It’s available from Monacelli as a paperback and from Thought Catalog as an ebook. It’s on Amazon (discounted, natch), and hopefully it’s at your local bookstore—if it isn’t, please ask!

All the buy links and all the press and all the news is on my book page here. And don’t forget I’m throwing a great big crazy book launch party on May 30th!

I’ve been working on this project since the beginning of 2010, so this is a pretty huge day. Thank you all for sticking with me, and for loving this crazy borough as much as I do.

Yay Brooklyn!

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

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

pix by Kit Crenshaw

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

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

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

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: east williamsburg | space type: performance venue | active since: 2011 | links: facebook

In late 2011, several queer community and collective living spaces were all shuttered in a row—the most high-profile being Mx. Justin Vivian Bond‘s House of Whimsy in the East Village. Artist Gage of the Boone and Mx. Bond’s former roommate Nicholas were looking to start a new space for queer and queer-friendly artists to gather and present their work, and they found what would become the Spectrum tucked behind a cheap diner in East Williamsburg. A former aerobics studio and after-hours bar, the space was painted black, walled with mirrors, and adorned with a stripper pole and two disco balls. “It was grimy and sleazy,” Gage says, “but also so weird and beautiful.”

photo by Shannon Carroll

Three years on, the Spectrum has hit its stride. During the day, the space is used for dance and theatre rehearsals as well as classes, like disco yoga, queer pilates, dance, and meditation, all of which have a focus on inclusivity for any identity of body type. Then there are the nighttime events, showcasing all types of art and performance. Some recurring shows include Cloud Soundz (a music showcase), Revolting Grace and Execution (performance and dance-based work), Mama Said Sparkle! (performance art), Dick-tionary (poetry readings), and Ova the Rainbow, and Dizzyland (elaborately themed late-night dance parties). “I feel like this space is my radical duty, my everyday activism,” Gage says.

photo by Kit Crenshaw

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

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

Dick Zigun, the unofficial Mayor of Coney Island since 1984, has built an incredible legacy of promotion and preservation for his beloved neighborhood. In addition to founding the annual Mermaid Parade in 1983—which has grown to be the largest art parade in the country, with close to 800k people attending in 2014—he cofounded the nonprofit multi-arts organization Coney Island USA, which is responsible for running a vast array of programming, including the Coney Island Museum, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Burlesque at the Beach and the School of Burlesque, the Coney Island Film Society, the annual Congress of Curious Peoples, the Coney Island Tattoo and Motorcycles Convention, the interactive Halloween play Creepshow at the Freakshow, and on and on.

pix by Remi Pann

Housed in the historic 1917 building that once held the first of Coney’s two Childs Restaurants, the museum is as historically rich and valuable as its home. Dick fought successfully for the building to receive National Landmark status in 2010, and the museum features a wonderful array of Coney history, including funhouse mirrors (great for selfies!), old bumper cars, and a scale model of the original 1903 Luna Park.

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

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: music venue | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook

On an anonymous and very industrial block in East Williamsburg, the Swamp has been going strong for six years—an incredible run for a DIY venue. Shows are mostly punk and hardcore—Resistance Culture, the Degenerics, Reagan Youth, Death Mold, HR of Bad Brains, the annual Latino Punk Fest—and there’s also a regular “dirty reggae” night and some ska and rocksteady shows. Many are benefits for radical groups like Anarchist Black Cross, WIN Animal Rights, NYC Antifa, and the Wolf Mountain Sanctuary. “Our thing is not money, but community,” says Christian E., who runs the space. “We have a great group of people who follow us and come to all the shows, so we try to make each one a really awesome event.”

pix by Walter Wlodarczyk

After such a long run, the Swamp is going to be slowing down on shows in order to refocus the space as a recording studio. There’s some awesome events planned for May and June to raise money for the Swamp’s new incarnation, so keep an eye on the Facebook page for updates.

Want to learn more about the Swamp, 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: williamsburg | space type: art & events | active since: 2012 | links: website, facebook, twitter

“New York can be very isolating, and when you’re isolated, you can start to feel a bit listless,” says editor Mark D., one of the members of the Big Irv’s collective. “Being part of an art collective is very energizing.” His housemate Kaitlyn agrees: “For me, community is huge. And being part of a community of artists—it’s a dream come true.”

The Big Irv’s collective members are veterans of communal living situations, including the Bushwick Trailer Park, so they’re accustomed to working as a group. This space, which over the years has been a bodega, a hardware store, and a small Pentacostal church, has nine art studios and a shared workshop in the basement. The main space functions as an art gallery and performance space, with events ranging from music to performance art to storytelling.

Want to learn more about Big Irv’s, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

1. The Book.
Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture & Creativity will be released on May 19th, from Monacelli Press in hardcopy, and Thought Catalog as an ebook. Full book details are here, including some sample spreads, press, and updates. Please check back often!

2. The Party.
I’m throwing a huge soirée to celebrate the book launch on May 30th at the Gowanus Ballroom, one of the most fabulous spaces in Brooklyn. There will be a punk/folk banjo player, a 50-woman AfroBrazillian drumming troupe, a renegade brass band, a flaming saxophone, aerialists, a photo show by the amazing Brooklyn Spaces photographers, food trucks, and even more surprises.

Full details on Eventbrite or Facebook. It will be kiiiiiind of like this:

3. The Countdown.
Since the majority of the spaces in the book haven’t been profiled on the site, I’m going to add one mini-profile a day for the next 15 days to count down to the book launch. Hopefully that will make up for all these many months with no posts!

Thanks for sticking with me. Yay Brooklyn!

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!

Brooklyn Spaces is going to be a book!

Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Outrageous Hubs of Culture & Creativity will be published by the wonderful Monacelli Press in Spring 2015, and I’ll be writing it this summer.

I want this book to showcase all the most brilliant, bizarre, and beautiful places Brooklyn has to offer. So I’d love to hear from you! Tell me which spaces are the most important to you, and the most important to making Brooklyn what it is today. Find me at brooklynspacesproject@gmail.com, or on the Bk Spaces Facebook & Twitter, and let me know which spaces I absolutely MUST include.

The output on the site will be a bit lean in the coming months, but I’ll do my best to put up a thing or two. And of course I’ll be keeping up the calendar, so please continue to check there for all the most wonderful things to do in our most wonderful borough.

And now, if you’ll excuse me…

Pioneer Works is huge. It’s around 27,000 square feet with 40-foot ceilings, which is just truly, absolutely enormous. The building dates back all the way to 1866, and for more than a century was home to Pioneer Iron Works, one of the largest machine manufacturers in the country.

Prominent Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin bough the building in 2010. As he told the New York Times, “My crazy dream is to create a kind of utopian art center.” And Pioneer Works is something pretty close to that dream. The nonprofit has several elements, including a massive exhibition gallery and event space (one of the biggest in the city), classes and workshops, a science lab with a powerful photographic microscope, artist residencies, institutional residencies (currently the Clocktower Gallery), a radio show, and a modern art periodical called Intercourse Magazine.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The events range from open studios to lectures (“How to Fake Your Own Death” is popular and recurring), from Hackathons to concerts, with musical acts like Spiritualized, Ariel Pink, and Omar Souleyman. And the classes are equally varied—some recent examples include “Physical Storytelling,” “The Alchemy of Light,” “From Tesla to the Transistor,” “Homebrew Kimchi,” “NY Theremin Society Workshop,” and “Lock-Picking and Open-Source Security.”

So get out to Red Hook and learn something! But first read the Q&A with David, Pioneer Works’ Director of Education.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of this building.
David: Okay! I know this because we had a Red Hook history class here recently. It was built in 1866, then in 1871 it burned down, and it was rebuilt in 1872. It was originally Pioneer Iron Works, one of the biggest iron works in the country. After that it was a tobacco-drying warehouse. Then they were doing something manufacturing until the 1950s; whatever they were making was super heavy, so they had this system to move it all around in here, and rollers set into the floor to roll it out the door. And then since the 1960s it was used to store financial records. When Dustin bought it, there was no heat, no running water, minimal electricity. The windows were all bricked up, the floors were wrecked, the staircases were terrifying. It took about a year of heavy work to get it into shape.

brooklyn spaces: I love that uniquely artist vision of walking into a completely decrepit space and saying, “I can see what this is going to be.” It’s like that quote about sculptors, how they look for the piece within the marble and then let it out.
David: Exactly. Dustin was like, “All right, this building is my next piece of art.”

Dustin Yellin sculpture

brooklyn space: How did you become involved?
David: I was teaching high school and really wanted to quit, so when Dustin presented me the opportunity to start a teaching program here, I thought I’d give it a shot. So we started, and it went really well in the summer, and then it went really well in the fall, and then Hurricane Sandy happened, and it just totally knocked us out. This whole building was like shoulder-deep in water. We tried to keep doing classes even though we had very little power and no heat—I bubbled in the classroom, like in ET, just encased it in plastic curtains, and we put in as many heaters as we could without blowing the circuits, but it was still so, so cold. We didn’t get heat until March, so that’s when we finally started doing classes again. Since then, we’ve just been growing and growing and growing.

brooklyn spaces: How would you classify the different kinds of classes offered here?
David: They’re pretty different, but it’s basically stuff that’s either really new or really old. We do cutting-edge stuff like microcontrollers and 3D printing and upgrading the firmware in your camera; those are for artists, designers, software developers, to demystify the process of new technologies that everyone wants to know how to use. And then we do old stuff, like paper marbling, or wet-plate or tintype photography, which is Civil War era. It’s to a similar aim as the newer stuff: giving artists a new vocabulary and a specialized practice.

brooklyn spaces: Do you come up with an idea for a class and then go out and find a teacher? Or do people bring you ideas?
David: Both. The lock-picking class, which is super popular, came about because I saw a lock-picking tent at Maker Faire—although tracking down someone who picks locks for a living was really hard. Then on the other hand, a woman came by the other day who wants to do a bread-baking class. We were like, “But we have no ovens, we have no flat surfaces, we don’t have anything.” And she was like, “It’s okay, we can make it work. How about we cook the bread on sticks over a fire?” We’ll try basically anything if it seems cool and the teacher seems competent.

brooklyn spaces: There seems to be a strong movement in Brooklyn for these kinds of classes and skillshares, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of places like 3rd Ward and Brooklyn Brainery. Why do you think that is? Do people just want to have more hobbies?
David: I think it’s deeper than that. Demystifying processes is so enabling. There’s a huge movement of open-source hardware and software in the tech world, and I think part of that is because we’re so controlled by the companies that make the technology we use. The fact that you can’t just open an iPhone and replace the battery is a conscious choice on their part. It’s not because oh you might do it wrong; it’s to keep you under their control. The open-source movement puts the power back in the hands of the individuals, and I think people are used to that idea now, so by applying that model to education, we’re unlocking it a bit. And I think it’s going to continue to grow.

brooklyn spaces: With so many choices, do you think they’re beginning to overlap? What makes Pioneer Works’ offerings unique?
David: I mean, maybe there’s some overlap with what 3rd Ward was doing, but we have something that they didn’t have.
brooklyn spaces: Integrity?
David: Oh yeah, well there’s that. But also we’re a nonprofit and they were a for-profit, which makes a huge difference. We’re an arts institution; it’s just a very different kind of space. Plus we have the nicest building. Once people come here once, it’s not hard to get them to come back.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think being in Red Hook has had an influence on how the space has developed?
David: Sure. There’s such a strong community here, and a real neighborhood feel, like I’ve never experienced anywhere else in New York. We’re trying to find ways to use this space as more of a community center. At the end of April we did a twenty-four-hour hackathon that was Red Hook themed. Business owners from the neighborhood gave us challenges, and all the tech people competed to make apps to address those issues. Pizza Moto catered the event. I love those guys—after the flood they came down to Van Brunt Street when nobody had any power and just started cooking pizzas for free, out on the street under the police lights.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your future goals for the space?
David: We’re building a lot of relationships with terrific groups like Invisible Dog and Generally Assembly and Fractured Atlas. We don’t know what we’re going to do with them yet, but we’re kicking around ideas. We’re also starting to collaborate in a bunch of ways with Brooklyn Museum, which is perfect because they want to be linked to a gallery and we want to be linked to an institution. Obviously we don’t want to be a museum, but the way they’re organized and the integrity they have, I think it’s a really great model for us.

***

Like this? Read about more skillshares: Brooklyn Brainery, Exapno, Time’s Up, Ger-Nis Culinary Center, Lifelabs, UrbanGlass, 3rd Ward

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

G&S Glitter Ball, NYE 2013 (photo by Linus Gelber)

For ten years, Gemini & Scorpio have been throwing huge, immersive themed parties, consistently positioning themselves at the forefront of the NYC underground art-party world. Along with a few other beautifully creative affairs—Rubulad, Dances of Vice, Shanghai Mermaid, Cheryl, various Winkel + Balktick shindigs—Gemini & Scorpio curate the most creative, daring, and over-the-top events that Brooklyn has to offer. Whether it’s jazz bands in a Russian banya, a steampunk Burning Man fundraiser, an old-meets-new electro-swing dance party at Lincoln Center, or a New Year’s Eve glitter explosion, Gemini & Scorpio bring together dancers, music, and performers around lavish themes to create unforgettable occasions, party after party after party. And that’s not all: G&S also curate a weekly events listing that is second only to NonsenseNYC for finding the most fantastic things to do any day of the week. Sign up here!

After years of being nomadic, Miss Scorpio found a permanent home for G&S in a repurposed Gowanus woodshop. Now, in addition to lavish monthly parties, the loft hosts lectures, dance classes, plays, photo and video shoots, and more. And after spending months on demolition and build-out of the new space, Miss Scorpio reached out to the community she has provided with so many fantastic experiences to ask for help with the next stage of development of her space—and successfully raised more than $32k through Kickstarter. In the short term, this will mean new floors, walls, and ceiling for the loft, and in the long term it will allow G&S to keep bringing us all the best, most magical affairs—the uniquely beautiful experiences that make Brooklyn the most spectacular place to be.

photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

brooklyn spaces: Let’s start before this space: tell me how you became one of New York’s most creative party mavens.

Miss Scorpio, photo by Linus Gelber

Miss Scorpio: It was a pure accident that started with a website about online dating. This was ten years ago, when online dating was mostly considered weird and sad, but Miss Gemini and I wanted to show people that it was actually this fabulous thing, like eBay for dating. We thought you should never just do dinner and a movie with your online date; you should do something interesting, so that even if the date sucked, at least you’d have had a cool night. So every Friday we put out a list of unique things to do with your online date, and then we started throwing “singles parties that don’t suck.” Well, they didn’t suck to such a degree that we couldn’t keep couples out! We started with a Valentine’s Day party, then we did one for Halloween, and another one for New Year’s, and now it’s ten years later and this is all I do.

brooklyn spaces: What elements are necessary to make a Gemini & Scorpio party?
Miss Scorpio: First there has to be a theme, something a bit off-beat and unexpected that gives people an excuse to dress up. Live entertainment is another factor that’s really important: there’s generally a whole evening of programming curated to the theme. A G&S party isn’t one you drop into casually on your way to something else; our ideal party guest is one who leaves the house knowing that they’re coming to see us, dresses to the theme, and stays with us for the whole night.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite parties.

banya party, photo from G&S

Miss Scorpio: I always enjoy the Lost Circus steampunk party, and also the banya parties, which we’ve been doing since 2006. A fantastic recent party was a sci-fi mashup called Cantina at the End of the Universe. It was a Star Wars Day party—I’ve been wanting to do that party for four years, but I had to wait until May 4th fell on a Saturday. One of the headliners was Big Nazo, this incredible alien monster funk band. They played the Masquerade Macabre Halloween party that I co-produced with Rubulad in 2010, which had one of my favorite moments of any party I’ve ever done. Big Nazo was onstage being joined by the five-piece Raya Brass Band, and I was leading a parade from our other party location, headed up by Extraordinary Rendition, a fifteen-person brass band. Big Nazo and Raya were supposed to be done when we got there but they weren’t, so we had like thirty people onstage jamming, along with these enormous alien monster puppets, and the crowd just lost their shit. It was beautiful. [Video of the madness here.]

Big Nazo, photo from G&S

brooklyn spaces: Who are some other favorite performers you’ve worked with?
Miss Scorpio: There’s definitely a family of performers that I book again and again. Sxip Shirey is an absolute genius composer and musician, and every time he plays I’m excited to hear it, especially when he performs with the incredible beat-boxer Adam Matta. The Love Show dancers are wonderful, they combine classical dance training with a cabaret attitude and fantastic costumes. Shayfer James is a terrific dark rock musician who deserves a much bigger audience than he’s getting. Sometimes I take on artists as a personal cause, and keep booking them until people realize how incredible they are.

G&S piano

brooklyn spaces: Have you ever had someone get so big that they outgrow your parties?
Miss Scorpio: Yes! After I booked the Hot Sardines for my Lincoln Center Midsummer Night’s Swing two years ago, their career has exploded and they are now booked constantly. That’s happened with a bunch of circus people I used to book as well. But it’s a good problem to have. I’m very proud of my talented friends.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, let’s talk about this space. How long did you spend looking for it, and what shape was it in when you found it?
Miss Scorpio: Four years of constant searching, and in the end it was a random Craigslist find. The moment I walked in, I knew this was it, even though it was completely wrecked. There was plywood over all the windows, the floor was rotted in multiple places, there were strange pipes everywhere, the ceiling was half rotted out, there were signs of a recent fire. It was terrible.

a few months after move-in

brooklyn spaces: How long did it take you to get it into shape?
Miss Scorpio: First there were two months of just demolition. Everything you see, all the walls, we did it all. We re-laid much of the floor, using wood repurposed from other parts of the space. Once we got bathrooms up—with walls—I knew I was ready to let people in. The first party we did here was Swing House, one of my 1920s remix parties. Everybody loved it, but it was a party in a construction zone.

fixing the rotted floors

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the non-party events you’ve had here.
Miss Scorpio: We’ve hosted a few lectures in conjunction with Observatory that have been great fun. We had one called “How to Trespass” with Wanderlust Projects, and another with my boyfriend, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, called “Sex in Dictionaries.” We just had a storytelling event, “I’m Tawkin’ Here,” which was all New Yorkers and New York stories. Brooklyn Swings does a weekly swing-dancing class. We hosted an immersive, participatory version of Midsummer Night’s Dream staged by Shakespeare Shakedown. I’m always looking for people who are doing innovative, interesting things and could benefit from having access to an affordable art space.

Meet Me in Paris Cabaret, photo by Binnorie Artwork

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship like within the rest of the underground arts community? I feel like, of everyone I’ve interviewed, you really know every single person in the creative class in Brooklyn.
Miss Scorpio: It’s an extremely tight-knit community. It’s not just me; I think we all know each other. But because I do the event listings, I have a good sense of what everyone is up to. Even if I don’t know someone personally, I can tell you what arc their work has taken over the last ten years.

G&S rooftop view

brooklyn spaces: Last year when you and I were doing Occupy Sandy volunteering together, you told me you once did the listings on your phone from Paris.
Miss Scorpio: Oh yeah. Another time I did them from a tethered connection in an RV on the way to Burning Man. Everywhere I’ve traveled, I’ve brought the listings with me. I consider it my community service, a way for me to give back to the people who trust me and honor me with their presence at my events.

G&S rooftop art

brooklyn spaces: What advice would you give someone who wanted to do what you do?
Miss Scorpio: I’d say definitely don’t get into it for the glamour! Ninety percent of what I do is spreadsheets and emails. Maybe by 11 or 12 on a party night I’ll finally get to get into costume and have a few hours of fun, but for the most part it’s a job like any other. For me the payoff is conceiving something and then seeing it become a reality.

brooklyn spaces: What are your plans for the future—ten more years of this?
Miss Scorpio: Oh gosh, I don’t know. It does seem like I’m pretty committed to the New York cultural underground, but I couldn’t tell you what will happen in my life in the next ten years. I hope it’s big and exciting.

***

Like this? Read about more underground nightlife: Rubulad, the Lab, Red Lotus Room, Newsonic, House of Yes, Gowanus Ballroom, 12-turn-13

Environmental-activism nonprofit Time’s Up is actually one of the very first spaces I profiled when I started this project. (Read the original post here!) But that was two whole years ago, and more importantly, I just got a new (used) bike of my own from these guys, so I wanted to remind everybody how wonderful they are. They’ve also got all sorts of new initiatives and fun things in the works, so it seemed like a great time to revisit.

open workshop, pic by Eilon Paz

Time’s Up is a volunteer-run direct-action environmental group. Their most visible project is the bike co-op, which does three main things: 1) acquires, refurbishes, and sets people up with terrific, city-friendly used bikes (like mine!) for a donation of about $200; 2) leads bike repair workshops, teaching you how to fix all the different parts of your bike, including one class per week that’s for women and trans only; and 3) opens their doors three nights a week to anyone who wants to use their vast array of tools and talk to their incredibly knowledgeable mechanics while working on your own bike. (Check their calendar for dates and times.) They also hold lots of group bike rides and work on campaigns to support causes like anti-fracking, alternative energy, and safer streets, and they’re working to turn the space into a community gathering spot, with new plans like a bi-weekly movie night.

Read on for my Q&A with Keegan, one of the bottom-liners of the bike co-op and the guy who sold me my fabulous new bike!

Keegan fixing a bike, pic by me

brooklyn spaces: How would you define the Time’s Up mission?
Keegan: At heart we’re an environmental group, and because we’re in New York City, that means trying to find sustainable ways to live in an urban environment. Bike activism is a big part of it, because bicycling is sustainable transportation, and we want to make it so that everyone feels comfortable biking in the city. That means creating safe spaces, like bike lanes, but there’s always going to be a place where the bike lane ends, so we really need the streets to be safer in general. The NYPD needs to be ticketing motorists, and when cyclists and pedestrians are killed, they need to be doing proper investigations. We’re having a ride to advocate for this on March 21—everyone should come join us!

soooo many bikes! pic by me

brooklyn spaces: Where do you get the bikes you refurbish?
Keegan: We buy them in bulk, these Dutch-style Japanese bikes called mamacharis, which means “mother chariot.” They’re terrific city-friendly bikes. They’re upright, with full fenders so you can ride them in any weather, and really good brakes so they’re safe. Basically everybody rides mamacharis in Japan, they’re hugely popular. The government actually tried to ban them, because they thought it was too dangerous for women to be riding with a child on the front and a child on the back and all the groceries too. But the women of Japan rose up to defend their bicycles, and they won, the mamachari didn’t get banned.

shipment of used bikes, pix by Steve McMaster

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the group rides you guys do.
Keegan: We have a monthly moonlight ride through Central Park and another in Prospect Park, there’s a Peace Ride that goes through various peace sites in Lower Manhattan, and we have some goofy theatrical rides, which are also direct actions, like we dress up as clowns and call ourselves the Bike Lane Liberation Front. We crash into the back of cars, like “Oh hey, what are you doing in this bike lane?” and give out fake tickets, stuff like that.

group ride, pic by Rich Johnson

brooklyn spaces: Are you guys part of Critical Mass?
Keegan: Critical Mass is leaderless and worldwide, but we used to help facilitate it in New York a lot, often just by showing up. Sadly, that ride has gotten smaller and smaller due to a massive police crackdown. It’s the same reason they shut down Occupy Wall Street: they don’t want to look like they’re allowing a political demonstration. This last month there were four riders and fourteen police vehicles! So now we do First Friday rides instead—those get forty or fifty people and zero police.

fixin’ bikes, pic by Eilon Paz

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved in Time’s Up?
Keegan: Our volunteer base is pretty huge, we have about fifteen hundred people. It’s a big, amorphous, fun group. It’s also very much a community.

brooklyn spaces: Do people come here and say “I have a wacky bike idea, can you help?”
Keegan: Oh yeah, ever since Occupy Wall Street, when we built energy-generating bikes to offset the gas generators in Zucotti Park.

energy bikes in Zucotti Park, pic by David Shankbone

brooklyn spaces: You guys used those after Sandy too, right?
Keegan: Yeah, although the bikes that were in Zuccotti were taken by the NYPD and mostly broken. We had three up and running when Sandy hit, and we deployed them right away, on the Lower East Side. When the LES got power back we took them to the Rockaways. We were also doing group rides out there three times a week, delivering goods. Through Occupy Sandy, we got funding to build fifteen more energy bikes, and some of them are still in the Rockaways. The People’s Free Medical Clinic is using two of them instead of getting hooked back up to the grid.

energy bike in the LES, post-Sandy, pic by Margot Julia DiGregorio

brooklyn spaces: How did Time’s Up end up in Williamsburg?
Keegan: We used to be at 49 East Houston St., and we got kicked out of there when the owner sold it to a developer. We were scrounging around for space and we did a direct action in Williamsburg when the Bedford Ave bike lane was taken out, a mock funeral for the lane. We got quite a bit of press for that, and the landlord here, Baruch Herzfeld, who’s a pretty dramatic and funny bike advocate himself, really liked what we were doing. This space was actually previously a bike shop, and he let us move in and take it over.

bike forks, pic by me

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel that being in Williamsburg has had an affect on the space, the mission, the way it’s run, that sort of thing?
Keegan: Definitely. Being here dictated so much of what we did for the first couple of years, because we’re right on the borderline between Chasidic Williamsburg and hipster Williamsburg. When we opened the co-op, we had a shocking number of Chasidic people coming in to fix their bikes, both men and women. It’s really interesting to see them come here and work alongside a bunch of hipsters who obviously have very different values, and then they find out that they’re really not so different: they all want to work on their bikes, they all want to live cheaply and sustainably.

tools! pic by me

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a nice fond memory you have from your time here.
Keegan: It’s all pretty good. After every single workshop I’m like, “Wow, that was great!” I just helped this guy fix his bike who does the programming for the tiny theatre down the block, Spectacle. I also got to help a woman who had been hit by a car. It’s just so much great community building; we all become friends by the end of the night. Every workshop is a terrific experience.

***

Like this? Read more about community spaces: No-Space, Trees Not Trash, Bushwick City Farms, Brooklyn Free Store, The Illuminator, Occupy Wall Street art show, Books Through Bars

Body Actualized Center for Cosmic Living is a new space in Bushwick that has quickly gained a lot of acclaim. A former iron foundry (and before that, briefly, a chicken slaughterhouse!), Body Actualized is now a beautiful, welcoming space with reclaimed-wood floors, a wall of windows, candles and incense, and cushions stacked along the walls. By day it’s a yoga studio offering hatha, vinyasa, and prana yoga, as well as rejuvenation classes, qi-yo workshops, new moon and full moon ceremonies, shamanic astrology, and more. By night it’s a venue for electronic music performances and “chill-out” parties.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Run by a loose collective of musicians, artists, and promoters—several of whom make up Vibes Management—Body Actualized is also known for weekly Cosmic Yoga, which is yoga with live ambient electronic music, and promoting “Healthy Hedonism”: a lifestyle reflected in organic food, community empowerment, consciousness raising, creative opportunities, and spiritual growth. You should obviously sign up for a yoga class, but first read my interview with Brian, one of the founding members.

photo by Angelina Dreem

brooklyn spaces: Did the collective exist before the space, or did the space come first?
brian: Body Actualized has been a group as well as a brand for about three years, since way before we got this space. We throw DJ parties with a cosmic aesthetic, and we did Cosmic Yoga on the roof of the Market Hotel for years. When we found this space we were excited to be able to have our own venue, but slowly it dawned on us that we didn’t want to do just a venue, so we decided to have yoga during the day. The three of us who signed the lease didn’t want to be the only ones doing things, so we called all our friends and said, “Hey guys, we’ve got something really special.” We started having meetings, and whoever kept coming back ended up being part of the founding collective.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Is the collective consensus based?
brian: Yes. Non-hierarchical, consensus based. The one rule is that no one should do anything they don’t want to do, and that way everyone can be happy. We’re more a group of friends with a vision than a business. Having a commitment to radical honesty is really important. Everyone can say whatever they’re feeling, because it’s based in love, and thriving on love comes from mutual understanding.

brooklyn spaces: How do you crystallize the vision or mission of the space?
brian: Right now, it’s not crystallized. We’re just doing what we do. Everyone kind of gets it, but no one can put it into words. We all know what’s appropriate for the space and what falls under the purview of our vibe.

Astral Project Orchestra

brooklyn spaces: Are you guys all into yoga? Are you the yoga teachers?
brian: There are three yoga teachers in the core group, but everyone is into yoga as a way of life. I mean, it’s not some sort of didactic thing; there’s no rules. If someone doesn’t like yoga for a little while, that’s okay; yoga is just a small facet of a larger vibe and intention, just one core element in galvanizing the overall energy of what we’re doing in the larger picture.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the events.
brian: They’re mostly centered around electronic music. There’s very few guitars; I think there’s only twice been a drum set used in the space. The music plays a huge part in determining the aesthetic of an environment. There’s a whole range of styles within electronic music, and we curate them specifically to hone in on a certain vibe, just like someone would curate an art show. Everything is working on a very subtle level to open the space, to open the pathways for someone’s mind to travel to a different region.

Shawn Devlin O’Sullivan

brooklyn spaces: When I came to my first show here and there were all the cushions on the floor, it was very affecting. It really changes the way you interact with and experience the space.
brian: Yeah, it’s important for them to be “chill-out” parties, because people will feel free. If someone comes here alone, they can still be comfortable, whereas when you go to a bar or a warehouse party, it feels and looks weird to be alone. Here, you could be laying down asleep in the corner, and no one would even take a second glance. It’s like positive nightlife. You’re in an environment that’s clean, a clean welcoming wood floor. No chemicals are used to clean the space; it’s sanitary in its own way. And most people take their shoes off when they come in, which changes the mindset of everyone in the room. When you have your shoes off, you let down your guard, you feel more vulnerable, you feel like you’re at home. This space is kind of an oasis, one that’s much needed in this very hard and often distracted, isolating city. There’s a social barrier in most public places that doesn’t really exist here.

brooklyn spaces: It must attract really interesting people.
brian: Yeah, all sorts of people who think about the world in ways they were not taught in high school. We have both artistic and mystic people come through, people who practice reiki or the use of subtle energies, people who are interested in tarot cards, in astrology. It’s not a party atmosphere; it’s a place for people to come together over a different energy.

Future Shock

brooklyn spaces: How do you feel about being in Bushwick right now? Do you have a relationship with some of the other innovative spaces around here?
brian: Bushwick is just paradise right now, I can’t say enough positive things about it. People are really friendly, energy is high, there’s a lot of great stuff popping up. Secret Project Robot is really cool, the new Silent Barn is going to be in Bushwick. Everything is ending up here. And we get a pretty cool racial diversity at Body Actualized, on top of all the other types of diversity. That feels good.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
brian: About fifteen times as many plants, like a beautiful jungle. Ambient, indirect lighting. Permanent installations that make people think differently about the world through technology. Everything about the space has to be something that no one is doing. Every element has to be an original concept. By doing unique things we can open people up to new possibilities.

Iasos performing at Cosmic Yoga

brooklyn spaces: Are there specific artists you’re hoping to bring in?
brian: Oh, yeah. We have like two hundred artists we’d like to have here. We’ve already had some incredible shows. Franco Falsini just played. For one of our first big shows we had Iasos, one of the founders of New Age music, who has never played in New York City before. That set a great tone and precedent for the music community worldwide. So when I email someone, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I know about that place.” I just emailed Maria Minerva, an amazing Estonian artist, and she was like, “Yeah, I know about the Center.” The sky’s the limit. You can do anything in this world.

***

Like this? Read about more community spaces: Trees Not Trash, Time’s Up, Trinity Project, Bushwick City Farm

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

all photos by Maximus Comissar (unless noted)

Yes, I know Flux Factory is in Queens. For what it’s worth, they actually started in Brooklyn—in the Monster Island building—and they’re one of the longest-running art collectives currently active. More importantly, though, they are, individually and as a group, terrifically creative, sensationally ambitious, and just unbelievably fun. I change the standards of what I’m going to cover on this site all the time, but the best way to sum it up is this: If I think something is fabulous, I want to cover it. And Flux Factory is fabulous.

some of the fabulous Fluxers

Housed in a converted greeting card factory in Long Island City, Flux has fourteen art studios and a staff of six. That’s around twenty people give or take, and in 2011 they held seventy-five different events (here’s a sampling), including art shows, installations, performances, screenings, workshops, lectures, and more. Everything at Flux is done, per their mission statement, with a “rigorous commitment to the collaborative process.” They have four major thematic group shows each year, involving art, performance, and community events, utterly transforming the gallery space each time. Recently there was “iSpy,” a “participatory collaborative game show” that encorporated guessing games, livestreaming, piñatas, feminism according to World of Warcraft, and tweets from the Flux toilet whenever it was flushed. Before that was “Banquet for America,” a month-long extravaganza that saw the gallery redone as an entire village, with a fifty-foot banquet table-cum-catwalk down the center and each artist manning his or her own shop, “selling” things like donuts and haircuts and feminist karaoke (I meant to sing “I Will Survive,” but I ran out of time). In addition, there are dozens of smaller projects, including educational initiatives, resident solo and group shows, guest-curated projects, Flux Radio, and a monthly potluck. There was a death match debate to discuss how artists are interacting with the #OWS movement. There have been lectures on social hijinx, interviewing skills, and kayak-building.

iSpy

Have I given you a sense of the incredible creativity and diversity of the artists in this group? This is why we live in New York, you guys, or at least why I do: to be able to see and participate in this kind of expectation-thwarting, envelope-pushing, rambunctious creative glee. And listen: the Fluxers are always looking for new friends, new volunteers, and new collaborators, so please, go on up to Queens and check them out. But first check out my interview with Executive Director Christina Vassallo, Residency Director Douglas Paulson, Press & Curatorial fellow Georgia Muenster, and artists Jason Eppink, Adrian Owen, and Richard Nathaniel.

brooklyn spaces: Is there a unifying theme among the artists here? How do you decide who gets to have a studio?
Christina: We’re not focused on a specific genre or discipline. It’s really people who are interested in working collaboratively; that’s our main criteria.
Douglas: Flux is an intentional community, and we rely on consensus-based decision making. The artists choose the next residents, conceptualize and generate the work for the shows, figure out who’s doing the chores. We discuss everything, and everyone has the right to object or bring new terms. Of course, there’s never unanimous agreement on anything, but after a discussion, the people who might not necessarily agree at least feel like they’ve had a chance to be heard. One thing that comes up a lot is the idea of “fluxiness,” which is a word we all know but no one can actually define. It’s the way we describe whatever it takes for someone to endure being part of this crazy mess.
Adrian: I think it’s wrapped up with the idea that we often take on ambitious projects that we’re not quite sure how we’re going to do and then figure it out as we go.
Georgia: Fluxiness to me is a cross between ingenuity and impossibility. And the color green.
Adrian: We want to make sure we’re perceived as professional as well as fun. So that’s part of fluxiness too, knowing that we have the heads behind all these crazy things we’re trying to do.
Jason: Yeah, but also? Fuck professionality. I think it’s more being able to execute what you can and pulling it through somehow. A lot of our peers don’t execute at the level we do. We actually make shit happen.
Georgia: We do so so so much. It’s kind of preposterous how much we do.
Adrian: Getting a fully functional administration rolling has allowed us to produce so much more.

Banquet for America

brooklyn spaces: Do you find any conflict between the organization required and the creative space of doing these sorts of projects?
Adrian: Yeah, that’s what we’re navigating all the time. It’s like herding cats trying to organize artists.
brooklyn spaces: Jordan from Silent Barn said exactly the same thing about musicians. Tell me about a favorite event or exhibit you’ve seen or been a part of here. I came to the opening of “Banquet for America” last month, and it was absolutely incredible.
Christina: That show was particularly fluxy in that it required extensive participation from the artists and the audience, with all the artists’ shops and performances. The more serious side of the show was an anti-capitalist statement about how mom-and-pop shops and independent retailers are getting pushed aside by big-box retail stores. Another show I loved was “Sea Worthy,” which, in typical Flux fashion, experimented with the boundaries of what an exhibition could be. It was in conjunction with the Gowanus Studio Space and EFA Project Space, and Swimming Cities contributed as well. We paired artists with boat builders to make a whole flotilla of artworks, and we brought members of the public around the New York City waterways. Again there was a serious discussion beneath the presentation: The water is the largest open space in New York City, and we wanted to show people that there are ways we can reclaim it.
Douglas: One of my favorites was “Congress of Collectives.” It was completely different from these sorts of spectacle-heavy shows. We invited representatives of more than thirty collectives from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, and we set up projects, discussions, panels, and talks designed to explore what it means to work collectively.
Georgia: One of my favorites was “Going Places (Doing Stuff),” our bus tour series, where you’d get on a bus and not know where you were going.
Jason: That’s what I was going to say too!

brooklyn spaces: I didn’t know that was a Flux project. Where were some of the places that you took people?
Jason: This was a three-summer project. The first year I went on three of them, and it blew me away, it totally made my summer. I wasn’t part of Flux then, but when I heard they were doing it again, I had to get involved. My friend Matt Green and I led one called “Quest for Immortality.” First we went to visit the Self-Transcendence 3100, which is a 3100-mile foot race around a single city block, started by the late guru Sri Chinmoy. Then we met Ashrita Furman, who holds the most Guinness World Records, and we set our own records, like “most people flossing their teeth with the same string of dental floss at once.”
Adrian: I beat some fifteen-year-old girl’s record for speed-eating a bag of Skittles.
Jason: Next we went to visit a monument of Crete that this old guy has been building in his yard in Bay Ridge, and then we went to Staten Island and climbed these abandoned liquid natural gas towers. We finished at Lemon Creek State Park, where this guy has been building rock cairns along the beach for about ten years. It used to be this trashy, gross place, and he has completely transformed it.
Adrian: I have two favorite Flux experiences: “The End of the End of the End,” the last show at the previous space, and “Housebroken,” the first show at this one. They were absolute mayhem from a curatorial standpoint, but just so much fun. Every single room had something happening in it at all times. There were like 200 artists involved in each. Every nook and cranny was programmed. It was intense and awesome.
brooklyn spaces: Did you perform or curate or make something for them?
Adrian: My metal band White Limo played both, and at “Housebroken” I sang opera in the shower with the door open and the shower curtain closed, wearing gold trunks. One girl actually pulled back the curtain because she probably thought it was a recording, and she just screamed and ran out.
Jason: Another awesome thing about that show was that everyone was invited to give us something we could keep, as a way to have artists help us finish the space. Most of the artworks that you see around this space came from that show.
Richard: I think my favorite experience is the monthly Flux Thursday. It’s all the people you know and tons of people you don’t, and everybody’s showing work and drinking and talking and high-fiving.
Georgia: Those are potlucks. We love to feed people.
Richard: Also the Greenpeace stuff was dope. We worked with them to sell real estate on top of black coal mountains. Just light stuff, you know.
Adrian: It was the performance-art portion of a project for a coal awareness tour they were doing with one of their Ice Breakers. It was in Chelsea Piers, right next to the driving range. One of our artists got hit by a golf ball.

brooklyn spaces: So when an artist has a studio here, is it only about working collectively?
Douglas: No, everyone here is pursuing their individual art and their own career in one way or another as well.
Christina: Through the years we’ve gotten really good at focusing on the collaborative aspects, and now we’re starting to get better at nurturing the individual simultaneously.
Douglas: Flux used to be a lot of people in their early twenties who just got out of school, but now it’s older, more serious. We had a Fulbright Scholar here, we have career artists. But we’re extremely conscientious about maintaining the existing community. We’ve dedicated one studio to people who have had a residency here already, so there are always former residents coming back. That’s extremely important, and it’s something that we’ve been very conscious of as we’ve transformed to a formal residency program: how to maintain that kind of cohesive fluxiness.

brooklyn spaces: How do you think Flux is affected by being in Long Island City?
Christina: There are so many things we get here that we wouldn’t get anywhere else. If we were in Manhattan we’d just be another group fighting for the same resources and the same eyeballs and audience.
Adrian: It definitely makes it harder to attract foot traffic, though. Queens holds such a stigma—even though it’s easier to get here than to most of Bushwick. It’s like, “Did you say Queens? I don’t know, man.” So that’s a big hurdle.
Georgia: It’s somewhat absurd to me; there are dozens of arts organizations out in Long Island City. Sculpture Center, Noguchi, PS1, Fisher Landau, Socrates Sculpture Park, Museum of the Moving Image…
Douglas: And the fact that we’re not in Brooklyn has allowed us to make our own identity rather than being just another Bushwick space.
Jason: I feel like if we were in Brooklyn we’d be overrun. I think it’s kind of to our advantage that people think it’s not as easy to get here. The people who want to get here, get here. It’s already an awesome, big community.
Adrian: We’re starting to get a few relationships locally. We’ve been here long enough, and people are starting to figure out what we’re up to.
Jason: I love that the people from the neighborhood see us as these crazy art people. We get to be that for a lot of New York. My first experiences of Flux were like, holy hell. This is much better than art. It’s wacky and playful people doing really exuberant things. I actually think that gets back to what fluxiness is. I think that’s sort of our legacy.
Adrian: I totally agree. That’s exactly what happened to me. I had a friend who lived in Queens and I was like “What? I’m not going over there.” And then Flux asked my band to play, so I made the trek—and I’ve been here for seven years. My eyes were opened in a whole new way. I was like, “You can do this?”
Georgia: It’s the same story for me too. The sense of playfulness is just unmatched anywhere else.
Jason: There’s no context for this sort of stuff in mainstream culture. To be exposed to this happening? It’s amazing.

***

Like this? Read about more art collectives: The Schoolhouse, Rubulad, Swimming Cities, Monster Island, The Hive, Arch P&D, Silent Barn

Update: The Brainery moved! They got a sweet new space in Prospect Heights which opened in early 2013.

Brooklynites are lots of things. We’re partiers, we’re makers, we’re performers and rock stars and artists. We’re also, maybe most importantly, collaborators. We love to share our knowledge with each other, so naturally skillshare and the “quirky education” movements are huge. There’s lecture series like OCD at Pete’s Candy Store, Nerd Nite and Get Smart at Galapagos, the Secret Science Club, Adult Ed, and everything at the Observatory; plus groups that are dedicated exclusively to hobbyists and experts and those who want to learn from them, like LifeLabs, Brooklyn Skillshare, TradeSchool, 3rd Ward, and, of course, the Brooklyn Brainery.

What Dickens Drank: Historic Cocktails

The Brainery has been getting a lot of press lately—from places like the New York Times, Brooklyn Based, GOOD, and Brokelyn—and deservedly so. It’s a perfectly wonderful idea: pair people who are passionate about a topic—anything from urban forestry to microwave candy to beekeeping to Haitian Creole—with an audience who wants to learn about it. Plus (and very importantly these days) classes at the Brainery are super cheap, as low as $5 for an evening’s worth of learnin’. That’s what I paid for The History of the New York City Subway, an interactive lecture that included tons of fun facts, passed-around books with photos of old train cars and subway graffiti, and of course YouTube clips of subway scenes from Saturday Night Fever and The Warriors. That was my first Brainery class, and I plan to take a whole lot more. You should too; it would be impossible to look through their course list and not see something you find fascinating. But before you click over, check out my interview with Brainery founders Jen and Soma, who happen to be some of the nicest, most animated, funniest people I’ve interviewed yet.

[all pix courtesy of the Brainery]

Designing for Non-Designers

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of how this got started and why.
Jen: I think one of the reasons we started this was to give us an excuse to learn more and research more. Soma and I are both just really curious; we had been going to all these classes and lectures, and it just started getting really expensive.

DIY Sandle-Making

Soma: We were going broke, basically. When you drop $300 on a class, there’s only so many times you can do that before you can’t pay rent.
brooklyn spaces: Yeah, I would say one time.
Jen: I guess we were richer back then.
Soma: What amazing days! So we decided that there had to be a way to offer classes more cheaply. We wanted to take classes on things like welding or shoemaking, but I mean, we’re not planning to become welders or cobblers, we just want to have a fun hobby or learn a little bit about something. And we realized that if you find people who are hobbyists at something—and really, in Brooklyn you can find an expert on anything—they love sharing it with other people. Basically the idea is that anyone can take a class, because it’s super cheap and accessible, and anyone can teach a class, because we all have a teacher hiding somewhere inside of us.

Ethiopian Cookfest

brooklyn spaces: Did you have this space from the start? How did that come about?
Jen: No, for the first year we rented space by the hour at Gowanus Studio Space, just across the canal by the Bell House. They were great, but we really needed a place we could settle into.
Soma: So we raised about $10k on Kickstarter and then spent a long time hunting for a space, because it turns out that in New York, finding a space is probably harder than finding ten grand. But eventually we moved in here, and it’s been great ever since.

Scents & Sensibility

brooklyn spaces: What were some of the earliest classes?
Soma: Man, I taught so many classes, I don’t even know. I think in the beginning I was teaching half the classes. It’s always been the same eccentric mix of stuff that we have now. We had a class about optics, a class about meat, a class about perfume.

brooklyn spaces: So what unites the class offerings?
Soma: It doesn’t matter what the subject is, but we really want everything to be collaborative. Everyone should be talking and it should be fun.
Jen: We don’t want people to be afraid to challenge the teacher or ask a question. People are still sort of in the mindset from college or whatever of like, up there is the person who knows everything and they are transmitting the information to you. But at this point in our lives, there’s no need to do that anymore.

setup for Making Ginger Ale

brooklyn spaces: What’s your background, are either of you teachers?
Soma: Absolutely not. Well, now we are. But no. I have a background in computer science, and Jen has a background in art.

extracting DNA from a strawberry

brooklyn spaces: What are some awesome classes that you’ve taught or taken?
Soma: My favorite class that Jen taught was her weather class. It turned out that the class was full of scientists. Everyone was a scientist, and they did their homework and knew all kinds of stuff and it was amazing. It was like a crystallization of what the Brainery could be in an alternate universe, where everyone in the class is already an expert. And I don’t even know, my favorite class to teach? I teach so much that I forget everything. I teach classes across the board, I teach Thai food and programming and the science of perception, just everything. I love every class I take, too. I will come to any class and be completely riveted by it. I can’t pick a favorite.

Spices 101

brooklyn spaces: How do decide what classes to offer?
Soma: People submit like crazy. We used to recruit people, but now people are always contacting us.
Jen: We’re always looking for new teachers. If anyone has anything they want to teach, tell us!

Soma at the Crawfish Boil

brooklyn spaces: Do you guys do events also?
Jen: Not as many as we’d like, but we had a big crawfish boil at the City Reliquary over the summer. We tried to make it educational, so we did trivia and we had a test, but it was basically just a party. It was really fun. Our newest thing is we’re putting together this club, Society for the Advancement of Social Studies. It’s going to meet at a bar, maybe monthly. We’re not sure what we’re going to talk about yet—labor rights? Triangle Shirtwaist Factory?—but it’s going to be nerdy and amazing. We’re really excited about it.

brooklyn spaces: How do you feel about being in Brooklyn today? Do you think something like this is inspired by Brooklyn?
Jen: Oh yeah, we’re totally a product of our environment. I don’t think we’d be doing this if we lived somewhere else.
Soma: We’re obviously doing a very Brooklyn thing in Brooklyn, I think it’s just hilariously Brooklyn what we do. But we’re totally self-aware and we love it.

***

Like this? Read about more skillshares: Pioneer Works, LifeLabs, 3rd Ward, Ger-Nis, Time’s Up, Urbanglass

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

The Red Lotus Room is breathtaking. The first time I went was for BANZAI!!!!!, a surreally crazy art and performance party, full of elaborate costumed revelers, an eclectic selection of multimedia art, and performances from drag acts to DJ sets. The second (and third, and fourth, and fifth) time I went back was for the famous Shanghai Mermaid party, an underground, more-or-less-monthly, themed event (usually Paris, Shanghai, Berlin, or New Orleans in the twenties or thirties), where everyone has to dress accordingly. It was a beautifully bizarre experience, riding the subway out to Crown Heights in period attire, wandering down darkened streets in heels, then stepping through the door into a sprawling, whirling, huge space, walls draped with red velvet, tables laden with candles, everyone in hats and suspenders and fans, sequins and rhinestones and fringes, with cigarette girls hawking candy and treats, exotic cocktails and food, and hours and hours of amazing performers: aerialists, fire dancers, musicians, burlesque, and more. The parties start at ten and go until dawn, if not later. It’s an absolutely phenomenal way to spend a Saturday night.

Juliette, photo by Erica Camille

So how did it all get started? Read on for my interview with Juliette, who’s responsible for the whole thing.

Blue Vipers of Brooklyn, photo from shanghaimermaid.com

brooklyn spaces: So how did it all get started?

Juliette: I really had a vision. I just decided I wanted to do a nightclub like Paris in the 1920s. Paris and Berlin and Shanghai all had these very decadent underground club scenes at that time. There was so much turmoil throughout the world, but people who have traditionally been marginalized—artists, intellectuals, gay people, people of color—have historically created underground scenes as a reaction to the mainstream, which then, ironically, takes its cues from the underground. Anyway, at the very beginning, my dear friend Tanya Rynd suggested that i throw some parties in lieu of trying to start an actual nightclub, to see if anyone was interested. For the first party, I think we each sent out fifty emails, and we were really particular about who we invited, because we wanted people who would really get it and appreciate it. And it was amazing. I had friends who had this space in Dumbo, and even though Dumbo hasn’t been dangerous for a long time, at night it’s kind of desolate, and four years ago even more so. People would be walking around going, “Are we in the right place?” and they’d walk through this maze of tagged walls, and then they’d hear music, and they’d walk in and it was just complete glamour, candlelight and chandeliers, the whole thing. It was really unexpected, which for me is part of the magic. You want to feel like you’re in a different time and place. That’s really my goal, to make people feel like they’ve been completely transported.

Lady C, photo by Erica Camille

brooklyn spaces: It’s kind of like a gift you’re giving to people.
Juliette: I don’t think there’s enough glamour in the world, I really don’t. Even though we may not have any money, we certainly can have glamour. If you have talented and creative people around you, you can make anything you want. But it’s definitely a lot of work, you have to be really obsessed to manifest your vision because it’s definitely against all odds, sometimes.

photo from Red Lotus Room’s blog

BANZAI!!!!! co-creator Eric Schmallenberger, photo by Gabi Porter for New York Metromix

brooklyn spaces: So what happened to the Dumbo space?
Juliette: Well, we outgrew it really quickly. Shanghai Mermaid got listed on Nonsense NYC, which is a wonderful list, and Jeff Stark wrote something very nice about it—I think he mentioned that we use real glassware. It was really exciting, but it made the party huge. And the landlords happened to be driving by and they called the cops and the fire department. About a dozen fire trucks and cop cars descended on the space. They walked in and were like, “Oh my god.” But they stayed for like an hour. Amber Ray was performing when they finally turned the lights on and the music off, and everyone started booing. I said, “You know what? You’ll look way cooler if you let her finish her number.” And they said okay. They were really, really cool.

photo by Michael Blase

brooklyn spaces: Did you get the Red Lotus Room right after that?
Juliette: No. We were mobile for awhile, which was so much work. Everything at Shanghai—tables, chairs, tablecloths, bar, chandeliers, curtains, the stage, the lights, the sound—we had to bring all that with us. Then we’d set up for hours, and when it was over, I’d be sweeping the floor in a ball gown at seven in the morning. So I knew I needed my own space, I didn’t want to keep setting up and breaking down. But finding a space in Brooklyn is super hard. I looked for a year and a half. I really wanted Red Hook, I wanted something on the water, I love turn-of-the-century warehouses, but finally I realized I had to be realistic. I like that it’s in Crown Heights, that people have to go a little bit out of the way to get here. I think when you have to work harder for something, you appreciate it more. Like the dress code. I hate to turn people away, but if someone’s going to go spend money and time to create an outfit from another era, I don’t want other people to come in in a polo shirt and jeans. It’s not fair and it breaks the whole illusion.

Trixie Little & the Evil Hate Monkey, photo by Benjamin Mobley

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship with the people in the neighborhood?
Juliette: I try to be a part of the community, and I’ve had a great response. I support the neighborhood, I buy everything I can around here. And there’s all these little kids, really nice kids, and they don’t have anything to do, so sometimes I let them come in, and I show them the backstage area and all the costumes, and I let them on the stage. I really want to try to do kids’ workshops or classes here, it’s definitely something the community needs. On the whole, there’s good things and bad things about gentrification. I remember being at Home Depot when we were first building out the space, and this guy said, “I’m so happy white people have moved into this neighborhood.” I said, “You are?” and he said, “Yeah, because now when you call the cops, they come.” That just gave me the chills.

Maine Attraction, photo by Michael Blase

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your favorite performers to work with?
Juliette: Les Chauds Lapins, they were the very first act at the very first Shanghai Mermaid. I love Hot Sardines, Baby Soda Jazz Band, Blue Vipers of Brooklyn—they were also at the first Shanghai Mermaid. For burlesque performers, I tend to go for people who are costumey and conceptual, like Veronica Varlow, and Maine Attraction, she’s got this great personality, very Josephine Baker. Amber Ray performed at the April in Paris party, when everything was very French and dramatic. Then there’s the fire performers, there’s so many great ones, like Reina Terror, Christine Geiger, Lady C and Flambeaux. And for aerialists I adore Seanna Sharpe, and of course  Anya Sapozhnikova from House of Yes and Lady Circus; she’s another example of someone who’s not only a performer, as I am, but who works her ass off to run her own venue while performing all around town. I’m very impressed with her and her dedication.

BANZAI!!!!! photo by Gabi Porter for New York Metromix

brooklyn spaces: Do you think the exclusive nature of the parties attracts people?
Juliette: Shanghai Mermaid is not exclusive, and I’ve never wanted it to be. Everyone is welcome. It’s just that for survival it had to be really on the down-low. Although lately it’s not so down-low anymore; it’s listed as a venue on Time Out New York, Gothamist just wrote about it, the Village Voice called it the “Best Literally Underground Cabaret Show.”

photo from shanghaimermaid.com

brooklyn spaces: Since this is a Brooklyn blog, tell me your thoughts on being in Brooklyn these days.
Juliette: I very much believe in Brooklyn, in the Brooklyn scene. I think Brooklyn’s really exciting. There’s still a little bit of a Wild West quality here, which I don’t feel like Manhattan has anymore, it’s gone really corporate. The party-throwers in Manhattan, they have PR agents and big websites, they want to do a lot of corporate stuff. I usually stay away from that. There’s definitely money in it, but the thing is, who are you creating it for? Not that people who go to corporate events don’t deserve something fabulous, but it’s just not something I’m going to go after. I guess I’m a purist.

Blue Vipers of Brooklyn, photo by Erica Camille

brooklyn spaces: What’s one of the best, most beautiful memories from the parties?
Juliette: I’ll always remember the very first moment at the very first Shanghai Mermaid when the curtains opened and Les Chauds Lapins were playing, and I looked around and saw all these people dressed so beautifully, and I thought, “We did it, and it’s so lovely!” It really was how I imagined it. That’s a great memory. Opening night at the Red Lotus Room was really exciting too. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but it is super rewarding to be able to do something like this and share it. And I’ve always been very, very blessed to have beautiful wonderful people come. When I walk down the aisle, people grab my arm and say, “Thank you so much for doing this.”

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Like this? Read about more underground party spaces: Rubulad, Newsonic, Gemini & Scorpio loft, The Lab (Electric Warehouse), 12-turn-13, Gowanus Ballroom, Big Sky Works

update, summer 2014: In sad but of course not shocking news, the House of Yes lost their East Williamsburg lease in August 2013. (If you want to take a look back, the Atlantic has an awesome piece on all three incarnations, from Bed-Stuy to Ridgewood to East Williamsburg.)

But why get nostalgic? House of Yes 4.0 will be opening in Bushwick the fall! Want to help make it happen, and get some wild and incredible rewards to boot? Donate to their Kickstarter, and help keep the Brooklyn underground alive.

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I am really overjoyed about this post, because House of Yes is actually my very favorite space in Brooklyn (so far), and one of the spaces that inspired this whole project. It’s an aerialist training facility and performance venue in a huge former ice warehouse, and they put on the most high-energy, high-caliber, innovative and astonishing shows I’ve seen. They make all their costumes onsite and build their own sets, they collaborate with Brooklyn bands for live musical accompaniment, and every show is just spectacular, bristling with staggeringly talented aerialists, trapezists, fire-dancers, contortionists, burlesque acts, singers, and musicians.

Anya Sapozhnikova

Besides putting on phenomenal shows in a fantastic converted warehouse—in one of the most vibrant corners of East Williamsburg, down the block from 3rd Ward, Werdink, Shea Stadium, the former Bushwick Project for the Arts and Bushwick Music Studios, and more—many of the House of Yes gals make up the loose conglomeration of female acrobats Lady Circus, and they are tireless, performing at all the best underground Brooklyn parties and Manhattan cabarets, like Shanghai Mermaid and Café Panache, among many many others. And the mainstream world is taking notice: the Lady Circus performers were featured as a costume-design challenge on the incredibly popular show Project Runway in 2011!

Don’t you want to hear from the woman responsible for it all? Read on for my interview with Anya Sapozhnikova, founder of House of Yes and Lady Circus and crucial fixture in the Brooklyn underground performance scene.

photo from designglut.com

brooklyn spaces: I first heard about House of Yes when it burned down.
Anya: Yeah, that was our first space. The thing about the fire was that it made us realize that people really cared about what we were doing, and the mobilization of the underground scene in Brooklyn and beyond really blew us away. Our friend threw us a benefit party at Pussycat Lounge, and all the underground parties that were happening that night canceled their events and moved everyone there. The benefit was immensely successful, and we went from having nothing—we were all homeless, all of our shit was gone—to being able sign a lease on a new space.

Circus of Circus

brooklyn spaces: Was House of Yes originally conceived as a studio and teaching space, or was it always a performance venue?
Anya: The old space was just “Let’s do this and see what happens.” The new space was always going to be a venue in the evening and a training and rehearsal space during the day. Upstairs we also have a sewing studio, Make Fun. To be able to flourish and produce as much work as we want to, we need every square inch of the space making money all the time. We aren’t like, “Oh, we’re DIY culture, we’re going to dumpster everything.” Sustainability’s great, but we’re really excited about doing high-production-value shows, we want to do the best we possibly can, and we don’t want money holding us back. We have this state-of-the-art facility that enables us to create a show from start to finish, from sitting down with all your friends and working out the concept to having a sold-out closing night. What makes it so beautiful to me is that we concentrate on every single aspect: the costuming, the rehearsals, the movement, the sound, the promotion, everything. To me, live theatre is the most all-encompassing, the most mixed-media way to produce art. So in order for us to do our best, we’re always thinking about how we can generate income so these things can keep happening and we can keep growing.

The Wonderneath

brooklyn spaces: There’s a lot of these types of spaces around, but I feel like House of Yes is more intentional, and the caliber of shows here is higher. Do you think that’s partly because you have such a multifaceted facility?
Anya: I think we’re just really ambitious. There are a lot of different people involved and everyone just brings a huge amount of passion. Everyone involved in the space is so hands-on. We know what we need, there’s always an open dialogue, and it’s just a really tight group of friends who are all really, really ambitious.

New Faux Fashion Show

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved in the day-to-day running of the space?
Anya: I don’t know. A lot. Nikki and Airin run Sky Box, which is the aerial component of the space, and that’s classes, workshops, training, rehearsals. Tara and Kae, who’s my main partner in the space, they run the sewing studio. Kae and I do the majority of the booking. Hasaan, one of the original founding members, runs the sound studio.

AHOYA, student showcase

brooklyn spaces: How long does it take to put a show together?
Anya: Two weeks.
brooklyn spaces: Seriously?
Anya: Yeah. $piderman! was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and it was done in two weeks. In two weeks we wrote, produced, directed, cast, made costumes, figured out the craziest lighting you’ve ever seen, everything. It was a huge pain in the ass and it caused a bunch of nervous breakdowns, but I think everyone secretly enjoyed it.

$piderman: Turn on the Lights!

backstage during 2010's Christmas Spectacular

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a favorite show, or one that’s particularly triumphant or special?
Anya: I like them all for different reasons, but I think that the Christmas Spectacular is probably my favorite. For a lot of the people involved, it feels like you have a real family. Me and Kae curate it, and it’s just everyone we know who we think is talented and amazing who we want to hang out with for three weeks straight. People can do whatever the fuck they want, and we kind of guide it and arrange it. I realized it was my favorite show when I was standing backstage and there was an eleven-year-old boy dressed in drag next to a fifty-three-year-old transvestite dressed as a man, and they’re dancing their asses off and I’m holding this giant spotlight, getting ready to go on, and I was just like, “Wow, this is really beautiful, we’re a family, and we’re celebrating this holiday that’s all about family.” It’s kind of really wholesome in a fucked up way. So that’s my favorite show. It’s low pressure, but really high talent, and it’s always good. Airin said it’s entertainment at its worst dressed in its best. High-quality chaos.

AHOYA! student showcase

brooklyn spaces: Being in this amazing corner of Brooklyn, do you have a relationship with the other people in the neighborhood?
Anya: Yeah, absolutely. It’s awesome to see this really accessible gentrification, where it’s not some random guy you’ll never meet building some random building you’ll never live in. Our peers aren’t afraid of becoming entrepreneurs and businesspeople, really pursuing what they want to do and doing it well, doing it in an interesting way that they care about. I love being in this community of business owners and curators and producers who are all young people, we all ride bikes and hang out on rooftops together. It’s like a different kind of grown-up. I really enjoy that.

Amber Dinner Theatre

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Anya: I want to become a New York City institution. I want to make theatre in New York City better. It’s okay for theatre to be really fucking entertaining. I want to create art that’s accessible and meaningful and a really good time too.

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Like this? Read about more performance spaces: Gowanus Ballroom, Big Sky Works, Rubulad, The Muse

Wau Wau Sisters at Big Sky Works

When I was in college in New Jersey, we used to come to Brooklyn to hunt for weirdness as much as we could. The first time I came to Galapagos was probably in 1998, when it was still in Williamsburg, and I saw some totally insane shows there. One of the best was the Wau Wau Sisters (Tanya Gagné and Adrienne Truscott), an “acroband” who wear crazy costumes and sing ribald songs while balancing on each others’ shoulders or sharing a trapeze. They were sensational.

Tanya, photo by Maximus Comissar

Where are they now? Still performing, of course, mostly in the UK and Australia. But when they’re home, Tanya—who happens to be one of the warmest, most exuberant ladies I’ve ever met—runs a circus school, Trapeze Loft, in an incredible community art and performance venue, Big Sky Works. At Trapeze Loft you can take classes in things like partner acrobatics, hula-hoop, trapeze, wire-walking, silks, cloud swing, and contortion. And at Big Sky Works you can see an insane variety of crazy, crazy, fabulous shows, with acrobatics, circus freakshow stunts, live music, projections, pie fights, clowns, burlesque, drag, and just all manners of creative weirdness. I actually got to see the Wau Wau Sisters do a farewell show there before they headed overseas, and they were even more sensational than I remembered. I’ve since been back for a handful of events—including Coney Island–based Mermaid Musee, the spectacular Morgan O’Kane‘s CD release party, and a benefit for Vic Thrill—each more weirdly wonderful than the last. Big Sky also collaborates with lots of amazing local groups, including Funny Bone Theatre, a comedy-based after-school program for kids.

Head over there for some old Williamsburg–style freakiness as soon as you can. But first, check out my interview with Tanya!

from Great Aerial Reef, 2006

brooklyn spaces: Have you been a performer your whole life?
Tanya: I grew up doing theatre and gymnastics and all that, but I don’t come from a show-biz family. I started studying circus when I moved to New York in my early twenties, and then I moved to France and Spain and San Francisco and trained really hard for a few years, and then I came back to New York and opened the Trapeze Loft in ’99. I started off giving private lessons, and I was slammed. We were a little bit ahead of this grand circus curve; at that point there was no Elizabeth Streb, no Circus Warehouse, no Sky Box, nothing. Now there’s so many spaces, which is wonderful.

Miss Ekaterina as the world's most terrifying unicorn

brooklyn spaces: Is it a good community? Do you guys all share tips?
Tanya: I definitely check them all out, and I know a lot of the teachers over at House of Yes and Lady Circus. A lot of the students take classes at all the spaces, and that’s cool because they can see what everyone has to offer. I’m kind of jealous of the students now, because when I came to New York there was only one person to train with, Irena Gold, this crazy old Russian lady who trained for Big Apple Circus.

brooklyn spaces: Why did you move the Trapeze Loft into Big Sky Works?

Tanya: I wanted to expand the possibilities. The Trapeze Loft was about half this size, so you couldn’t have a class with more than four or five people. This space is really ideal. The ceiling is seventeen feet high, and you can rig anywhere. I knew it would be a lot of work, because when I first got it, it was just an empty space. But I decided to take the risk. I think there’s a need for it in the neighborhood, there’s not enough underground, kooky things going on, you know? So I got the space and drew up a really basic plan. And then one of my students who’s a welder was like, “I’ll weld the railing!” And one of my friends who’s a carpenter was like, “I’ll build the stage!” Janet Clancy and Kris Anton, who are my technical directors now, and the most awesome people in the world, they helped install all the lights, sound, and rigging. It was like a tiny village all coming together. It was really nice seeing all these people saying, “We want to help make this happen.” It came together really fast, like within six weeks. It was a ton of work, but we kicked ass.

photo from Big Sky Works' Facebook

brooklyn spaces: Do you choreograph all the shows yourself?
Tanya: It depends. Some of the shows I choreograph, but the one we had last weekend was a circus cabaret, everyone coming with an act, everything from aerial to clown to juggling. Other times people will come in with their own show all ready to go. The space is open to whatever. I’ve had friends shooting music videos, my friend had his wedding here, another friend had an art opening, another wants to do a pie-fight show, clowns running around with shaving cream and whipped cream pies, and I’m like, “Yes! This is your place!” I want any kind of shows, whether it’s rock and roll shows, puppet shows, dance parties—whatever the fuck you want to try out, bring it here, we’ll see how we can make it happen. It’s not just a circus space. I want it to be seen as a funhouse. That’s the kind of New York I want.

photo from Big Sky Works' Facebook

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some cool shows you’ve had here.
Tanya: The last few were the circus cabaret shows, which bring in a great mix of people from the professional circus scene. There’s people who teach at Circus Warehouse, TSNY, Sky Box, there’s people from LAVA, an all-women’s dance and circus troupe I used to be a part of. It’s a great way to try out a new act and meet new people in the community. Usually I have a host; among them have been amazing performers like Circus Amok‘s Jennifer Miller, Miss Saturn, and Murray Hill. Recently Butt Kapinski, she’s like a private eye investigator clown, put on an amazing show with a live jazz band. Some other great performers I’ve had here are Ambrose Martos, Chris Rozzi, Magic Brian, Amy G, Amazing Amy, Vic Thrill, Lone Wolf & Cub, Mermaid Musee, Miss Ekaterina, and members of Suspended Cirque and the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus A couple of weeks ago one of my teachers did a student showcase. My friend BAMiAM.tv is going to start putting on a monthly party with bands, aerialists, video projections.

Corn Mo, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you think being in Brooklyn influences a space like this, or that spaces like this have an impact on Brooklyn?
Tanya: Yes, yes, yes. When I moved into the neighborhood in 1992, I lived in a place called Keep Refrigerated, near the Mustard Factory, and there were so many crazy abandoned buildings. This place was full of crack and cars on fire and hookers. So if you wanted to put on a show, you just went into a abandoned building and put on a show. Obviously that doesn’t exist anymore, that period’s over. But I feel like anyone can still put on a show, you don’t need a million dollars or a fancy producer and director. In that sense I think Brooklyn has definitely influenced how I look at making shows. Just because all the fancy high-rises and people with money are moving into the neighborhood, that doesn’t mean this place can’t be kooky anymore, and it doesn’t mean we all have to leave. It’s still awesome here, just in a different way. I want to keep some freakiness, and I think the new people moving in want the freaky shit too. That’s why I want the space to get more visibility, because I feel like it’s still pretty underground, and I want to get people here to see all this great stuff.

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Like this? Read about more performance spaces: House of Yes, Red Lotus Room, The Muse, Cave, Rubulad, Gowanus Ballroom, Chez Bushwick

I’ve been to Death By Audio a few dozen times, but somehow I always forget how cool it is. My friends’ doom metal band Bloody Panda played a brain-meltingly loud show there a few years ago, and I saw my other friends’ band Dead Dog there last summer. Todd P books there a lot. The shows are always raw and raucous, which of course befits one of the early Williamsburg DIY venues.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

When I went a few weeks ago, the show was as crazy as I expected. First was Bubbly Mommy Gun, a weird psych rock outfit, who had their saxophonist hiding behind the wall and playing through a tiny window. Next was Mugu Guymen, a duo with the guitarist kneeling over dozens of pedals and the drummer just going crazy, playing faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. Last was Makoto Kawabata (from Acid Mothers Temple) with Pikachu (from Afrirampo), who flailed around and leapt up onto her drum kit and grabbed a microphone from out of the ceiling to scream into. Amazing, amazing show.

Bubbly Mommy Gun

Q&A with Edan, Death By Audio’s booker

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space and your involvement.
Edan: Death by Audio was a pedal company before it was a show space. Oliver Ackermann from A Place to Bury Strangers moved in in 2005. At first they rented out the front part as a photo studio, but after a while that didn’t pay the rent, so they started throwing shows. I worked the door at some of the earlier shows. I was booking shows around town, but I just kind of started bringing everything here. Then one of the bookers didn’t want to do it anymore, and I took over.

Pikachu

brooklyn spaces: Is there a particular kind of music that’s generally the focus?
Edan: It’s whatever I want to listen to. I wouldn’t have a show here if I didn’t want to see the band. But I feel like I have a pretty broad musical spectrum. It tends to go toward noisier music, heavier rock, heavier metal, and weird harsh noise stuff. But there’s all kinds of pop here too. If it sounds awesome, and if I think it’s going to be cool live, we put it on.

Bubbly Mommy Gun

brooklyn spaces: What are some favorite shows you’ve booked or seen?
Edan: Last summer we had Ty Segall, Charlie and the Moonhearts, and a bunch of other awesome bands. That show was amazing. The best part of that was Ty and Michael had a project together before that, and they did a duet at the end as an encore. That was really cool, it was something I never thought I’d see. And all kinds of band reunions, or people saying they saw videos on YouTube of bands playing here and were like, “Oh man, I want to play there.” Universal Order of Armageddon said that, Party of Helicopters said that. Paint It Black, we did a show for them, that shit sold out in an hour. I never even sell advance tickets for shows, and that one was gone in a day, which was crazy.

Makoto Kawabata

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a struggle or a triumph you want to share?
Edan: I have all kinds of trials! The more it’s a personal thing, the more effort you put into it, the harder it is when you lose to things like money. That’s not what it’s about, but you know, sometimes bookers come in and put holds on dates and tell me I’m going to get some band and I’m like, “That’s fucking awesome, they’ll be great.” And then a month later the booker’s like, “Oh, we were never actually going to bring the show there, we were just holding it in case we couldn’t find a bigger space.” That kind of stuff is soul-crushing. Or there’s always some show that I’m missing a band on, and I end up sitting in front of a computer for hours, emailing tons of bands and getting so many nos. It takes a long fucking time. Then I go to work at like seven, run sound all night, get off at three in the morning, have to clean the place twice. But it doesn’t matter, because I get to see all the shows, you know? I’m always excited about anything that’s here.

Mugu Guymen

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts about being in South Williamsburg these days?
Edan: Some of the first underground DIY shows I saw were around here. There’s a place that’s just now newly a condo where I watched Lightning Bolt play in a dirt pit, and Liars, and Panthers, it was a really sick show. Glass House Gallery was one block away, I saw tons of shows there, I saw Dirty Projectors play to like three people there. I grew up on that, in my adult life, my Brooklyn life. I’ve watched Williamsburg go from totally weird-ass back streets to something more normal, although people still walk down here thinking it’s the edge of the world. I used to have people leave after their shift and get mugged for the $20 they’d made, but it’s not fucking like that now. It’s totally safe, totally normal. Death By Audio and Glasslands and 285 Kent and Glass House and Main Drag Music and so many other spots, we’ve helped change what’s safe and unsafe.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Edan: Just to continue, to maintain the quality, and to keep appreciating it. I don’t want to get bored of doing this.

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Like this? Read about more music spaces: Silent Barn, 285 Kent, Shea Stadium, Bushwick Music Studios, Newsonic, Dead Herring

Gowanus Ballrooom is one of my very favorite spaces, one I can’t help updating and re-writing about again and again. (In fact, check out my article from their Fall 2011 show “Paint Works” on Gowanus Your Face Off!) The space, most of the time, is home to Serett Metalworks, but three or four times a year it gets transformed into a massive art spectacle. They’re doing so much to make a home for emerging and underground artists in New York, and every one of their shows is spectacular—and necessarily ambitious, given the sheer scope: the Ballroom is 16,000 square feet on two levels, with 50-foot ceilings. You have to slink down a super-sketchy dark alley on the canal to get to it, but oh, man, is it worth it.

The group shows feature outrageously great art from up to fifty  artists at a time, including huge metal sculptures, lush photographs, hyperreal paintings, abstract assemblages, quirky dioramas, stained-glass windows, woven cloth streamers, giant wooden installations you can climb around in, collages you can run your fingers through, intricate ink drawings, shifting projections, and more. Plus live entertainment! Aerialists like Seanna Sharpe (in her first performance since her stunt on the Williamsburg Bridge), fire dancers like Lady C and Flambeaux Fire, and of course bands, including Crooks & Perverts, Les Bicyclettes Blanches, Apocalypse Five and Dime, Yula and the eXtended Family (from Hive NYC), and Morgan O’Kane, the absolute most phenomenal banjo player you’ve probably never heard (unless you ride the L train a lot). At the 2011 Art & Architecture Show, he played past 2 a.m., almost two hours of just the best music ever, and I haven’t seen so much foot-stomping, arm-flailing, whooping joy since… well, since the last time I saw Morgan play, I guess.

2011 Art & Architecture show

Crooks & Perverts, photo by Megan K O'Byrne

Q&A with Josh, the Ballroom’s founder, and Ursula, art show curator

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space.
Josh: I run Serett Metalworks, and I moved the shop here a year ago from Nostrand Avenue. This is twice the space I need, but it was the bottom of the economy crash, and when I saw the space I knew that I would use it for other things besides metalwork. It’s a fucking beautiful shit hole, I love it. It doesn’t make sense for me to run a metal shop here, because you can’t heat it in the winter, there’s always water leaks, and it gets too hot in the summer. But we deal with it. We build weird art and architectures structures, so the people who work here, it kind of inspires them to do better work, to be happier about their job. That’s a big part of it, just the beauty of this insane old place. It used to be a steel mill, a boatyard, a cannonball factory, a chemical factory. The history here is ridiculous.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: In the metal shop, is it all your projects? Do other people do their projects here too?
Josh: It’s mainly our shop where we fabricate our stuff, but I also work with all these different groups. Someone comes and says, “Hey man, I need lockdowns for this WTO protest, can you help me build them?” Or like Swimming Cities, a bunch of fucking hippies who are building pontoon boats they can collapse, ship to India, and sail five hundred miles down the Ganges River. How fucking cool is that? I want to support those fucking maniacs, because that is awesome.

photo by Ursula Viglietta

brooklyn spaces: What made you start doing art shows?
Josh: I always wanted the space to be dedicated to art and architecture and engineering, mostly because architects and engineers, their social life is so fucking boring. But it’s a really interesting group of people doing really interesting work, and I like the idea of art and architecture and engineering together, because there’s a lot of aspects of engineering and architecture that are art. So the idea was to have a space for all three. We did the first Art & Architecture show in early 2010. The whole thing was thrown together in two weeks, and it went real well. Then we did another one about six months later that was really successful and really fun. But I learned it’s a lot of fucking work putting on a show, it’s an insane amount of coordination, and the person who’s doing the coordination loses their mind not at the end, but halfway through.
Ursula: I stayed pretty sane.

Flambeaux Fire, photo by me

Josh: Yeah, I’m getting there. I’m just finishing the story. Anyway, it blew my mind how much work it was. So I was like, all right, if our next show is going to be twice as big, it’s going to be a major ordeal. So I asked Ursula to get involved, and she came in and took the steering wheel, coordinating, organizing, categorizing, social working, all this stuff that has to come with an intense art show. And it was a great move, she really handled the stress well. There’s a lot of fucking stress involved. We pick people who do great art, but when you do that, you’re going to be dealing with some characters. That’s where the social-working aspect comes in.
Ursula: I’m actually training to become a social worker, so it worked out well. I think my background is just the right balance of art and psychology. It was a challenge and it was fun. I like doing really difficult things. If I see something that looks like you can’t do it, I’m like, “Okay, let’s figure it out!” I met a lot of really great people, and it was pretty inspiring for me as an artist.

Morgan O'Kane, photo by me

brooklyn spaces: What happens to the metal shop during a show?
Josh: Believe it or not, moving the whole shop out of the way only takes three or four hours. And while the art show is up, we’re still fucking welding and grinding. All my guys love it. Setting up for this show, every single one of them came and worked fifteen, twenty hours for free, just because they loved it.
Ursula: Of course, they snuck their own artwork in as well. I’d come in and be like, “Where did that come from?”

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: How do you think Brooklyn affect a space like this, or how does a space like this affect the future of art in Brooklyn?
Josh: The beauty of the Gowanus Canal is that it’s now a Superfund site, and that means that 2,000 feet from the edge of the water, in any direction, you can’t build housing or food service of any type. So this area is going to be a great place for about ninety years. There’s always going to be this nice mix of industrial industry and art studios. It’s not going to be McKibben Street—puke my brains out.
Ursula: There’s also an artistic community here that’s a little bit hidden, so it’s a really nice spot to have a new exhibition space, because we’re not competing with what’s going on in Williamsburg or Chelsea. It’s a place for emerging artists to do what they want, and it’s huge. I mean, to be able to invite people who do the kind of large-scale installations that we had, and to tell them, literally: “You’ve got two weeks. Build something.” Not many places can do that. Especially when you’re dealing with artists who don’t have a name, and you’re just trusting them. So I think that’s something that we can offer to the neighborhood, and to the art community in general.
Josh: I started off working for Cooper Union, working with a lot of pretty big-name artists, and I was really turned off by the art world, how nasty it was, the money, everything was just politics and crap. This space is great because we can do it our way. We just fill it full of cool shit, and people fucking love it.

Lady C, photo by Megan K O'Byrne

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any advice for other people who want to take on a project like this?
Josh: Just call us. You got something crazy? You think you have schizophrenia? That’s beautiful. Call us. We like that.

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Like this? Read about more art & events spaces: Monster Island, Big Sky Works, Red Lotus Room, Gemini & Scorpio loft, House of Yes, Cave, Rubulad, Vaudeville Park, 12-turn-13, Werdink / Ninja Pyrate

I’ve been hearing about Invisible Dog—a multi-floor interdisciplinary arts center, filled with art studios, galleries, and event space—for a while, and I was really excited when Ian Trask, the center’s first artist-in-residence, invited me out to the opening for the group show Work/Space, to meet with him and see the place.

Named for the toy this repurposed factory used to produce, Invisible Dog was started by Lucien Zayan, who saw the abandoned factory and fell in love with it. “When I saw the building,” he told me, “the idea of creating an art center with studios and event space came to me.” So he met the owner and convinced him to go along with the idea. “And he was crazy enough to follow me!”

Lucien’s main goal is to support emerging artists from all over the world, and he says there’s always a link from one show to the next. “One artist usually inspires me for the next show. They give me an idea that makes me meet other artists.”

Invisible Dog has studio space for thirty artists, a rotating series of exhibits, plenty of events, a theater residency program, and a store full of weird and wonderful things.

Ian Trask

Ian’s art is often interactive, and we sat on one of his pieces while we did our interview.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get involved with Invisible Dog?
Ian: I was part of a group show here run by Recession Art. I met Lucien that weekend, and he liked my art, and he kind of let me start hanging out in the basement. At the time it was filled with decades worth of old factory stuff, like floor-to-ceiling stacks of spools of colored elastic, buckets of belt buckles, all these materials that could generate inspiration for the right people.

brooklyn spaces: You’re the space’s first artist-in-residence, right? Did they make the program just for you?
Ian: Yeah, it hadn’t really been figured out. There were really no terms, except that, if he let me use the found materials, I would make a piece to give back to the space.

brooklyn spaces: What was the experience of being the artist-in-residence like?
Ian: It was incredible, right from the very first day. Lucien and I had been talking about how I might start using the materials in the basement, and then I just came one day and he was like “Here’s a key.” I figured I might as well show that I wanted to be here, so I went down to the basement and started working. I came back upstairs after a while, and there was a girl giving a cello performance, which was great. I went back downstairs for an hour, came back up, and there was a bar set up and people partying. Every time I came up there was something else going on. I was like, “How’s this even happening? What is this place?”

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a particular fond memory from your experience here?
Ian: The people have been a lot of fun. I’ve had access to a wealth of information. And the exposure the residency has offered me is amazing. I met a guy this weekend who runs a group called Figment, and he said he could get me into that show. Plus I’ve done fun things, like Lucien asked me to create something for a kids’ art fair, which was run by the bilingual elementary school down the street. They wanted to have art-making sessions where the kids could go home with a project, so I made pieces for them to make small caterpillars out of cardboard, yarn, and shredded paper. It was pretty fun.

brooklyn spaces: Has the residency given you the opportunity to explore your art in new ways?
Ian: Oh yeah. This piece we’re sitting on, it’s the first time I’ve done anything interactive with cardboard, and I got a really great response.

brooklyn spaces: Did people sit and stomp on the art?
Ian: All day long. I have pictures of people of every age stomping on it, lying on it, little kids were running and jumping on it. I had originally wanted to create the piece standing upright, and at like midnight two days ago, I tried to stand it up and it all just exploded. I had to do it all over. And as kind of a second option I decided to let people walk on it, and it turned out to be a much better idea. So, you know, small discoveries like that. It was just a really nice fellowship. Plus I’ve developed a really nice friendship with Lucien. He continues to push me, tries to get me involved in other projects. So obviously it’s gone beyond just my twelve-month term. It’s propelled me along my artistic journey.

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

I’ve loved City Reliquary for years. It’s right on Metropolitan Ave., and I pass by it at least once a month, always delighted to find a new bizarre and beautiful display in the front window, whether it’s an array of Pez dispensers, ceramic unicorns, pizza magnets, or postcards from the Queens World’s Fair. In fact, City Reliquary started out around the corner from its current location as just a window, the street-facing window of founder Dave Herman’s apartment, which he filled with his own collection of Statue of Liberty figurines and other New York ephemera.

all photos in this post by Maximus Comissar

Now, like Proteus Gowanus, City Reliquary is a non-profit community-based micro-museum. The Reliquary is slightly broader in scope, with a permanent collection of NYC artifacts, including a selection of Subway tokens, a picture gallery of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the original 2nd Avenue Deli sign, among much, much more. Even the bathroom houses its own micro-micro-gallery of old-timey tincture and lotion bottles. Though the museum is certainly tiny, you’ll want to spend a while poring through the staggering amount of amazing stuff crammed into it. They also have terrific events and fundraisers, including the monthly THird THursday party, Show and Tell open mics, an annual block-long street party called Bicycle Fetish Day, and more.

Q&A with Bill, City Reliquary’s president

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the exhibits you’ve had.
Bill: We just took down one that was all photographs of streetlights. It was one guy’s personal collection, and he told the histories of each one, when they disappeared, stuff like that. We found him through a guy named Kevin Walsh who runs a great website called Forgotten New York.

brooklyn spaces: What’s the current exhibit about?
Bill: It’s a guy who’s eating a slice of pizza from every pizzeria in Manhattan, and he takes a picture of every slice and the restaurant where he got it.

brooklyn spaces: How often does the exhibit change?
Bill: It depends how long it takes us to get the next one together. We tried to do a new every month, but it was just too much.

brooklyn spaces: And are they always New York–centric?
Bill: Yes. The only thing that isn’t New York–centric is the window up front, Community Collections. That showcases collections by different New Yorkers.

brooklyn spaces: Why Brooklyn? Why Williamsburg?
Bill: Just circumstance. We didn’t pick the neighborhood; Dave lived here, this space opened up, we moved in.

brooklyn spaces: What’s the relationship with the community?
Bill: Everyone’s been really great. Saltie and Roebling Tea Room have donated food for benefits, Momofuku donates cookies, sometimes we hold events at the Knitting Factory.

brooklyn spaces: Anything else you want to tell the world about the museum?
Bill: Our hours are noon to six, Thursday through Sunday. Come to the events, they’re great fun. We always have Brooklyn beer at them.

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Like this? Read about more micro-museums: Proteus Gowanus, Micro Museum

photo from the New York Times

neighborhood: bed-stuy | space type: parties & art space | active since: 1993 | links: none (sorry!)

update December 2011: Rubulad is moving! After  nine years in South Williamsburg and six in Bed-Stuy, this amazing space is hunting for a new home. And they’ve just completed a down-to-the-wire Kickstarter campaign, raising over $35k to help them on their way. It remains to be seen where they’ll go, but it’s clear this vital community will continue to grow and inspire creative culture for years to come.

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Rubulad—along with House of Yes, the 123 Community Center, and a handful of others—is what inspired me to start this project in the first place. For fifteen years, Rubulad has been an incubator of creative art and culture in New York; it’s one of the oldest, longest-running paeans to cultural experimentation, wild beauty, art for the sake of art. The influence of the space on Brooklyn’s creative class is impossible to overstate.

photo by E.A.R.

Rubulad is a huge, stunning, two-floor warehouse on the Bed-Stuy / Crown Heights border, and is both notorious and revered for the massive themed parties they’ve been hosting for over a decade. The events include installation art, eclectic performances, film screenings, and musicians, and attract a diverse crown, the majority of whom dress up in elaborate costumes to fit the themes.

photo by E.A.R.

Remnants of every one of the parties still adorn every inch of visible space—the walls, ceilings, rooftop, furniture, backyard, and garden are teeming with a dizzying array of decorations, from framed shellacked jellybeans to glitter-painted stuffed animals to a giant birdcage with a carousel horse inside.

photo by E.A.R.

In addition to the parties, Rubulad has also been home to many more intimate events, like kids’ days, smaller music performances, benefit parties, and art shows. Grub, the bi-monthly freegan community dinner bottom-lined by In Our Hearts, was held here for years. Want to hear how it all began? Read through for my interview with Sari, one of Rubulad’s founders.

Grub, photo by Julia Roberts

brooklyn spaces: When did you start doing this and why?
Sari: We’ve been going in different incarnations since ’93. It was started by four bands: Fly Ashtray, Uncle Wiggly, Smack Dab, and the Gamma Rays. Together we rented a huge place in South Williamsburg, back when things were cheap.

photo by E.A.R.

brooklyn spaces: Did you start right off throwing parties?
Sari: Well, we had this big space full of all these artists and musicians. And it felt a little flat to all the bands to just be playing in bars and not have any kind of control over the environment. We wanted to take a hand in that and say, “We’d like this band to play with these other performers, and then show these projections, and have a little play in between.” And we just invited the neighborhood in.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: What were some of the obstacles you faced when you left Williamsburg for this new space?
Sari: One obstacle was the neighborhood. It took a while for people to want to come to Bed-Stuy. It’s hard to imagine that now, but even five years ago, people were like, “What? The G train?! You’re kidding!” But things moved quickly.

Grub, photo by Julia Roberts

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk some more about the art and the artists.
Sari: I come at this as kind of a director of a show. My dream is to create a holistic piece of art, an experiential environment that many different people had a hand in. Our desire is to create work for people, and for people to get other work from having been here. The artists here have a chance to really evolve. We’re kind of family-oriented; lots of artists come back to do work here again and again, and so we get to see how they change and what happens to their art over several years. It’s really nice to give artists an opportunity for that growth, as opposed to just doing one show here, one show there.

photo by E.A.R.

brooklyn spaces: I read the interview you did with Nonsense NYC some years ago, where you talked about how for one party you needed sheets, and so you called all these hospitals to see if they would donate sheets.
Sari: We do have to hustle to get things, but you can have good adventures that way. That’s the part I like, the moment when you’re standing in a record store trying to find a square-dance caller or something else that you never thought you’d be doing.

photo from the Village Voice

brooklyn spaces: What have been some of your favorite party themes?
Sari: They always surprise you. You never really know when you pick a theme whether it’s gonna work. One of my favorite ones was Laundry Day. Who would have known that Laundry Day would turn out to be such a good theme? There’s a great picture floating around the internet of a girl playing music in roller curlers in front of the set of the laundry. And there was one party I really loved like ten years ago called Night of the Living Toys. That was really beautiful. If you look around the space, you can see remnants from them all.

photo from brokeassstuart.com

brooklyn spaces: How do you find the artists? Or do they find you?
Sari: Gosh, a lot of them find us. If they’re supposed to be here, they somehow hear about us, even in Australia or something. There’s really a lot of good stuff out there, almost endless good stuff. It’s amazing all the stuff that people know how to do.

photo by E.A.R.

brooklyn spaces: Clearly this is a creative space for making and appreciating art. But there are people who just see it as a party house. What do you think about that?
Sari: Well, those people are really missing the point, because if that’s what we wanted, we would just have a bar. People who are just looking for a place to drink beer, I encourage them to go to a bar, there are many. It’s not like we’re against that, but our parties are meant to be experiential. The whole point is for people to experience art that they wouldn’t see in the commercial world, or listen to music that they wouldn’t hear on commercial radio. Not that I mean to disparage beer, and I don’t want to underestimate the importance of celebration, because that’s really important to us. We definitely want to encourage more celebration and to help people make more holidays. People need them! Life is sad sometimes.

photo by E.A.R.

brooklyn spaces: How do you think being in Brooklyn has affected Rubulad? Do you feel like what you’re doing and have done is specific to Brooklyn?
Sari: That’s an interesting question. I’m a New Yorker and I went to high school in Brooklyn, so I’ve gotten to see Brooklyn really change. It used to be that everyone in Brooklyn just wanted to get to the city, and they thought of themselves as bridge-and-tunnel people. They’d think, if you make it, you go to Manhattan. That’s really changed, Brooklyn has really become its own city. Manhattan has become a place where the money lives more than where the people live. Here in Brooklyn there’s more space for independent stuff to happen, and there’s a lot of help from a great community. There are so many other spaces, other people who are doing amazing things. There’s a lot of cross-pollination between different groups, and we work with many groups who do things that are so different than we do. What was the last part of that question?

photo by Julia Roberts

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like what you’re doing here is specific to Brooklyn?
Sari: Well, for years we thought that we were the only space like this in the world. We didn’t know that there were other Rubulads all over America and all over the world. I guess Burning Man was the first time we were like, “Holy shit, there are so many other people doing stuff!” The way we do things is specific to where we are, for sure, but we have connections to so many different kinds of spaces all over the place. I have a desire to live a life that doesn’t involve a certain kind of people, and I’ve been able to achieve that. I’m happy to never have to go to Midtown to work and live that sort of life. In New York that’s pretty hard to achieve, since it’s so expensive to live here. But there’s something about the grit of the struggle in Brooklyn that gives people a little added bite and energy. There’s so much going on right now, it’s a really good time around here, in Bushwick, Bed-Stuy. There are so many groups around that are really amazing, like the Groove Hoopers, or the Chicken Hut people. They’re like gutter-punk bike-jousters, and they throw a heck of a party. And we love Secret Project Robot. There’s so much going on in Brooklyn that we’re really excited about.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any advice for creative people who are trying to figure out how to be involved in something like Rubulad?
Sari: There was a boy in here who once said in an interview, “Do art, be art, live art,” and that made me so happy. I want to encourage people to not be shy, to just make stuff and share it, because that’s what it’s for. I hope more people will make more spaces and do more weird theaters and galleries. If you decide to create your own thing and make it happen the way you want to, other people will enjoy it and join in.

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Like this? Read about other underground performance & party spaces: 12-turn-13, Monster Island, Flux Factory, Gemini & Scorpio loft, The Lab (Electric Warehouse), Red Lotus Room, Big Sky Works, Newsonic, Gowanus Ballroom

The first time I went to Proteus Gowanus, I couldn’t find it. I walked around and around the block, checking and re-checking the address, and getting more and more confused. Finally I peered down a dubious-looking alley just around the corner from where it should have been, and sure enough, there was light spilling from a doorway halfway down. So, word to the wise: Proteus Gowanus is a little bit hidden, but it’s there.

Housed in a box-making factory from the 1900s, Proteus Gowanus is a multipurpose art space with a lot going on. It includes an art gallery with rotating and permanent exhibits, a micro-museum, a library, a reading and study room, an event space, and a collaborative nonprofit boutique of unique publications and “protean objects.” Proteus Gowanus has a broad scope, but all of its disparate parts come together to make a varied, fascinating whole.

Among their exhibits and projects:

• The Observatory Room, an interdisciplinary event space that hosts discussions, film screenings, and lectures on a wide range of topics, from Parisian brothels to Italian medical museums to Haitian voodoo to American cartoons. (I’ve been to three Observatory events, and they’ve all been amazing.)
• Morbid Anatomy, an outgrowth of the blog by the same name, featuring a collection of books, photographs, ephemera, and artifacts relating to anatomical art, cabinets of curiosity, the history of medicine, death and mortality, memorial practice, arcane media, and other topics.
• Hall of the Gowanus, a micro-museum of local curiosities, including old Gowanus maps, pressed flowers from the region, a Gowanus historical timeline, and much more.

Hall of the Gowanus

• The Fixers Collective, an idea that grew out of an exhibit in the gallery, which encourages people to bring in something broken, which the collective members make a collaborative effort to restore, mend, repurpose, or enhance.
• The Reanimation Library, an almost whimsical permanent collection of outdated, worn, or discarded books.

Reanimation Library

• Proteotypes, which extends some of Proteus Gowanus’s shows and exhibitions into the field of printed matter.
• dedicated to assembling apparently incongruous ideas or forms to construct surprising yet meaningful compounds and dialogues.
• The Writhing Society, a weekly class/salon dedicated to constrained writing.
• A study hall and writers space in all galleries and reading rooms. (Membership only $50/mo!)

(photos from the Proteus Gowanus Facebook page)

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Like this? Read about other micro-museums: City Reliquary, Micro Museum