conversations about respect and communication and everything, and we’ve became more aware of our roles in the house and what it means to be here, as well as the value of being direct and honest about what you need from the people around you, which is not something that is often encouraged in day-to-day life. I think it really made us value one another and the fact that this place exists. This is really kind of a new organization; it’s a group that is growing together. New people come in and that completely changes the dynamic because they have something to add, or somebody leaves so there’s that piece missing, and we learn to make a new shape out of it together.

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Like this? Read about other communal living spaces: Hive NYC, Jerkhaus, The Schoolhouse

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