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: gowanus | space type: recreation | active since: 2013 | links: website, facebook, twitter

As soon as Royal Palms owners Ashley and Jonathan walked into a former die-cutting factory on the Gowanus Canal, they knew they had to make the shuffleboard club they’d dreamed about. “We just plunked down our life savings and started figuring out how to make it happen,” Ashley says. They worked on it for two years, spending a long time raising money, including a Kickstarter campaign for the actual courts, which raised more than twice its goal. “That gave us a lot of confidence,” Jonathan says. “It showed us how many people were excited to support this idea, to make our passion project their passion project.”

pix by Alix Piorun

As they’d hoped, the somewhat archaic game, long relegated to retirement homes and cruise ships, is doing swimmingly in Brooklyn. It’s the perfect intersection of nostalgia, novelty, and challenge, plus it’s a very social game that you can play with a drink in your hand. “Shuffleboard takes a minute to learn but a lifetime to master,” says Ashley. “It’s hard to be very, very good, but it’s also hard to be very, very bad.”

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

neighborhood: coney island | space type: nonprofit museum | active since: 1985 | links: website, facebook, twitter

In 1985, David Sharps—a self-taught and then Paris-trained juggler and clown—bought the Lehigh Valley Railroad Barge No. 79 for $1. At the time, the 1914 cargo ship was sunk eight feet deep in the mudflats of Edgewater, NJ, and it took David two years to remove 300 tons of mud from the hull, restore the barge, and get her floating again.

pix by Alix Piorun

By the mid-1980s, the barge had become a floating nonprofit museum. In addition to displays about maritime history and the story of this ship in particular, the Waterfront Museum is filled with artifacts—signboards, tools, lanterns, fittings, barrels, foghorns, bells—the majority of which has been donated by fans and enthusiasts.

The museum, which has been docked in Red Hook since 1994, also acts as a floating classroom and cultural programming venue. In twenty years it has brought hundreds of thousands of people to the waterfront, from school groups to tourists, for everything from circuses to lectures to weddings. The Red Hook community board has pointed to the Waterfront Museum as possibly the single most significant factor in bringing people to the neighborhood for the first time.

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

neighborhood: clinton hill | space type: art gallery & coworking | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter

A few years into its stride, Freecandy has become a malleable space for independent creative individuals to convene and showcase their work. By day it’s used for coworking, with creative types building apps, miximg music, managing bands, and designing streetwear; by night the space morphs into an art gallery, music venue, black-box theatre, or whatever the situation calls for.

all photos by Alix Piorun

Founder Todd Triplett’s goal is for Freecandy to bring all different kinds of people together in what he calls “directed serendipity” to see what develops. Todd, whose grandfather was a jazz musician, believes that art and music have the power to change the world, and he wants Freecandy to carry on the cultural legacy of Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, and Ft. Greene. “The vibe of this place, the bones, it’s just so authentic,” Todd says. “It’s exactly what I envisioned when I was moving to New York.”

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

The Brooklyn Historical Society is definitely a bit more conventional than the spaces I usually cover here. But this is a site about exploring everything our borough has to offer, and that doesn’t only mean watching aerialists in a Bushwick loft or riding flaming bicycles in a Bed-Stuy alleyway. And it should also go without saying that Brooklyn is absolutely steeped in history, and that the particular initiatives, accidents, and cultural tides of the past are in large part responsible for making the present what it is.

Othmer Library archives; all photos by Alix Piorun

BHS is a beautiful way to connect with all that. As Programs Associate Meredith Duncan told me, “Sharing the past is so important because it informs what’s happening in the present, and also what will happen to the future communities and culture of Brooklyn.”

Founded in 1863 as the Long Island Historical Society, BHS’s mission is to “make the vibrant history of Brooklyn tangible, relevant, and meaningful for today’s diverse communities, and for generations to come.” The gorgeous building, which turns 150 this year, is best known for its stunning two-floor research library. But after finishing a $5.5 million renovation, the space now features a lot more: four art galleries, an event space for public programming, a classroom for student workshops, and a gift shop filled with crafts from a wide variety of Brooklyn makers.

The four galleries cover a lot of different ground: currently on exhibit upstairs is “Documenting Sandy,” a collection of mostly cellphone pix from the harrowing superstorm and its aftermath; whereas the just-opened exhibit on the main level, “In Pursuit of Freedom,” is a public history project exploring the heroes of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement.

"Documenting Sandy" exhibit

The public programming offered at BHS is extremely diverse as well. Some of this year’s fascinating events include: Pat Kiernan in conversation with Gothamist publisher Jake Dobkin, an original musical by the Irondale Ensemble called Color Between the Lines, a lecture on the history of the Gowanus Canal by popular Brooklyn Brainery speaker Joseph Alexiou, a walking tour of the Wallabout Historic District, and the Brooklyn Zine Fest—just to name a few.

And then, of course, there’s the nationally recognized Othmer Library. Its various collections include municipal and administrative records from the villages that eventually became Brooklyn, personal and family papers dating back to the 1600s, genealogies, war histories, several thousand prints and drawings from the 17th century on, and more than 300 oral history narratives. There’s also a photography collection that starts in the 1870s, which includes amateur and professional photographs of buildings, people, and major cultural events, from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge to the 1977 Bushwick blackout. And there’s a large collection of cultural ephemera relating to Brooklyn icons, from the Wonderwheel to the Dodgers.

Othmer Library archives

There’s even a whole room dedicated to maps, as well as a person whose entire job is to catalogue and classify them. The amount of history contained in these maps alone is staggering; in addition to extensive street and lot maps, there are centuries-old Fire Department maps, municipal maps, sewage system maps, transit maps, and on and on. It’s exhilarating to look through them and feel the power of history’s force under your fingertips.

The majority of the collections are available for public use, although you need to make an appointment to view some of it. There are also various online-accessible catalogues—but don’t skip a visit to the marvelous building if you can help it.

"Landmarks of New York" exhibit

You should definitely visit to see for yourself the incredible resources available throughout BHS. In the meantime, sign up for the newsletter, where you’ll get to see Photo of the Week and a Map of the Month taken from the archives. BHS also publishes books, curriculum kits, and neighborhood guides, from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge, some with accompanying walking tours and podcasts.

BHS gift shop

According to Meredith, some of BHS’s future goals are “to encourage more interaction with the greater Brooklyn community, and to become a cultural hub, both for Brooklynites and for tourists.” In addition, they’re hoping increase educational initiatives; through donations and grants, schoolchildren can visit for free, so they’re working on expanding outreach to teachers who could take advantage. BHS also works with university professors to help them use original artifacts in their classes. And of course, BHS will continue to be a resource for anyone who, for any reason at all, wants to learn more about amazing Brooklyn.

***

Like this? Read about more historic spaces: South Oxford Space, Brooklyn Lyceum, The Schoolhouse, Broken Angel

The Cave is a huge basement studio in an artists’ loft building in Crown Heights. It’s a multifaceted space: part performance venue, part rehearsal studio, part gallery, part community gathering space, and it’s inhabited by a collective of musicians, dancers, sculptors, and artists.

all photos by Alix Piorun

Currently the Cave is being used as a set for an immersive dance performance called “The Cave: Archaic Remnants and the Methods of Transfer.” That name encompasses the space (the Cave), the dancers (Archaic Remnants), and the musicians (Methods of Transfer). The set, sculptures, and installation were designed by Laura Cuille, and nearly a dozen artists contributed music, dance, choreography, and more.

There will be one final performance of this unique site-specific piece on November 21st—buy tickets here. But first read my Q&A with Laura and two other contributors, Don and Arielle.

brooklyn spaces: Laura, how did the idea of this performance come about?
Laura: We all came into this space a year ago, and there was already music going on, and visual arts, and movement, but it was really loose and divided. At the time I was making life-size sculptures, and the idea of working with music and dance was in the back of my head. I was actually looking for a different space to install the sculptures, but then I realized I could put them here. So I started building the set and it just clicked that this was something we could all do together and all build off of to make it a whole.

brooklyn spaces: Don, how did the music come together? Were you inspired by the sculptures?
Don: We were collaborating together but separately, if that makes sense. The energy of creation ended up bringing our practices to a solid line instead of two parallel lines. Laura and I are kind of the same, as far as the way we work. I’m the audio version of her.

brooklyn spaces: Arielle, what’s your role?
Arielle: I’m behind the scenes, helping. I’m like the host.

brooklyn spaces: How would you describe the show to someone who hasn’t seen it or will never seen it? What are you trying to evoke with the performance?
Don: I would call it a Pompeii cave sculpture with visual stimulation and movements to cinematic music. It’s not that I wouldn’t call it dance, but I think it’s a little different. It’s almost like live shadow puppets feeding off of the music.
Laura: I think the theme is really universal. I was reading Carl Jung’s The Red Book while I was working on this piece—I’ve always been inspired by music and literature to drive me in my art. And I’ve always worked with the human figure because that’s all we can really perceive of. With the Cave it came to me like a spark, because I was just dealing with raw human emotion and psyche and all the things that are at the root of what drive us and have not changed in the history of human existence. All the other shit in society is basically just decoration and different ways to confuse what’s actually driving us, which is really raw and primal. The symbol of the Cave, and then the dance and the music—it explores all these themes, the primal human condition, confusion and pain and all these things, and accepting it more than trying to find a conclusion to it.

Arielle: Piña Bauche’s dance troupe describes themselves as a “theatrical dance company,” and they use that notion of theatre. There’s something so cinematic about the music in this piece, there’s a sort of theatrical interpretation of movement, symbols that come across with the sound as a sort of shadow and reflection of the dance. And the music, it feels like a movie score. The way it builds and falls is really cinematic. And also, the idea with this piece is that you stay in the Cave, you never leave it. After most performances you leave a space immediately, so whatever experience you’ve had or however it’s affected you, you take it with you, alone. But for this, we’ve brought other artists and musicians to continue performing after the performance, incorporating the vibe or energy from the show. That way, for the audience, whatever feelings you’re having, you don’t have to be isolated with them and you don’t have to just leave. So this isn’t an isolated performance, it’s a performance within a context, within a space, and within what’s to come afterward.

brooklyn spaces: Have any of you ever done a site-specific, multi-faceted performance like this before?
Arielle: No, it was new for everyone involved.
Don: But doing it all this in the space made it really comfortable, almost like playing in my living room. Which is not to say that I didn’t get nervous; I definitely did.
Laura: I agree, the process was so natural. It just moved so easily and so magically.

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on being an artist in Crown Heights these days?
Don: I love it here. I think it’s the perfect blend of people. It’s all ages, and it’s not loud; Bushwick, which I do love, is just a lot louder. People are working really hard all over the place there, but Crown Heights is a little more mysterious, there are all these random things happening. There are a bunch of people doing really cool things right in this building. There’s a dude building boats! Tug boats, like pure wood, cedar and stuff. The people around here are so interesting, and there’s so much passion.
Arielle: This neighborhood is a lot more community based, and a lot less commercial. It just seems so natural.

***

Like this? Read about more unconventional performance spaces: Gowanus Ballroom, Gemini & Scorpio Loft, Brooklyn Lyceum, Dead Herring, Bushwick Starr, Cave, Chez Bushwick

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

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

The first thing my sister Laurel told me about Bushwick City Farms was that being a volunteer there went a tremendous way toward assuaging her gentrifier guilt about living in Bed-Stuy. “As soon as I unlock the gate, a dozen kids come running out of the housing projects nearby, asking if they can plant seeds, or paint planter boxes, or just play tag in the space,” she said. “And the parents come by every day to thank us for what we’re doing for the community, and for keeping an eye on their kids.” My experience was the same. The kids are so eager to help that we couldn’t do any of the planting ourselves—they practically grabbed the seeds out of our hands. And when I talked to some of the adults in the area—who were barbecuing on the sidewalk, and insisted on giving me a heaping plate of grilled chicken, sausages, and rice and beans—they reiterated how happy they were about the farm as a safe community space.

kids planting (photo by Alix)

Bushwick City Farms is really one of the most beautiful projects I’ve had the pleasure of profiling. Like Trees Not Trash, they’ve appropriated two abandoned lots (so far), and they’ve filled them with fowl—chickens, ducks, guinea hens, even a turkey—and gardens. They’re growing more than fifty different fruits, vegetables, and plants, and the entire yield is given out to the community. They’ve got a small version of the Free Store outside of one farm, where people can take or leave clothes, small appliances, and other household goods. In the past they’ve offered ESL classes in the farms, and the spaces serve as a gathering place for members of the community, as well as an opportunity for food education—one day we were harvesting and passing out arugula, and we watched many people try the spicy green for the first time.

Jason with a bucket of greens (photo by me)

The project is entirely volunteer run, and nearly everything has been donated. They’re always looking for more helping hands, so head on out to see them if you’d like to participate in this incredible project. But first, read my interview with Vinnie, Jason, Aneta, and Laurel.

planters (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Vinnie: My wife Masha, the founder, got permission from the owner of the lot on Broadway to use it as a community garden, and she and the original group of volunteers came in and started cleaning the place out. Shortly thereafter, Jason and I got involved, and other people started helping out, and little by little we started building and expanding. The goal was always to produce fresh, organic food for those in the community, and to provide a space that people could come in and enjoy. We also want to provide food education, to bring people back to basics as far as where food comes from, how to grow and produce it responsibly, and how to eat healthy.
Jason: People are so out of touch with where their food comes from, how food is grown, and what types of food you should be eating.

Jason and Laurel (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: What was the lot like when you got here?
Vinnie: It was overgrown by weeds, and it had been used as an illegal dumping site for years, so it was completely full of garbage. It was a year before it started really looking like something.

Outside the Broadway lot (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: What did you start with?
Vinnie: We had chickens and some container gardens. The garden itself went through a kind of a metamorphosis over the first couple of seasons. We didn’t really know what we were doing; a lot of it was a learning process. We didn’t know about the extent of the contamination in the soil, and we had built smaller beds that didn’t have enough depth to them, which were taken apart eventually.

Inside the Broadway lot (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: What’s the soil contaminated with?
Jason: Everything. A hundred years of building and collapsing and building and collapsing.
Vinnie: Dumping too. The Stockton lot has been both an apartment building and a gas station in the past, and then it was vacant for two or three decades. It’s basically a landfill; there’s no real soil. It’s mostly cement, brick particles, and garbage.
Jason: There was a tent city, and people had been living in there up until like 2009. Apparently there was a crazy fight, some guy bashed someone’s head in with a shovel, and then there was a fire and their huts burned down, so it was vacant when we went in there.

Planting tomatoes in the Stockton lot (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: When was that?
Jason: Earth Day 2011. We’d had our eye on it for a while, and we just decided to go in and start cleaning it out. We spent a long time bagging up trash, raking up the rubble, cleaning it up. We planted some flowers that first day, and then later we built the fence and got some container gardens started. We just started slowly building it up.

container gardens (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: So you didn’t have prior permission to be in the Stockton space the way you did with the one on Broadway?
Vinnie: No, we just went in and did it. Eventually the manager contacted us. He asked us to write a proposal to the owner, and we did that, and we were given permission to stay. Most people, if they’re not using the land, are pretty open to the idea of community gardens. Or at least that’s been our experience so far.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: What was the reaction from the community?
Vinnie: People loved it, the kids especially. They really love the chickens.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: Where did the chickens come from?
Vinnie: The first ones came from the pollo de vido, the live poultry shop on Myrtle. Since then we’ve gotten more from there, and a lot of the birds have been donated. The turkey was left here on Thanksgiving; we never saw who brought it.

guinea hen & chickens (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: And what about all the building materials and things? Where did all that come from?
Vinnie: We get different things from people in the community: grocery stores have donated produce, gardening companies have given us leftover plants, landscaping companies gave us all the woodchips. There’s a company that ships huge stones, and they have these pallets that are only good for one use, so we get all of our wood from them.

building planter boxes (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: What all do you have growing now?
Vinnie: Oh, there’s so much. We have spinach, kale, all kinds of lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes…
Jason: Cucumbers, green beans, cilantro, basil, mint, eggplants, a fig tree…
Vinnie: Roses, apple trees…
Jason: Pear trees, peach trees, nectarines, plums, peppers, elephant ears—just tons and tons of stuff.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: And all the food gets donated to the community?
Jason: Yeah. Sundays at 2 o’clock we do distribution, we give out the eggs from the chickens and whatever we’re harvesting that week. The food is given out on an as-needed basis, but we don’t check credentials or anything. We trust people to need what they take and take what they need.

garden behind the chicken coop (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved in keeping this going?
Jason: There’s a core group of about ten volunteers who come to work here almost every day, but if you include all the kids in the neighborhood and everyone who stops by to help out when they can, we probably have more than fifty people.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Vinnie: Probably by the end of the summer we’ll be thinking about expansion, going into other lots, getting schools involved, doing more educational programs.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: What’s the most rewarding part of this for you?
Aneta: I like that people get really excited about it. People are so thrilled, like, “Wow, I’ve never seen a live chicken before!” That’s really fascinating and rewarding. People are happy, really happy to see this.
Vinnie: It reminds a lot of people of where they’re from, so it’s really nice to see their reactions. And the kids just love it. It’s really great to work with the kids.
Jason: For a kid to see something go from seed to harvest is unbelievable, that’s so cool. And they’re more likely to want to eat what they’ve planted, so we’re planting seeds in a lot of different ways.
Laurel: I think the community-building is my favorite part. Providing a space to bring people together and to meet their neighbors. It’s a diverse neighborhood, and I think it’s great to challenge boundaries and remember that people are people.

photo by Alix

Like this? Read about more community spaces: Time’s Up, Body Actualized Center, Boswyck Farms, Books Through Bars, No-Space, Trinity Project, #OccupyWallStreet art show

In a dense (and getting denser!) corner of Bushwick, Fort Useless, a DIY show space housed in what used to be an underground punk venue, is a stone’s throw from the Schoolhouse, Goodbye Blue Monday, the Bobby Redd Project, XPO 929, 6 Charles, and probably a few more I forgot. Although Fort Useless is mostly known for music, they’ve also got a monthly comedy showcase called Spit-Take Fridays, a regular Songwriter Salon, movie nights, dance performances, visual art exhibits, occasional storytelling events, and straight-up parties. It helps that it’s an extremely malleable space, and also that Jeremiah, who runs things, is deeply committed to fostering community, and is happy to turn over the reins to various friends and collaborators who want to put together their own events.

Fort Useless is gearing up for a big weekend during the upcoming Bushwick Open Studios (June 1 through 3), with an art show, a Spit-Take Friday, a live music show, and a Songwriters Salon. Head on over to catch some or all of that, but first read my interview with Jeremiah!

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to do this?
Jeremiah: I’ve been involved with music the whole time I’ve been in New York. I was in a band, Man in Gray, and I got involved with booking shows through that. We didn’t know a lot of other bands, so we tried to coordinate musicians to get to know each other and play shows together, which eventually resulted in us creating StereoactiveNYC. Anyway, we’d played shows at the McKibben Lofts, we’d played shows Todd P produced, and those were some of the funnest shows I’d been involved in. So I wanted to do something like that.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What was the first show here?
Jeremiah: We had Sharon Van Etten and a bunch of people I was friends with: Jared Friedman, Gabriel Miller-Phillips, Kristie Redfield, Manny Nomikos, El Jezel. It was just a slapdash sort of thing, but it ended up being one of my favorite shows I’ve ever done in my life. It was an auspicious start.

Sharon Van Etten, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: How would you characterize the music you have here?
Jeremiah: The space sort of dictates that we can’t have a certain type of music, because we’re in a mixed-use building with residences above us, and I try to be as respectful as possible. There’s definitely a loose-knit community of bands that are regulars here, and the great thing about them is that it’s about musicality, the skill of writing songs and performing them. The bands are more about the music than about the scene. But I guess everyone thinks that.

Gunfight!, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the other events you have here.
Jeremiah: We have a monthly comedy show called Spit-Take Friday, which is put together by George Flannagan of El Jezel. It’s been really successful. A lot of comics have said they love doing it because there’s always a crowd here that’s here to laugh.

George Flanagan at Spit-Take Friday, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: What else?
Jeremiah: There’s our Songwriters Salon, done by my friend Jared. We have ten or twelve people play three songs each, generally one new song, one old song, and one cover. We encourage performers to talk to the audience in between songs and get feedback. It’s a salon in the old sense of the word, where people are sharing and communicating. One person called it “Songwriters Anonymous.”

Songwriter Salon, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: And visual art, right?
Jeremiah: That’s the newest thing for me. Because comedy, as different as it is from music, there’s sort of a basic similarity. You’ve got to book something, you have to have a schedule, you have to have some sort of organized thing for a night to flow. But art? The way an art exhibit is organized is so backward to me, based on my years spent dealing with musicians.

"120 dB," photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: Do you curate the shows yourself?
Jeremiah: I try not to, although I’m about to do my second one. The first one I did was for BOS 2010. It didn’t have a theme, I just wanted to have whatever we could get, get as many people involved, showcase as much work as possible. It was cool and people like it, but it really taught me how not to do a show. The one I’m doing for the upcoming BOS is much simpler. It’s called “XNY,” and it features two artists, Daina Higgins and Bryan Bruchman, who were longtime residents of New York and both moved away to different cities. Daina does photrealistic paintings of urban landscapes, and Bryan is a photographer. I have this idea that once you look at a city like New York, you look at other cities the same way, so I wanted to have their work displayed together and see what that looks like.
brooklyn spaces: That sounds like an awesome idea for a show.
Jeremiah: I hope so. I have a real love for BOS because it’s sort of why I ended up in Bushwick. I’d been to a lot of things out here, but spread out over a long period of time, so I hadn’t really thought of it as a neighborhood. But then I went to a friend’s band playing a showcase during BOS and wandered around the neighborhood, and it made me see Bushwick in a new way.

"120 dB," photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How’d you pick the name?
Jeremiah: My friends’ band, Unsacred Hearts, has an album called “In Defense of Fort Useless.” I love their band, I love that album, and I love that name.
brooklyn spaces: Is it a commentary on how you’re doing something incredibly useful in the neighborhood?
Jeremiah: I mean, I knew that was there, but it’s not why I picked it.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite shows that have happened here?
Jeremiah: Well, like I said, the very first one was incredible. The Mardi Gras and BOS shows are our biggest. One that I really loved, last spring I had a bunch of friends who had been in amazing bands and were each starting new projects, and we had four of them here—Weird Children, nightfalls, Passenger Peru, and Clouder—all playing their very first show in this new incarnation. It was the most packed this place had ever been, and it really drove home to me that this is such a strong community. And the bands all sounded amazing.

Weird Children, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Jeremiah: This may sound cheesy, but Fort Useless is really not about the space we’re in, it’s about who’s doing it. And I’m not sure how much longer we can stay in this space and continue to grow. We’re in no rush to get out of here, but if we find the right thing that we can transition into, that would be amazing. I’d like to be able to vary the kinds of shows we do. Jess Flanagan has curated two dance shows, and they’ve been great, but I would like to have a space where she can put on the show she wants to put on, instead of having to scale it down to fit this space. Also, we were en route to becoming a not-for-profit, but plans kind of stalled. We’re hoping to get that going again.

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Like this? Read about more music and event spaces: 285 Kent, Vaudeville Park, Gowanus Ballroom, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Shea Stadium, Bushwick Project for the Arts

This is my first “honorary Brooklyn” post. I just came back from a trip to Austin with my sister & cousin, and although there were a half-dozen places I’d love to write about if I lived there and had more time—like the 21st Street Co-op, where we cooked for Food Not Bombs, or the massive, gorgeous “Graffiti Park,” where we clambered around in the dark taking photos, or Spider House, where we saw the amazingly creepy Boessi Kreh, complete with a woman erotically kneading bread dough onstage—by far the most spectacularly weird place we went was the Cathedral of Junk.

I was strongly encouraged to get to the Cathedral by Bk Spaces photographer Alix Piorun (read her post about it here), but when we brought it up to our Austin friends, everyone said two things: “I think that place got torn down,” and “It’s really really far away.” Neither of these things are true. Although the Cathedral has been threatened with dismantlement and cited for code violation several times, it’s still kicking. And it’s less than a half hour bus ride from downtown Austin.

The Cathedral is the project of Vincent Hannemann, a totally lovable curmudgeon who answered the phone when we called ahead, chided us for not banging the gong hard enough when we arrived, and then toured us around the Cathedral himself, scolding us for not being clever enough with our photo poses. He has “JUNK KING” tattooed on his knuckles, told us stories about a few of the bizarre items in the Cathedral (“Oh, that one’s really creepy; my ex-wife made it”), and tolerated our poking around his giant trash statue for a couple of hours.

The photos should speak for the Cathedral itself. The main structure is three stories high and has several little rooms. It is made of just about everything you can think of: bicycle parts, lawn chairs, decapitated Barbies, a rusted fridge, crutches, a diving board bridge, zillions of plastic trinkets, cement-filled tires, busted electronics, glass bottles, a box spring, road signs, bathtubs, CDs, broken toys, car seats, shopping carts, and countless knickknacks of all sizes that are a lot harder to identify. There are a bunch of satellite statuettes, a few junk shacks, and smaller sculptures. It’s altogether a fantastic mess, and so so so worth a visit.

Here’s a whole slew more pix, taken by me and my sis. Enjoy!

that's me!

that's my sis!

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Like this? Read about more silliness: Broken Angel, Idiotarod, Lost Horizon Night Market, Dumpster Pools

One of the reasons I started this project is that I was alarmed at how fleeting so much of the underground can be. The people who drive the creative classes are focused on creating, on making art and beauty and enhancing underground culture, which tends to result in less of a focus on trivialities like leases and fire codes and the law in general. I seem to be constantly hearing about the unceremonious demise of so many brilliant spaces—the 123 Community Center being forced out by their landlord, Bushwick Project for the Arts getting evicted by the city, House of Yes (in its original incarnation) burning down, Silent Barn being ransacked, Monkeytown and Change You Want to See defeated by endless rent hikes.

photo from Passion Faction

But there are other ways for a space to come to an end. Sometimes it’s intentional, for one reason or another, and in the best case it’s on the creators’ own terms. So it is with 6 Charles Place. The Bushwick warehouse used to be called Semi-Legit, and was known for underground events. Passion Faction threw dance parties with DJ Spanky spinning and Nicky Digital taking pix, Team San San had an art show, there were anarchist benefits and lectures, and plenty of musicians came through, including Nomadic War Machine, Rosa Apatrida, Shady Hawkins, Anchorites, Krunk Pony, Ash Borer, and Woe.

But those days are behind them now. Today the space is divided into two businesses: Running Rebel Studios and Proliferation Publishing.

photo from Passion Faction

Nick has been operating Running Rebel since October 2011. It’s a big, private, very malleable space, and they’ve done a lot of different work already, including photos for Nylon and Inked magazines, fashion shoots for Olcay Gulsen and Arrojo Soho, and music videos for Imaginary Friends and Rosie Vanier.

brooklyn spaces: What made you shift from throwing parties to running a business?
Nick: I thought we could make something profitable, since no one can get jobs now and you have to do everything yourself in order to survive.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to get it up and running?
Nick: It was a lot of work. I renovated the entire thing, painted the entire ceiling by hand, painted every single brick, twice, because the first coat got so disgusting and dirty. I built a bathroom and changing room. And I got all this equipment, including a nineteen-foot cyc wall.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your business philosophy?
Nick: I try to be friendly with everyone. I don’t think that pissing people off is the right way to go about anything, especially when you’re trying to develop relationships. I’d rather take a loss now and have someone come back again later, rather than ripping them off and having them hate us forever.

brooklyn spaces: Is running a photo studio something you always planned to do?
Nick: No. I have a degree in German. But I had the idea and ran with it. This is cool, it’s strange. It’s fine for now. I can live, I can eat. What else do you need?

photo by Alix Piorun

And then there’s Proliferation Publishing, New York’s only twenty-four-hour print shop, run by Adam. They use really cool old machines from the sixties and seventies that they’ve acquired at auctions and garage sales, including one that was used to print NYU’s diplomas for years. And they bought what probably amounts to a lifetime supply of ink for about $60. They print everything from take-out menus to wedding invitations to vinyl banners.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How do you know how to work all this stuff? Did you know how to use the machines when you bought them?
Adam: No, we just bought them on impulse. Then we found PDFs and guides and shit online and taught ourselves in our garage. We have this one incredible troubleshooting manual written by this hippie guy in the sixties. The book starts, “Around 1950 I was searching for Nirvana in the woods in New Mexico.”

brooklyn spaces: How do you find your clients?
Adam: We go and bother pizza places and shit and we’re like “Hey we can print menus for cheaper than what you’re paying now,” and they’re like, “Okay, cool.” And people come in to print album covers for their bands, business cards, political posters, stuff like that.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Adam: I want to do books eventually, but not right now. We’ve got to get a book binder and a paper cutter first. We’re also going to start offering photo-printing services, so people can shoot photos at Running Rebel and then print them here. This could be a full-time gig, and it probably will be eventually. But we’re in it for the long haul, so we’re taking our time.

photo by Alix Piorun

Both Adam and Nick were kind enough to offer discounts for Brooklyn Spaces readers. At Running Rebel they’ll give you a full-day weekday photo shoot for $300, and at Proliferation Publishing you can get 1,000 business cards or stickers for $75. Go support Bushwick small businesses! Email them at runningrebelstudios@gmail.com or adam@proliferationpublishing.com.

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Like this? Read about other print shops & photo studios: Acme Studio, Gowanus Print Lab, Bushwick Print Studio, Werdink, Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio

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

Even though I live about ten minutes away from them, I’d never heard of Werdink Screenprinting Boutique or Ninja Pyrate. And maybe you haven’t either—but believe me, that’s going to change. They’ve got  an amazing hybrid space, encompassing a high-end screenprinting studio, a boutique shop selling apparel and skateboards (all printed onsite), a multipurpose event space with a rubber floor and an aerial rig, a DJ setup, and a recording studio in a pirate ship. A pirate ship. And they’re really eager to open the space up to the community, to see what people can do with it.

Who are these amazing people? Matthew is the Werdink screenprinter, and his sister Krisstina and her boyfriend Jeff are still figuring out more amazing ways to use the Ninja Pyrate space. Plus they’re all well connected to the crazy Brooklyn creatives: Werdink did a screenprinting truck for the first three Lost Horizon Night Markets and shares tips with Bushwick Print Lab; Krisstina pals around with one of the girls from House of Yes and Lady Circus who started Make Fun; their space is literally downstairs from Shea Stadium.

Scroll down to hear more from these awesome people!
[all photos in this post by Alix Piorun]

brooklyn spaces: Okay, tell me about Werdink.
Matthew: It’s a screenprinting studio and retail shop, based on high-end development for independent fashion and artists. I work with people who are looking to broaden their horizons, make their stuff bigger. I take my time with my clientele, and I build relationships with them and bond with them and become part of their creative process. I’ve been doing this for years, and I do a wide range of printmaking, so I have a lot to offer. It’s not just making t-shirts; I also do tip-to-tail skateboard printing, and lots of other things. I spent a period of my life working with high-end, bigger names and brands, and I want to be able to give more independent people that same experience.

brooklyn spaces: Who are some people you’re really excited to be working with?
Matthew: My friend Ian Hurst, he has a company called 333Theory, and we’ve been working together for three years now, developing his line. Right now we’re making a bunch of t-shirts, but the t-shirts are a side project for his graphic novels, which are coming out later. There’s Connie Wang, from Iconartistry, who I got to know through Ad Hoc Art. She worked with me here for a few years and has since moved on to start her own print studio. There’s Hannah, she interns here, she’s started a brand called Helplessly Happy. There’s Hull, they’re a metal band, they were actually my first intense project in this space. A lot of those guys work at the Anchored Inn around the corner—we love that place, it’s awesome, everybody should go there and drink. Our friend Tara McManus has a company called 3rd Earth Designs, she has some stuff in my boutique and is always expanding her line. It’s hard to pick favorites, I love everyone I work with.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, so let’s switch to Ninja Pyrate. You guys are doing a bunch of different things in here, right?
Jeff: Yeah, we have a lot of interesting hobbies, so we’re trying to do as much as we can. We want to do different yoga classes, like dubstep yoga, costume yoga, pirate yoga. We have a friend who wants to teach capoeira, and we have an aerial rig. On top of that, we have a lot of friends who spin fire, so we’re going to do some poi and spinning classes, and we’re working on making new kinds of fire-spinning tools.
Krisstina: And also stuff like craft nights, clothing swaps with live screenprinting, skill-building workshops, movie nights.
Matthew: We did a release party for a book I helped work on, Gutterfish, with some people reading poetry and a couple of DJs. We’re also planning to put in a little tea and coffee bar.
Jeff: And the space isn’t just for us. We’re going to have an open house soon, because I want to get people imagining, coming up with ways they could use the space.
Matthew: We’re starting to finish up the projects on the inside, so now I’m thinking about the outside. I want to do a party to get some graffiti up on the wall outside.
brooklyn spaces: The landlords don’t mind?
Matthew: The landlords are so cool! I walk over there and I’m like, “Hey, I know you just spent thousands of dollars putting in this new sidewalk last year, but is it cool if I have the city come tear it up and put in some trees?” And they’re like, “It’s you’re place, do whatever you want. You want trees, get some trees.”

brooklyn spaces: Whose is the recording studio? Is that Ninja Pyrate?
Krisstina: Yeah, I do music recording. And our band, Yar, uses it.
brooklyn spaces: And why a pirate ship?
Krisstina: The pirate ship is all found wood. I found it in the hallway of my apartment. I almost walked past it, because, you know, bedbugs. But then I was like, “Wait a minute! I’m a pirate, those are skeletons, this was meant to be.” I called Jeff and said, “Honey, I got you a present from the garbage.”
Jeff: It was the best present I’ve ever gotten.
Matthew: About 80 percent of this place was built with recycled materials. Everything in the boutique is reused. Build It Green is freaking rad. I can’t go there without wanting to spend hundreds of dollars.
Jeff: Krisstina really wanted a playground floor, and I was like “We’re never going to find that.”
Krisstina: And then one of the times we were at Build It Green, I was like “You wouldn’t happen to have rubber flooring here, would you?” And they totally did. We had to dig it out from under the snow in the back parking lot. It was filthy.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think places like this are what’s making Brooklyn what it is right now? Or is Brooklyn like this, and people come and find their place here?
Matthew: That’s a good question. I think it’s a bit of both. As soon as I came to this neighborhood, I was like, “This is where I belong.” I never want to leave Brooklyn.
Krisstina: In Brooklyn there are so many creative people who are really motivated, and who all want to share tips and ideas. It helps to pool your resources; you never know how far you can go when you do that. Space is rare in New York, and expensive, so people have to come together to make it work. And people in the Bushwick area are so supportive. People make an effort to check out what you’re doing and help you with it.
Jeff: I love our friends in Brooklyn, and even people who don’t have this sort of space know we’re here, so if they need somewhere to spread out and do something, they can come to us. We’ve got a lot of creative friends who need more space to be loud, and this is a place they can do that. We’re just trying to help people get together and do things.

Like this? Read about more art & event spaces: Gowanus Ballroom, Arch P&D, Hive NYC, Big Sky Works, Egg & Dart Club

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

This post is a cheat, I know. The Idiotarod is not a space, and it’s not even always (or only) in Brooklyn. But it is so ludicrous, so fantastically silly, that I don’t care. There’s so many things like this—Lost Horizon Night Market, Improv Everywhere, Newmindspace, Fluff’s Stuff—silliness and spectacle just for the sake of it, which is what makes this the best, funnest place to be. It’s part of the essence of Brooklyn for me.

image via nileguide.com

So what’s the Idiotarod? Well, as their website explains: “The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. The Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it’s people, instead of sleds, it’s shopping carts, and instead of Alaska, it’s New York City.” How this works is that teams of five people pick a theme, steal acquire a shopping cart, dress themselves and their cart up accordingly, and race from checkpoint to checkpoint, usually for about five miles and over at least one bridge. Sabotage is encouraged, as is throwing food or snow, and, of course, drinking. No one knows where the race will begin or end, or where the checkpoints will be, until the last possible minute. Prizes are awarded at a secret afterparty for things like fastest team, best costumes, best sabotage, etc.

photo by Colin Colfer

Want to hear more from people who have done it? Check out my interview with Alix and Leila! (That’s them in the top photo on this page, Alix on the right and Leila on the left, part of team Andrew W.K.art in Idiotarod 2012.)

picture by pixietart, via Gothamist

brooklyn spaces: When was your first race?
Leila: I did it for the first time in 2007, and our theme was the Cold War Kids. Half of us were dressed as Americans and half as Russians, and we divided the cart in half, and in one half we had a vodka bottle and the Communist Manifesto, and in the other we had an old McDonald’s carton that we found on the street, and then I took a dish towel and covered it with duct tape and wrote “The Iron Curtain” on it and hung it on the front. In 2008 I was Jem, and 2009 we were the Oregon Trail of Death. In 2010 I took off, which I’m glad I did, because Alix says that was the coldest day of her life. This year we did it together, and we were Clam Rock.
Alix: I first did it in 2008, and we were the Boston Tea Party. We had wet teabags to throw at people—there was a lot of food throwing then. Our cart had a Sam Adams picture on it, and we decorated it as a boat. In 2009 we were The Price Is Wrong, Bitch! In 2010 we were Gilligan’s Island. I got my boyfriend to do it, and two other friends. I was like, “It’s going to be really fun!” And then it was just the coldest day ever. I only had fingerless gloves on and I could not feel my fingers once we started running. We’re running, my eyes are tearing and I can’t see, snot is flying. My friends were like “Why the fuck would you do this? This is not fun at all.”

photo by Tod Seelie, vie Brooklyn Vegan

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the actual mechanics of the race.
Leila: Okay, the mechanics of the race are stupid, it’s incredibly disorganized. It takes a lot of effort to even figure out when the race is happening.
Alix: They don’t really have much information on the website. It used to be run by COBRA, Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association, and then I guess they “sold” it to Corporation X. Or no, COBRA gave it to Team Danger Zone, and then they gave it to Corporation X.
Leila: Once you’ve figured out when it is, you have to figure out how the sign-up works, because the fact that you’ve done it in the past doesn’t mean they’ll assume you might be interested again and tell you about it. And they make it really hard for you to sign up. This year we had to complete an eight-page form filled with stupid questions, which we had to get notarized—we faked the notary. Then they text or email to say where it’s going to leave from, and everybody knows it’s a lie. That used to be to mislead the police, but now it’s just tradition. You have to wait until like 8:00 on the morning of the race to find out where to go. One year we started in Chinatown, one year we started in Queens, one year we started at fucking like 63rd and York or something.
Alix: Every race goes over at least one bridge, so it’s cross-borough. But this year there was a lot of snow still on the ground, and I think that they changed it around at the last minute, because we just stayed in Brooklyn. Anyway, you have to go to four or five checkpoints, and you have to complete stupid tasks before they tell you where to go next. Sometimes you can leave early if you bribe the people there, so a lot of people bring mini bottles of booze for that.

photo from Kotaku

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the tasks?
Alix: This year, one was you had to blow a feather and keep it in the air longer than the other team, or there’s races around the bar, or you have to find someone and have them give you something.
Leila: Sabotage used to be a big part of it. One time we were going across the bridge into Queens, and people were pouring dishwashing soap down the bridge, and everybody started doing the thing like you see in cartoons, where people are like “Whooooaaaa!” with their legs.
Alix: There was another sabotage where someone had a bowling ball they would put it in people’s carts. They put it in ours and we didn’t notice. We were running, going, “Why is this thing so heavy?” And with the sabotage, you never know if you’re going to the right place. The first year I did it there was a fake checkpoint, they just said, “You have to stand here for twenty minutes, this is the first checkpoint.” Some people were like, “This is fake, we’re leaving!” and then you’re like, “Well, is that a sabotage?” You can’t trust anyone.

photo by Colin Colfer

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite carts that you’ve seen?
Leila: The Roman Chariot was really good. They had like forty people, including Remus and Romulus, and there were all these people in matching costumes, and this triumphant Roman Empire–style music
Alix: My first year there was a team that I think was called Two Girls One Cart. They had two blowup dolls and this huge tub of poop-looking stuff, and they were throwing the pudding-poop at people. When we were running over the Manhattan Bridge, there was this huge goop of pudding just dripping down the railing of the bridge.

photo by Matthew Bradley via geekoutnewyork

brooklyn spaces: Does anyone get in trouble?
Leila: One time when we were outside of a checkpoint, a cop drove by very slowly, and shouted over his bullhorn, “Please at least try to not let me see that you are drinking in public!” And everyone was like “Okay, we’ll try.”

photo by Aaron Short, via Brooklyn Paper

brooklyn spaces: And so is it the funnest thing you do all year?
Alix: I love it. If you have a really good cart design, and other people have really good cart designs, it’s great. Just looking at the carts is really cool. When you line up at the starting point, everyone’s checking out all the other carts and taking pictures.
Leila: It’s also a cool way to see neighborhoods you don’t usually get to see.
Alix: It’s the only time I ever run, too. It’s like a five-mile run every year. So yeah, it’s fun. And it’s a tradition. It’s this thing we do every year that we get to amaze our friends with.

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Like this? Read about more public art spectacle: Lost Horizon Night Market, Dumpster Pools, Broken Angel, Bring to Light, Cathedral of Junk