gemini & scorpio loft

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.

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

lost horizon night market

neighborhood: nomadic | space type: guerilla art | active since: 2009 | links: website

Okay, the Lost Horizon Night Market isn’t exactly a space, it’s more an idea contained in many, many spaces. But it’s such a spectacularly fun idea—and several of the awesomest nights I’ve had in my ten years living in New York—I couldn’t possibly not cover it.

The Night Market is a crazy guerilla art event, masterminded by Mark Krawczuk and Kevin Balktick (interview with Kevin below!). Every few months, dozens of people rent box trucks, make them over into interactive art installations, park them on an empty block in a desolate corner of Brooklyn, then roll up the doors and invite people in to play. The whole event only lasts about four hours, and then the trucks drive away and it’s like nothing ever happened. Melissa, who did the Campfire Truck with her art collective, Blood Dumpster, said, “The whole concept reminds me of gypsy caravans or traveling circuses in the way that they would roam from town to town, set up shop for the day, and then be gone by morning.”

photo by Maximus Comissar

photo by Maximus Comissar

At the Night Market in March 2011, some of the trucks I played in were: The Teapot Dome Disaster, where we all sat around a long table and were served green tea; Granny’s Attic, dense with clothes and dishes and books and detritus, all for the taking (I got a plate and a scarf!); Bass Tsunami Truck, where I walked along suspended planks and my whole body vibrated with the pumping bass; Space Truck, filled with fog, where moonmen urged us to “drink of the body of space” while proffering a goblet of punch; the Petting Zoo and BBQ Truck, in which, after cozying up to some very lifelike papier-mâché cows and pigs, we were served delicious cubes of barbecued pork; and the Smash Truck, where lucky participants went behind plexiglass and donned goggles to smash up old electronics with a hammer. Some trucks I missed: the Hot Tub Truck (yes, for swimming in), the Strip Truck (yup, with actual strippers), the Boxing Truck (with a ring and costumes for the competitors), and so much more.

The Big Quiz Thing, photo by Maximus Comissar

According to Melissa, “making a truck pushed me to think outside my normal boundaries. This was trying to immerse not just one person, like most art, but a large group of people into a different setting, and to play on the expectations of what they would find in the back of a truck.” The possibilities really are endless.

Noah, who did the Big Quiz Thing, a spinoff of his company of the same name, said, “This is the kind of thing we live in NYC for. I’m always amazed how much effort people put into things like this, expecting no financial reward. It renews your faith in the human race, and in the positive power of art.” I couldn’t agree more!

photo by Michael Blase

photo by Michael Blase

brooklyn spaces: What was the genesis of such a crazy project?
Kevin: Mark saw this pickup truck with a pagoda thing on top at Burning Man, and he thought they were serving sushi. It turned out that they weren’t, but he thought it was great and wanted to do something like it. There’s an event called Decompression that the New York Burning Man community puts on here, and he decided to do it there. I was working that night, and I was on the radio, and someone announced, “By the way, I would strongly suggest that everyone check out the secret Japanese noodle restaurant running out of a truck in the parking lot.” And, lo and behold, there was a fully functioning ten-seat restaurant serving freshly made noodles, running out of this rental truck. Mark did that a few more times, once in front of Rubulad, once in Dumbo, bringing the truck to different parties. And then we started thinking, “Let’s do an event where everything is in trucks!” The first official symposium for the Night Market was held in a truck parked behind a building in Dumbo, and the first Night Market was three or four blocks from there, during the Dumbo Arts Under the Bridge weekend about a year and a half ago. We had about ten trucks, and it was the only Night Market that will ever happen where every person got to see every truck. This past one is the fifth we’ve had in New York. San Francisco has had two. There are other cities that are interested in picking it up, too. It’s turned into a really nice project. And it started with Mark and the noodle truck at Decompression.

outside the Boxing Truck, photo by me

brooklyn spaces: I tried to get into the noodle truck, but the line was too long.
Kevin: Yeah, it gets pretty brutal.
brooklyn spaces: But they did a good job, they had someone standing outside giving haiku assignments to keep the masses entertained.
Kevin: That’s something we just learned. One of the San Francisco Markets had an Alice in Wonderland truck, and there was a guy at the back of the lift-gate telling riddles, and whoever answered the riddle got to go in, whether they’d showed up an hour ago or five seconds ago. That was the dawn of the line-based entertainment. I’ve got to do something for my truck next time, because I always have a line, and people are always standing there looking unhappy.
brooklyn spaces: Because especially as it gets later, you start to panic, since there’s so much left that you haven’t seen yet.
Kevin: Well there’s no way to see all of the trucks at this point. In theory if you spent exactly six minutes in each truck or whatever you could do it, but that’s kind of pointless.

inside the Teapot Dome Disaster, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How did you publicize it at the beginning?
Kevin: We didn’t. And the reason for that is because it’s an event with a very finite capacity. We’ve always said that the rule of thumb is: “Don’t invite anyone you wouldn’t invite to a party in your home.”

Circus Truck, photo by me

brooklyn spaces: As the originator of the event, how much authority do you bring to it? How much do you have to do?
Kevin: Technically speaking, we have no authority. These are all things that happen in public places, so from a certain perspective, we can’t tell anyone what to do. The planning really consists of getting our friends together and encouraging people to do trucks, helping them conceptualize and things like that, setting up the meetings and symposia, and then Mark and I drive around a lot and look for places that we feel would work right. It’s actually a sort of very reasonable amount of planning, because everyone is totally self-contained. It’s just not a ton of work for something that creates a lot of joy for a lot of people. Everyone involved does a little bit of work, but no one has to give their life up to make sure one of these things happens.

Campfire Truck, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What have been some of your favorite trucks?
Kevin: I’ve actually seen fewer trucks than most patrons, since I’m often presiding over my own. But some of the most memorable for me have been the Surveillance Truck, the Sleep EZ Motor Inn, the Hot Tub Truck, the Strip Truck, Make It Happen, the Smash Truck, and, of course, the Lost Horizon Noodle Bar.

brooklyn spaces: What are some you’d still like to do or see?
Kevin: There are so many ideas out there. My favorite clever idea that no one has done yet is the Needle in a Haystack.

Pillow Talk Truck, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Any final thoughts?
Kevin: The Night Market gives people a platform to realize projects without having to worry about renting a venue or promoting themselves. It’s a forum for DIY creativity and entertainment. We believe that it’s a nicer world when everyone can create with and learn from one another instead of relying on the world of commerce to tell you what to do and who to meet. We didn’t invent and certainly don’t own the idea of truck-based entertainment. Anyone can do this; you don’t have to wait for us to tell you when the next one is going to be. Rent a truck. Do something neat. Invite your friends. Have fun.

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Like this? Read about more public art & spectacle: Dumpster Pools, Broken AngelIdiotarod, Bring to Light, Cathedral of Junk