gowanus – brooklyn spaces

royal palms shuffleboard club

oriana on 12 May ’15

[I’m counting down to the release of the Brooklyn Spaces book by doing one mini-post per day, sharing teasers of some of the places you’ll find in it.]

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!

gemini & scorpio loft

oriana on 20 May ’13

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: art & events | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr

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

twig terrariums

oriana on 10 Mar ’12

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: makers, commercial | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest

all photos by Maximus Comissar

Yet another amazing maker shop in Gowanus, Twig Terrariums—the brainchild of Katy Maslow and Michelle Inciarrano—sells tiny gorgeous worlds. Their terrariums are housed in mostly found glass—like vintage gumball machines, cake stands, light bulbs, pitchers, and pendants—and they’re filled with lush mosses and other plants, complete with quirky little scenes. These include sweet things like wedding couples, hiking groups, zoos, and people reading or golfing or swimming, as well as more adult fare like naked sunbathers, fornicating couples, graveyards, zombies, graffiti artists, and axe murderers.

Michelle & Katy, photo by Lauren Kate Morrison

Katy and Michelle are a couple of seriously busy crafters: in addition to running their shop and offering lots of terrarium-making workshops, you can catch them at tons of fairs, like Bust Craftacular, Renegade Craft Fair, and Brooklyn Flea. Their amazing work has been featured all over the place, including NY1, New York Times, New York Magazine, Urban Outfitters, WNYC, Design*Sponge, and more. And they’ve even have a book: Tiny World Terrariums.

brooklyn spaces: Give me a brief definition of a terrarium.
Katy: It’s really just plants enclosed in glass.
Michelle: Terrariums were started back in the 1800s by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. He wanted a fern garden in his yard but he couldn’t make it grow because there was a lot of pollution where he lived in London, but he noticed that inside this little case where he was experimenting with moths, a fern spore had somehow taken hold and grown. So he started coming up with different types of cases and seeing how different plants did. And he experimented and got it right, and it actually changed the course of history. It’s the reason we have tea, coffee; it was indirectly responsible for penicillin and things like that, because they were able to take plants much farther than they had before.
brooklyn spaces: Wow! Did you know all that before you started making terrariums?
Katy: No way.

brooklyn spaces: So how did this all come into being?
Michelle: Katy and I were childhood hooligan friends, we used to hang out all the time and be crafty. We lost touch for several years, but then we met again about five years ago and went right back to making things together. And one day I pulled a cruet jar out of my kitchen cabinet and said, “I want to make a terrarium out of this.” Before we knew what happened, we had terrariums all over our apartments.
Katy: We got addicted so quickly! We had to choose between giving them to everyone we knew or trying our hand at selling them. When we went to the Brooklyn Flea for the first time we had an amazing response, and we were picked up by the New York Times. The first day! The second time we went we got picked up by Country Living. Third time it was something else, and then something else, Rachel Ray and Real Simple and all these awesome things. It was definitely a surprise.

brooklyn spaces: Did you think five years ago that this was going to be your lives?
Katy: Not at all. We were just presented with an amazing, unexpected, very charming response, and this became our livelihood. We’re hoping that it’s not a passing phase. I mean, terrariums have been interesting for 200 years, and most likely they’ll be interesting for 200 more. And we’re always challenging ourselves, looking for ways to make it bigger, better, cooler, more intricate, more elaborate.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite terrariums.
Katy: My personal favorites are the graphic horror: axe-murderer scenes, post-apocalyptic scenes, wheelbarrows full of body parts, mass graves, zombies. One of the ones I have at home has a guillotine on a hill and heads rolling down. There’s an irony to it, this kind of fun, expansive space that can be filled with quirky little characters and inhabitants. One of our popular ones is a big beautiful terrarium with a little park, and then off in the corner there’s a couple doing it in the bushes. Of course, we also do a lot of unicorns and fairies. We really just go with our weird tastes and bizarrely varied interests and whims.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the specific moss. Which are the funnest to work with or look the best?
Katy: Well, there are like twelve, fifteen thousand types of moss in the world, so there’s a lot to work with. When we were researching, we found out that NASA was actually considering terraforming the moon with moss because it’s so hardy and adaptive. But we each have our obsessions. We love the sphagnum buds that happen in their juvenile form, and they grow in bogs, like six feet of mud, right alongside streams and ponds. Sometimes when we go mossing, we really suffer for our art. Michelle lost a shoe once.
Michelle: I took a wrong turn and sunk a foot and a half down in the nastiest, stinkiest bog you can imagine. And I lifted my foot up and my shoe was gone. I had to go home with a bag over my foot, and it stunk.
Katy: She reeked. And I laughed and laughed!

brooklyn spaces: Do you do your mossing in and around New York?
Katy: We have freelance mossers all around, and we’re always looking for more. If you guys ever want to go mossing—
Maximus: Oh my god, I want to do that. Can we do that?
brooklyn spaces: Yes!
Michelle: Okay, just don’t go to Central Park. You can’t take from public land or parks or anything like that.

brooklyn spaces: How does being in Gowanus affect you as artists and small-business owners?
Katy: We love it here. We’re both Brooklyn natives, and I think this is one of the best neighborhoods in the borough.
Michelle: Our neighbors are absolutely amazing. Ben, who runs Gowanus Your Face Off, he came in and introduced himself the second he saw our sign go up. Proteus Gowanus picked up some glass from us to house weird objects for an exhibit. There are so many cool things in Gowanus. We’ve got Film Biz Recycling, 718 Cyclery, and Littleneck right down the street. Everyone’s got such great ideas.
Katy: Everyone’s been really welcoming and supportive and really into what we do. We just love it here.

brooklyn spaces: Having grown up in Brooklyn, what do you think about being here these days?
Katy: I love what Brooklyn’s become. When I was growing up it was still grungy, and I do kind of miss the seedy underbelly of New York, which doesn’t really seem to exist anymore. But I very rarely go into the city, I rarely leave Brooklyn. I get my rugelach in Midwood and my latte in Gowanus and I’m a happy camper.
Michelle: I’ve always loved Brooklyn. Even though it’s stinky and smelly and all the trash and traffic, it’s still so charming.
Katy: Last time I had out-of-town guests, we didn’t even leave Brooklyn. We went from a barge museum in Red Hook to the best pizza in Bay Ridge to Green-Wood Cemetery, and it was the coolest. There’s so much here, it’s so quirky and fun. I fall in love with it every time I think about it.

***

Like this? Read about more makers: Metropolis Soap Co., A Wrecked Tangle Press, Breuckelen Distilling, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, Ugly Duckling Presse

ugly duckling presse

oriana on 14 Dec ’11

space type: nonprofit press | neighborhood: gowanus | active since: 2000 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit letterpress printing and bookbinding studio with a pretty long and fascinating history, which you can read about over on their site here. In the late nineties the Presse was a zine called Ugly Duckling, and in 2000 the group started 6×6, which was put together in various living rooms and printed at a tiny Manhattan Valley letterpress shop whose primary business was making church newsletters. Since then UDP has lived in three states, four countries, the Nest Space in Dumbo, near a pier in Red Hook, and now at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus. They’ve got twelve editors and have printed over 200 beautiful handmade books, not to mention dozens of broadsheets, tons of chapbooks, and all kinds of paper ephemera. They’re beginning to explore ebooks too, and they even have a podcast!

this & all photos in this post by Maximus Comissar

One of the cool things about a volunteer-run press is the amount of opportunities to let the community in. If you sign up for the UDP mailing list, you’ll get invited to their headquarters every couple of months for bookbinding, hand-stitching spines, letterpressing covers, and all manner of classy, functional arts and crafts. Maximus and I went by for a visit to help bind copies of the chapbook “Mr. Z., Mrs. Z., J.Z., S.Z.” with thick twine, met some lovely interns and volunteers, got to see the antique-looking machines in action, and hung out with Matvei, the Presse’s founder.

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Matvei: When I moved to New York in the late nineties, a bunch of my writer friends started making one-of-a-kind books for each other, little artist projects, simple things. Then we started to print larger runs of things like chapbooks, hand-bound books, zines, stuff like that. We started 6×6 in 2000, and just before that, we’d started putting Ugly Duckling Presse on the spines of all our little books, even though Ugly Duckling Presse wasn’t a place, it was just our living rooms. But it stuck. We wanted to publish our peers and poets we admired. There was a lot of labor involved, hand-stamping and rubber-banding and binding, so we already had that sense of making stuff, of zine culture and collage and hand-pasting and book arts and things like that.

brooklyn spaces: When did it become more a more formalized press?
Matvei: In the early 2000s, we moved in with a bunch of other arts organizations in a large space in Dumbo called Nest Space for eighteen months. We all got to be there practically for free; all we had to do was clean it up and build some walls. It was one of the early Two Trees buildings, and of course it was part of their plan, to bring in arts people to make the neighborhood more desirable and drive up the real estate values. Now there’s a crazy expensive boutique where our little workshop was.

brooklyn spaces: That’s so depressing.
Matvei: Well, it was fun. And there were lots of other arts groups there, some of whom we’re still in touch with, like Collapsible Giraffe, NTUSA, Paul Lazar Big Dance Theatre, Brooklyn Underground Film Festival. We had a huge common space that we used for events and performances and crazy parties, which was really inspiring. It helped people to know who we were and also helped us bring a certain kind of energy to poetry. Poetry’s really versatile, you can listen to it in a library in a stiff chair or you can go to a reading in some underground place and have it performed with crazy music. It was a very vibrant scene at the time, and that really influenced the way we wanted the to press work. It wasn’t just a publishing house, it was a place for people to come together, and to learn how to make books.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to leave that scene?
Matvei: In Red Hook we were holed up in one of the buildings near the Coffey Street pier, and it was a little lonely. But that’s when we were really making the press into something serious, so maybe we needed that kind of focus. And then we came here and became part of the Can Factory community, which has been really great. Issue Project Room is here, Rooftop Films is here, there’s a letterpress studio upstairs, Swayspace, they do beautiful work. There’s other publishers here too, One Story, Archipelago, and Akashic. There’s great energy, it’s a wonderful environment for us.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any favorite books, or books that were a particular pleasure to make?
Matvei: We’ve done some very labor-intensive accordion projects, like 5 Meters of Poems, which really is almost five meters long. There have been a number of projects that I’m really proud of, like The Drug of Art by Ivan Blatný. He’s a multilingual poet who wrote in a lot of languages at once. Ana and Veronica, who edited that book, they put together pretty much a critical edition, with solid editorial backing, annotations, footnotes, all of it. It’s something that even a university press isn’t necessarily going to take on these days. And then on the other hand, we just did a chapbook called “Surprised by French Fries” by Joe Dailey, which is totally irreverent and funny, it just sings in a particular, ephemeral, non-serious way.

brooklyn spaces: I also noticed one called “Get the Fuck Back Into That Burning Plane.” That’s a great title.
Matvei: Yeah, I love that one, that’s Lawrence Giffin. We’ve working with him for years. We published his work in 6×6, then we did a chapbook of his poems, and we’re going to do a full-length book of his next year. That often happens. We like to have longer relationships with writers.

brooklyn spaces: Is there any overarching artist statement that unites all of the Ugly Duckling Presse books?
Matvei: Aesthetically we’re very eclectic, but some of that has to do with the structure of the collective. Each editor really has to want to do whatever they’re going to publish, and also it’s their choice; it’s not democratic, we don’t vote on which books to do. But we all come from similar sensibilities. We all want to publish books that no one else is doing. And there’s of course the handmade aspect. We’re not luddites by any means; sure, we’re a letterpress shop, but we also have two computers and we’re doing online books, exploring things that you can’t do in a print book. We just really believe in the book as a technology that works and that hasn’t been exhausted yet, one that is still interesting and immediate, and that it’s important how you make the book, not just what’s in it. I think we’re okay with the idea that we publish things that aren’t commercially viable, but we’re still engaged in cultural activity. It’s possible that our books will be read fifty yeas from now, and it’s possible that they won’t. But it continues an idea of culture that probably isn’t part of the general American or even global notion of what culture is anymore.

***

Like this? Read about more books and book art: A Wrecked Tangle Press, Central Booking, Books Through Bars

gowanus print lab

oriana on 16 Nov ’11

space type: print studio | neighborhood: gowanus | actice since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

The Print Lab is deep in the bowels of Gowanus. It’s a nice stroll from the train, unless you happen to visit during a freak blizzard Halloween weekend like I did, in which case it’s kind of a cold, wet slog. But totally worth the trip! The space is huge and comfy and inviting, with great art on the walls, studio members hard at work at the many tables and machines, and incredibly friendly teachers and staff. I was invited to take the Intro to Screenprinting class, which (thankfully) covered all the basics, and though I’ve got no drawing eye whatsoever and had never even touched a screen before, I totally made a shirt that I’m not at all embarrassed to wear.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The intro class is only one of many offered at the Print Lab; there’s printing classes for skateboards and posters and stationary, digital classes on Photoshop and Indesign and website-building, there’s classes for kids, classes for DIY weddings, they even had a class on how to jailbreak your iPhone. Of course, they could also do everything for you, offering all kinds of large-format and specialty-ink printing services for fancy projects. Or if you already know what you’re doing and want to DIY it, you can become a member, gaining access to all the tools, paints, supplies, computers, machinery, and anything else you could possibly need. So go print something! But first click through for my interview with Amy, the lab’s marketing director.

screens

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your more unusual classes?
Amy: There’s lots. We have one on printing in repeat, for making fabric or wallpaper, we have a specialty inks class where you get to use flocking and foils and glitter, we have digital classes that are geared toward helping you make your designs appropriate for screenprinting, all kinds of things.

sinks

brooklyn spaces: There are also events here, right?
Amy: Yup. Last weekend we had a Halloween event, where kids got to have characters screenprinted on their clothes. We also do collaborative events; we did a party with Sobe and a craft night with Etsy. About once a month we have an opening reception for the new art exhibit.

screens

brooklyn spaces: Is the art done by Print Lab members?
Amy: Sometimes, but this one was curated by the art collective Six Betweens. Next month we’re doing an exhibit with the Graphic Artists Guild, and after that is a student show called “The Art of Rebellion.” Screenprinting lends itself to protest so well, because it’s really affordable, you can make multiples easily, and you can really deliver a message.

paints

brooklyn spaces: What’s the screenprinting community like? Do you guys get together and talk shop?
Amy: Sure, we’re friendly, we’re fun, we like to get along with everybody. We’re buddies with USA Tees, we have a good relationship with The Arm, a letterpress studio in Williamsburg, and also with the Brooklyn Artists Gym, which is just down the street. It’s really exciting to be in Gowanus right now, part of the growing artist community.

oven

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your exciting clients or members?
Amy: We worked with one Brazillian designer doing specialty printing, glitter and things like that, and we do some contract work with the fabric designer Scott Hill, who runs Old Village Hall. Two of our long-term members, Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats, are part of Camel Collective, and they were featured in Mass MoCA’s “The Workers” show. Some other great members are painter Jeremy Penn, illustrator Erin Gallagher, graphic artist Norm Ibarra, and printmaker Andreas Ekberg. The artists here do really amazing things.

our instructor

brooklyn spaces: What’s the best part of working at a printshop?
Amy: I just think it’s exciting to be a part of a space that encourages people to make things, and to work in a way that they might not be able to on their own. I mean, you can screenprint at home, but it’s certainly very difficult, especially in New York with tiny shoebox apartments. So I love being able to facilitate people having the space they need to work and create.

me with my screen

***

Like this? Read about more makers: Pickett Furniture, 6 Charles Place, Werdink, Bushwick Print Lab, A Wrecked Tangle Press, Metropolis Soap, Arch P&D, Gowanus Ballroom, Urbanglass, Better Than Jam, 3rd Ward

swimming cities

oriana on 3 Oct ’11

neighborhood: gowanus (and the world!) | space type: art collective | active since: 2001 | links: website, blog, facebook, twitter

update, Nov 2011: Want to see some absolutely amazing photos from Swimming Cities’ incredible trip down the Ganges in India? Check ’em out on their blog here.

***

With this post, I am thrilled to say that I’ve covered all the spaces that inspired me to start this project! Not that I intend to stop; I’m just really excited to have finally gotten to talk to everyone I’d initially set out to, and to celebrate all their crazy brilliance.

So let’s talk about the crazy brilliance of Swimming Cities. They’re a nebulous art collective of somewhere between ten and thirty people who build boats out of found materials and sail them all over the world. The boats themselves are essentially floating works of art, and the group does visual, musical, and dramatic performances atop them as they go. The first project, started by Callie (aka Swoon) and assorted friends, was the Miss Rockaway Armada (since splintered into its own collective), which went down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to St. Louis in 2001. The next project, Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea, went down the Hudson River, from Troy to Deitch Projects in Long Island City, in 2008. Then in 2009, Swimming Cities of Serenissima sailed down the Adriatic Sea, starting in Slovenia and winding up in Venice to crash the Biennale. And now, in September 2011, Swimming Cities Ocean of Blood is making their way down the Ganges in India, starting in Farrukhabad and ending in Varanasi for the Diwali festival.

photo by Tod Seelie, from Arrested Motion

They’re a well-connected group in the Brooklyn underground & art communities. Over Swimming Cities’ history, all manner of artists and collectives have taken part, including members of the Madagascar Institute, the Toyshop Collective, the Infernal Noise Brigade, GreenBusTour, Black Label Bike Club, Flux Factory, and dozens more. Much of the initial work on the Ocean of Blood boats was done at Serett Metalworks, and they throw crazy themed fundraising parties at the Gowanus Ballroom, Electric Warehouse, Chicken Hut, the warehouse on Ten Eyck, 285 Kent, and lots of others. The collective is also naturally involved in the Burning Man community and participates in Maker Faire, often winning awards for their ingenious floating creations. You can donate to their Kickstarter campaign to help them get home from India, but first check out my interview with Orien (third from left) and crewmember Angie (far right).

Ocean of Blood crew

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?

Miss Rockaway Armada boat

Orien: I had a boat and was living on the Gowanus Canal, and Callie lived a few blocks away. We met at Pratt, and she would hang out on my boat and we’d talk about building a floating performance art space. Then I left and spent some time in India, and she did Miss Rockaway Armada with several other artists. After that we did the Hudson River and Venice projects together, and then Callie was giving the project up, so I asked her if I could keep it going. India was the obvious choice for me; it’s my favorite place. But there was a lot of ambiguity about whether this would actually happen. I’m not a famous artist, I don’t have any money, I don’t have backing. But it gradually gained momentum, and now Swimming Cities has a presence beyond its association with Swoon and the other projects.

boats in Venice, photo by Tod Seelie, from Brooklyn Street Art

brooklyn spaces: Before we get too much into India, what was it like being in Venice for the Biennale? How was the reception?
Orien: Being in Venice with a boat is so much fun. I don’t recommend going there if you can’t get a boat, it’s just going to drive you crazy. And the reception was great, everybody loved it. Except when we went into the Arsenale, which is a military base, like a fortified marina, this big square with water and some sort of promenade around it. We went in there with Dark Dark Dark playing on the roof we and tied up the boats, and they came and cut our lines and told us to fuck off. But come on, we basically came uninvited in junk boats, so of course they did that.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, so now tell me about India. How many of you are going over, how many boats do you have, how did you set it all up?
Angie: There’s five boats, eight people are going, and we have a couple of Indian people there. We sent a scout a few of months ago, and he lined up places for us to stay and to store stuff, and people to help us, and institutions and permits and things like that.
Orien: They government wanted to know what we were doing. They don’t want to be like, “Oh, you’re doing a performance? Great!” and then you get there and quarter a cow or do something really offensive. But we got a letter of support from the Ministry of Culture that says something like, “Your project is not specifically offensive to us from a cultural perspective.”

sketch for part of the Diwali performance

brooklyn spaces: The highest praise. What are the performances going to be?
Orien: We’ll be pretty far out on the water, so it’s not practical or logistically possible to have sound or a plot. It’s going to be a gradual, five-day visual performance with a very vague narrative. It’s kind of like architectural puppetry.
Angie: We’ll have a big mechanical sculpture involving lights and movement, and at the end the boats come apart.
Orien: It sort of demonstrates the function of what makes the object interesting.

five boats in radial formation, photo by Ben Mortimer

brooklyn spaces: What do you guys do in between trips?
Angie: We have a lot of events. Most of them are fundraisers, but this summer we did the Battle for Mau Mau Island in Gerritsen Beach, where we got all our friends to form boat gangs. There was a race, a battle, and boat jousting.

West India Day fundraiser, photo from Laughing Squid

brooklyn spaces: What’s your motivation for doing this?
Orien: I’m really interested in boats as pieces of architecture, as objects. I come from an industrial design background, that’s what I went to school for. And all these people really enjoy being a family and having a common goal that isn’t about money or the banality of the homogenized world of bullshit. So I just keep doing it. It’s a reaction to the alternative. To exist in the actual world isn’t really an option for me; if I don’t do this, what the fuck am I going to do?

Bordertown party at Electric Warehouse

“Caddywhampuss,” which won Best in Show at the 2010 Maker Faire, photo from Makezine

brooklyn spaces: What’s next for you guys?
Orien: We’re probably going to go to Russia, down the Volga river to Moscow. I really want to go to Lake Baikal, which is one of the world’s largest lakes, it represents one-sixth of the world’s fresh water. It’s got seals and underwater caves, it’s insanely deep, and it’s in the middle of Siberia, there’s nothing near it. And surrounding Moscow is the Golden Ring area, the oldest part of Russia, so you have this really old architecture and culture.

welding pontoons with a martini, photo by Mayra Cimet

brooklyn spaces: Are you inspired as an artist by being in Gowanus, or in Brooklyn in general?
Angie: We were totally lucky to have Josh get that shop on the Gowanus.
Orien: Oh yeah. We built the first boat in this tiny place on Nostrand Avenue, and then Josh was like, “Guess what? I’m getting a new shop and it’s insanely massive and it’s on the Gowanus Canal.” It was just the most ridiculous luck we’ve ever had. This project wouldn’t have happened without Josh and Serett, it literally would not have. But other than that, I don’t find New York especially inspiring. It’s basically an impossible place to get anything done.

brooklyn spaces: But overall, has this been a rewarding experience?
Orien: Definitely. I have all the things I was looking for. We have the best friends anyone could have. We have something to do that isn’t awful, that doesn’t contribute to the greater horror, that doesn’t hurt people. No one has gained anything from what we’re doing, except maybe the beer distributors. Other than that, no one’s getting rich off us, which is nice. That’s about all you can ask for.

photo from Pipe Dream Museum

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

brooklyn brainery

oriana on 12 Sep ’11

space type: skillshare | neighborhood: prospect heights | active since: 2010 | links: website, tumblr, facebook, twitter

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

ger-nis culinary & herb center

oriana on 17 Aug ’11

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: skillshare | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter, blog

Let’s just take a minute and talk about something totally outside of the purview of this blog: ice cream sandwiches. Think about an ice cream sandwich. We all have the same picture, right? Mushy chocolate cookie with rock-hard crappy vanilla ice cream? Let me just clear that image right out of your head. Here, my friends, are some freaking ice cream sandwiches:

chocolate-dipped almond cookies filled with black cherry ice cream

cucumber & gazpacho granita ice bites

basil ice cream with bacon on tomato

orange sherbet on sliced beet

I hope I blew your mind a little bit with those. Because Ger-Nis Culinary & Herb Center, where I took the Artisanal Ice Cream Sandwich class that produced such loveliness, totally blew mine.

Ger-Nis—like so many of the spaces I’ve profiled—has a lot going on. In addition to a whole slew of incredible cooking classes—like Indian Street Food, New Nordic Cooking of Iceland, and a Make Your Own Take-Out series, to name a very few—they’ve got social clubs and supper clubs and meetups and all sorts of festivals. It’s a warm, incredibly welcoming space, and I can’t wait to go back to cook something else. You should too! But first read my interview with Nissa Pierson, the space’s creator.

photo by me

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space?
Nissa: About seven years ago I started a business called Ger-Nis International, which is an importing business for organic, fair trade fruit and vegetable. We were looking for a new space for the business, and we found this one. Honestly, the moment I saw this place, I said, “I’m going to open up a culinary center,” even though it was just an empty room then. I’m very quick to do these kinds of things. Luckily, my brothers are builders, and they were amazing, building everything out for me after I designed it. I think of the theme as “modern French farm.” I really like a kitchen to have a homey feel. Kitchens that are too modern make you feel very icy, very culinary school, big chefs with their hats, and so the modern edge here is for the artistic side, and the farm-y feel is for the culinary side. I think the place has really nice energy, because it’s all been done with love.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: How long have you been teaching cooking classes?
Nissa: Thirteen, fourteen years. I’ve taught for the city of Santa Monica, a bunch of Whole Foods in different cities; I’ve done lost of private classes, I’ve taught at culinary studios across the country. I’ve also written a lot of herb recipes. But I’m 100 percent self-taught in everything I do.

brooklyn spaces: Do you also take a lot of cooking classes?
Nissa: Not really. I’ve taken a few and been bored to death, because most of them are just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Cooking classes are all so technique-based, and I’m not such a believer in technique. I think you can cut an onion a million different ways. I travel a lot, and when you travel, it’s not so much about technique, it’s about ingredients. So that’s what I try to emulate.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How do you decide what to teach here?
Nissa: Listen, my head is filled with so much stuff. Creating the classes is the exciting part for me. I get bored super easily, so it’s really important that we have a variety of classes. We first opened in the summertime, so we started with a lot of ice cream and gazpacho. Our bestselling classes are my Latin classes; our pasta classes are popular too. We have such a laid-back feel about the place, and great people come in who really want to learn. And it’s a really social thing. People leave exchanging numbers and come back again together, which is really nice to see.

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick rundown of all the different components of the space.
Nissa: Well, of course there’s the cooking classes. We also have a couple of series. One is Brooklyn Conversations, with local chefs, which is a nice way for people to get to know the chefs, and for the chefs to get to just talk about food. We have one called the Brooklyn Artisanal Kitchen, so like Salvatore Brooklyn will teach people how to make ricotta, things like that. We also do supper clubs, with a local chef and all the different local artisans, farmers, and purveyors. We did a social club this summer, sort of like a meetup for foodies, where we organized events and brought food, like we did “Opera in the Park” and brought antipasto. I’m doing one in a couple of weeks called “Lettuce Shred It” at Rockaway, which is free surf lessons—I’m a surfer—and lettuce sandwiches. Then we also have Kids in the Kitchen, and we go into schools, or have school groups come here. We’ve done programs with developmentally disabled adults. We do all different kinds of things, so long as it’s about food education.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship with the community?
Nissa: I’m a strong believer in supporting the community. We do as much as we can to work with neighborhood businesses, to collaborate and cooperate. We work with Union Market quite a bit, and a lot of the restaurants around here, like Miriam, Franny’s, Al Di La. We arranged one of our meetups at the Sycamore, which is a bar and flower shop. We try to bring our customers to the people and businesses we believe in supporting.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Nissa: I’d like the space to be profitable because I’d like to pay my rent. That’s number one. I’d like this to become a place where people in the community come to socialize, to learn to cook, to play. I’d like it to become a domain for local chefs, food artisans, people with a food education message. A lot of people tell me that I take on too much, that there’s too much going on. But I believe that if you have a good grasp of how to connect it all, then it’s easy. So that’s my goal.

***

Like this? Read about more teaching spaces: Brooklyn Brainery, Lifelabs, Pioneer Works, 3rd Ward, Time’s Up, Bushwick Print Lab, Urbanglass

film biz recycling

oriana on 8 Aug ’11

space type: nonprofit | neighborhood: gowanus | active since: 2009 | links: website, blog, facebook, twitter

One of my favorite things about this project is how often it surprises me. And holy shit was it a surprise walking into Film Biz Recycling, an enormous basement warehouse in Gowanus in between the Ger-Nis Culinary & Herb Center and the Textile Arts Center, just bursting with castoffs from movies, television, and commercial shoots.

photo by me

And I’m not just talking about plastic display food and costume jewelry and faux brick walling (although there’s plenty of those); there’s also racks of designer clothing and shoes, row upon row of high-end leather couches and brass lamps, plus headboards and telephone booths and bicycles and filing cabinets. And those are just the big items; there’s also aisles of small stuff, from books to toasters to street signs to toys.

all photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

What’s it all for? Well, for you, for whatever you can think to do with it, whether it’s building out your loft or decorating for a themed party. Eva, the founder, and her crew collect everything the film biz can’t use, and then they separate it into things to sell, things to deconstruct and reuse, and things to donate. They work with dozens of charities, including Blissful Bedrooms, Recycle-a-Bicycle, Room to Grow, Fertile Grounds, and Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, sending clothing to shelters, baby items to single mothers, e-waste to recycling centers, and building materials to reuse shops. In the three years it’s been open, Film Biz Recycling has diverted 180 tons of stuff from landfills. And they’re just getting started! It’s a space you’ve really got to see, and a cause that is so worth supporting, with your time (they love volunteers!), your money (don’t you need a new armchair?), and your ideas. Get over there! But first, check out my interview with Eva.

brooklyn spaces: What made you get into all this?
Eva: I worked in the film business for fifteen years, and I just spent so much time trying to find homes for all the leftover materials. I started a Google Group in 2007 to get all the art departments talking to one another, figuring out how to exchange materials. But the stuff needed a place to go, so in 2009 I got a tiny space in Long Island City. I used my savings for the deposit; it was totally underfunded, which was fine, that’s what ecopreneurs are famous for. But it turned out we had to grow or die, so I started looking for a new space. When I found this one—11,000 square feet!—I said, “We’ll be here or nowhere.” So we did an emergency fundraiser and raised $20,000 in two weeks, everything from $10 from a production assistant to $1,000 from Bridge Props, another prop house. We were weeping from the support. So we raised the money, signed the deposit, and got the hell out of Long Island City.

brooklyn spaces: Are you happy in Gowanus?
Eva: We love it! It’s like a perfect metaphor. We’re in between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, which are both gentrified and pretty wealthy; and then there’s this sort of ugly center, this butt crack in between those two lovely white cheeks. It’s so dirty here, but the people who love it really love it. One of the first things I did when we got here was start reaching out to anybody who’s trying to make Gowanus a better place, like Gowanus Canal Conservancy. I said, “Hey, we have materials, and we’re going to give them to you for free. Come down and see what you want.” Then I started finding local charities. CHIPS, a men’s shelter, is down the street, as is Camba Women’s Shelter. Sean Casey Animal Shelter is up the road.

brooklyn spaces: Are all the charities you work with so close?
Eva: No, they’re all over. Materials for the Arts picks up from us once a month, and Build It Green. Wearable Collections picks up clothing; they send what’s usable to South America and recycle the rest. Our mission is sort of a triple bottom line: people, profit, and planet. People are saving money, and these rich companies aren’t spending $900 a dumpster for all this usable stuff to just be tossed. It’s cheaper to donate it. It’s never not been that way.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, take me through all the different components of the space.
Eva: Well, first we have the Re-Workshop. We want this to be a community hub, a place for groups to meet and talk to one another. We have a Re-Gallery, to show the works of our featured artists, who have a workshop in the back. Right now it’s Dog Tag Designs. We’ve got our offices in the back, and a kitchen, and even an underground terrace, where they used to store the coal to heat the building. It’s our break room and spraypaint area and impromptu garden center—I’ve made some planters out of toilets that Build It Green refused, and we’re growing basil and things.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: Now tell me about what you’ve got for sale.
Eva: Let me just give you a couple of examples. There’s a set of brand new white leather couches that cost $3,700 new; the whole batch is $1,200 here. There’s a roll of rubber flooring, which costs $1,000 at RoseBrand, that we’re selling for $200. A gorgeous vintage lamp that was $2,300 new is $400 here. There’s a couple of crazy old phone booths that we just sold to Brooklyn Creative League to use in their coworking spaces. And that’s just the huge stuff. We also have a Small Boxes section. We have things like Bodega in a Box, Birthday Party in a Box, Hospital in a Box—these are usable items, not just props. We have salt and pepper shakers, lunch trays, trophy cups, petri dishes, candles, maps, a whole box of creepy clowns.

brooklyn spaces: So is everything for sale?
Eva: Not everything; we also have a rental-only section for items that are specific to the industry. Like, imagine a Downy commercial, with the mom looking into the dryer at her laundry, or a Sunny-D commercial, with the kid looking into the fridge. How do you get those shots? You cut a hole in the back of the dryer or fridge. And what did we do in the goddamn stupid industry forever? Bought a new one every single time. So now at Film Biz Recycling we rent them out.

brooklyn spaces: Have you found anything that you were just stumped about how to repurpose or recycle or resell?
Eva: Theatrical flats. They’re huge, they’re made with lauan—a rainforest material from the Philippines—and they get used once and tossed. But I’ve been thinking about remaking them into composting bins. Our composting company is Vokashi, and I’m going to see if they could use something like that. There’s a solution for everything.

brooklyn spaces: Do you want to export the Film Biz Recycling model to other cities, like LA?
Eva: Well yeah, but you know what? Brad Pitt needs to write me a check. I’m not doing it from the ground up again. But I really do want to fix the film industry. I don’t want to go to a movie and know that everything on the screen is in a landfill now. There’s a midcentury credenza I had to throw away once that haunts me to this day. That thing survived so many decades, made it to our set, and, because somebody flaked on Craigslist, was put into a dumpster and is dead now. That’s not okay with me. Film Biz Recycling isn’t the last resort; we’re the only resort.

brooklyn spaces: And it doesn’t just benefit the film industry.
Eva: The industry is only 10% of our revenue. This is stuff that anyone can use, and I just want to get the word out, so people will. It’s starting to work; Film Biz Recycling is being featured on a new Discovery show called Dirty Money. Eco Brooklyn just wrote a post on us; they redo brownstones sustainably, and they bought some materials from us, which is just what we want. I mean, it’s easy to sell a couch; it’s hard to sell a piece of wood. Anyone who’s redoing their apartment or building out their loft should come here, there are so many possibilities. You could use four theatrical flats to make a platform for your bed or your band or whatever. Trim it with some carpet squares or curtains, it’s beautiful. Anything you can think of.

***

Like this? Read about more community spaces: Books Through Bars, Trees Not Trash, Bushwick City Farms, Time’s Up, Brooklyn Free Store, Trinity Project, Boswyck Farms

bond street studio

oriana on 26 May ’11

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: studio | active since: 2005 | links: website, tumblr, facebook, twitter

On my way to Bond Street Studio, I had one of those lovely Brooklyn realizations: I’ve been living in this city for a decade, but I’ve never walked down this particular block before. I love how this blog project has really given me the opportunity to explore new corners of our fabulous borough!

Like Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio is a blank canvas of a space, which can be rented out for photo and video shoots. They’ve had some really diverse clients, including Google, General Electric, Italian Elle, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. As Tiasia, Bond Street’s branding consultant, told me, “It’s the right amount of space to make an intimate set, it’s not too grandiose. You really have the option of molding and playing with the space here, the way the light falls, the skylights, everything.” Photographer Robert DiScalfani, the owner, also uses the space as an art gallery, specializing in giving lesser-known artists a new audience. It’s such a versatile space, and Robert’s got plenty of tricks up his sleeve for new ways to use it, so expect to hear about a lot of cool events here soon.

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to open the studio?
Robert: I’m a photographer, I do mostly fashion photography, high-end wedding photography, and food photography, and I started doing videography a few years ago as well. I’ve owned two studios in Manhattan, and the rents just got too crazy, so I moved to Brooklyn about ten years ago. I owned a photo gallery down the street called Bond Street Gallery, which was a happening little spot. Unfortunately, we opened up just prior to the market crash, and then all hell broke loose, no one was buying anything. So I was working out of a live/work loft in Cobble Hill, and I was approached by some builders in the neighborhood who asked me if I needed a workspace, and I did. This is a new construction, it was a dirt lot a few years ago. When I started renting it out, it was about 80% still photography and 20% video, but now it’s completely the opposite. There’s so much filmmaking going on in the area, it’s incredible. And last year we start having some exhibitions here, as well.

brooklyn spaces: What have been some favorite shoots, or interesting people who have been through?
Robert: Google was here recently, shooting a video called “Chromercise,” about their browser Chrome. Italian Elle comes through several times a year, with a terrific photographer named Paulo Sutch. Kristen Schaal from The Daily Show was photographed here. Recently we had Saunders Sermons shoot a music video here, he’s a jazz musician but he also sings R&B, and he’s played trombone or saxophone for Jay-Z and Fantasia songs. I also had Ted Leo and the Pharmacists here not long ago. It’s great seeing all the creative people come through and whip this place into something you would never imagine possible.

brooklyn spaces: What are some things you’d like to do that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Robert: A gallery I know in Soho has a monthly photo salon, and I’d love to do that here. I’d also like to do something similar for independent film. Another thing I want to do with the gallery is to showcase more new artists. It’s not easy to get an exhibition in New York; you don’t just walk into a Chelsea gallery and get an exhibition. So I’d like to open up the space to people who need an opportunity to show their work. There’s so much talent out here. I found this artist from Haiti last week, I walked into his apartment in Bushwick and looked at the paintings and I was stunned. His stuff is so detailed and deep and layered. Just beautiful. And this guy has never had a show!

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel Brooklyn has had an influence on the space?
Robert: Oh, I’m thrilled to be in Brooklyn. It’s such a great place, the creativity is just over the top here, it’s fantastic. Whatever your imagination can come up with is possible in Brooklyn.

Like this? Read about more film and video businesses: Film Biz Recycling, Running Rebel Studios, Factory Brooklyn, Acme Studio