city reliquary

oriana on 31 Mar ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: micro-museum | active since: 2002 | links: website, facebook, twitter, tumblr

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

urbanglass

oriana on 25 Mar ’11

neighborhood: sunset park (ft. greene) | space type: skillshare | active since: 1977 | links: website, blog, facebook, twitter

I went to an open house at UrbanGlass—a glass-working skillshare and teaching center—completely on a lark, and it was absolutely fantastic. After touring the space, we watched people making glass beads over blowtorches, and a team of two blowing and shaping a hunk of molten glass into a vase, sliding it in and out of the “glory hole,” a furnace set to around 2000ºF, which is used to re-melt the glass as it’s worked on. It was incredible.

Housed in a historic former theatre, UrbanGlass is huge and hot, filled with kilns and pipes and furnaces and fire, with glass-blowers and glass-firers and glass-fusers in safety goggles and protective gloves all around. It was the first all-access glass center in the United States, and is now the largest, with studio space for more than 150 artists and classes for over 500 students each year.

Discs by Misako Shimizu

In addition to classes and studio rentals, UrbanGlass hosts exhibitions, offers a visiting artists program, and even started the Bead Project, a scholarship program to help economically disadvantaged women learn a marketable skill.

Glassblowers Rob Panepinto and Alexis DeLeon

Student work from the “Kiln 2” class with Laurie Korowitz-Coutu

Laurie Korowitz-Coutu making beads with a blowtorch

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Like this? Read more about skillshares: Brooklyn Brainery, Time’s Up, 3rd Ward, Gowanus Print Lab, Pioneer Works, Bushwick Print Lab, Ger-Nis, Exapno

factory studios

oriana on 23 Mar ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: commercial | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter

This one is a little different than the spaces I tend to cover. But my goal has always been to showcase the diversity and creativity of our fantastic borough, and Factory Studios is a great example of people doing something completely surprising and awesome with their space. It’s a full-service soundstage with a diverse and often high-profile clientele; they do photo shoots for magazines like Vanity Fair and Paper, music videos for everyone from Gogol Bordello to Redman, and commercials for companies like Disney and Jet Blue. Factory collaborates with the production company Gravity Sleeps, and the recording company Three Egg Studios. All this in an unassuming warehouse in the middle of Chasidic South Williamsburg! Ah, Brooklyn, you never cease to amaze me.

Q&A with Carrie from Factory & Sam from Gravity Sleeps

brooklyn spaces: Was it a ton of work to get this space set up?
Carrie: It took six months. It was pretty DIY; the walls are built with these things called SIPS panels, which weigh 400 pounds each and are extremely insulated. We had to move them around with a forklift and dollies, and the dollies kept breaking because the panels were so heavy.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a little bit about what goes on in here.
Carrie: We do lots of music videos, commercials, photo shoots, the occasional party. We get everything from Vogue and Spin to Spike Jonze. We’ve had a lot of really cool bands, like LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes, Sleigh Bells, Phantogram, and The Hundred in the Hands. We also have a lot of rap and hip-hop, like Ludacris, The Dream, Lil’ Kim.
Sam: We have smaller groups, too. We recently shot a video for these young up-and-coming hip-hop artists from the Bronx, who came to the Factory because the artists that they look up to had shot here. When we showed them around, they saw the same couch Ludacris had used in his video, and they were like, “Oh we’ve got to have that in our video!”

brooklyn spaces: Did you have an idea when you set out of the kinds of clients you were hoping to cater to?
Carrie: No. There’s a need for spaces that are soundproof, so that was our number one thing. And although we have some big-name clients, we also cater to people who don’t have a lot of money. We did a lot of things for free to get things going, and we’re always helping people out. Brooklyn is a good scene for art, so we’re not stingy.

brooklyn spaces: How has the relationship been with the neighborhood and the community?
Carrie: Well, one time we had a hip-hop video, and they wanted to shoot the guy with his Lamborgini and Ducatti out front. Our neighbors were pissed. Little kids were on the balconies, screaming in Yiddish and throwing things at them. I try not to do things like that, though. I try to be courteous.

brooklyn spaces: Why did you decide to do this in Brooklyn?
Sam: We wanted to cater to the Brooklyn artist scene, and I just really like Brooklyn. If I had all the money in the world, I’d still live in Brooklyn. As for Factory, I think that it being located here has been important for the way that artists perceive the space. It looks inviting, it doesn’t look like an establishment studio, but it still is just as professional and high quality.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have a favorite memory or fun project?
Carrie: For me, definitely Spike Jonze directing LCD Soundsystem, that was amazing.
Sam: The video is for the song “Drunk Girls.” It shoots the whole space. It starts off on the side but then it breaks the fourth wall, it’s all one shot, and so the character is the Factory.

LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls by EMI_Music

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Like this? Read more about other film industry spaces: Acme Studio, Bond Street Studio, 6 Charles Place, Film Biz Recycling

books through bars

oriana on 19 Mar ’11

neighborhood: red hook | space type: nonprofit | active since: 1996 | links: website, facebook

Books Through Bars is a all-volunteer collective started by the Nightcrawlers Anarchist Black Cross, and the group’s single goal is to donate free books to the incarcerated. Prisoners write in with requests, and three nights a week, during packing sessions, volunteers scour the bulging shelves of donated books to fill those requests. The group attracts a diverse variety of volunteers—from hipsters to activists to teachers—all of whom are united under the belief that literacy and access to reading material is a human right. Currently housed in the basement of Freebird Books, BTB has been in several previous donated spaces, including a NYCANH building and ABC No Rio before that. Their only cost is postage, and they hold lots of events, like movie screenings, game nights, and music and art shows, to raise funds to cover that expense.

Last summer I volunteered at BTB about once a week. It’s an incredibly rewarding experience, with a consistent, tangible feeling of accomplishment every time you find a book that you know is just what a particular person is looking for. So go help out this terrific organization! Donate some books, volunteer at a packing session, or have fun at an event. But first, check out my interview with collective members Joe and Danny.

brooklyn spaces: How do the prisoners find out about the organization?
Joe: Word of mouth spreads really easily. People in prison are kind of starved for companionship, you know?

brooklyn spaces: Do you get a lot of strange letters?
 Danny: Some of the strangest are not from prisoners but from prison officials. We recently had Freud for Beginners rejected by the state of California because it “depicts nudity in such a way as to create the appearance that sexual conduct is imminent.”

brooklyn spaces: Do you get a lot of return letters from the prisoners? Do people write back to say thanks for the books?
Joe: Yeah, we get thank you letters all the time. I often write letters to people that I slip into the books. There was someone I wrote to—I’m a Satanist, and so is he, and I sent him all these Satanic books. And as a thank you, he sent me an ink imprint of his hand with the Sigil of Baphomet on it, and it had flecks of his blood, saliva, and semen. It’s framed and hanging on my wall.
Danny: I have one of his drawings on my wall too.
Joe: Another guy I developed a correspondence with, I ended up calling the prison for him to get him medical treatment he’s been denied, and I’ve even spoken to his mother. He got out recently, and he called to thank me for everything I did. I think it’s really unfortunate for the incarcerated when the human element gets lost.

brooklyn spaces: What are the most common types of books requested?
Danny: A lot of African American history, Spanish dictionaries, educational stuff, like math and science.

brooklyn spaces: I remember one letter asking for books on fixing cars, and I thought that was so heartbreaking. I’m sure the prisoners probably have no access to cars.
Joe: The ones that make me cry are the ones that are barely legible, where you can tell this person has a child’s reading level, and it’ll be like, “Please send books on dinosaurs.” Like putting this person in a cage is doing the world so much fucking good, right? These folks have no access to real literature. I do a debate program in Rikers with the youth, which was started by a Books Through Bars member, and I’ve seen the libraries there. There’s basically shitty pulp and the bible, and that’s it. And this is New York, I can only imagine how bad it is elsewhere.

brooklyn spaces: I know BTB wasn’t always in Brooklyn, but do you think Brooklyn has influenced the space in any way? Do you feel like being in Brooklyn is a good fit?
Danny: It wasn’t Brooklyn for the sake of Brooklyn. After we left the NYCAH space, we had two options, and both happened to be in Brooklyn.
Joe: There’s a lot of gentrifying scum and hipsters around Brooklyn, and I guess that’s why it’s good to have this here, because the wealthy and liberal-leaning youth are all about Brooklyn. As someone who’s from Brooklyn—one of the last people from Brooklyn who’s in Brooklyn—it makes me a little angry, but hopefully if this article gets out and people read it, the privileged scum who see fit to displace the members of my community might come down to volunteer, or, better yet, give us some of their parents’ fucking money.

***

Like this? Read about more activism: #OccupyWallStreet art show, Bushwick City Farms, The Illuminator, Brooklyn Free Store, Trees Not Trash, Time’s Up

better than jam

oriana on 14 Mar ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: design co-op | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, blog, etsy

Honestly, I wandered into Better Than Jam by accident. I was looking at art at the Loom during Bushwick Site Fest, and suddenly I found myself in a bright, beautiful boutique, with rack after rack of silkscreened t-shirts and dresses, felted hats, shining jewelry, stitched pillows, knit scarves, and on and on. It turns out that Better Than Jam is a handmade design co-op, a collective space run by fashion designer Karin Persan. It’s a lovely shop full of lovely things, open daily. Go support the store and buy yourself something nice, but first read my interview with Karin!

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Karin: Well, I’m a fashion designer. I’ve been doing markets on the weekends for six or seven years, just traveling around, and the opportunity came up to take this space and open a storefront, so I grabbed it. I wanted to make it a showcase for local designers, and I started with a core group of awesome, talented people, and as I’ve been open I just meet more and more creative people from the neighborhood. The way the space works is everyone puts in a little bit for rent, and then keeps 90 percent of what they make. It’s a self-sufficient space.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have specific ideas for what you want to stock?
Karin: I have to keep it noncompetitive between the designers, so I only take on new people who don’t have anything similar to what I already carry. I like to have a good array of styles, designers with a good range of experience, and everything is high-quality, obviously.

brooklyn spaces: Do you do all the selection and the running of the space yourself?
Karin: Yup. I don’t make the designers work like a co-op usually does. I do want them to be involved, like bringing in new stock regularly, and I have events every once in a while, so I want them to come and participate, so people can meet them. People really love meeting the designers of the pieces they love.

brooklyn spaces: I’ve never heard of a space like this before, is this a pioneering idea?
Karin: Oh, I don’t know. I went to art school, I’m not a business major. I’ve had people emailing me from all over the country, saying, “What’s your business model?” I don’t have a business model! This is just what works for me.

brooklyn spaces: Was there a particular desire to have your shop in this neighborhood, or in Brooklyn in general?
Karin: It made sense for me to do it in Bushwick. This is where I’ve been for the last few years, I’m really proud of my neighborhood and how many creative people are here, and I like being a part of the growth of it, in a positive way. It wouldn’t make sense for me to open something like this in Park Slope or Williamsburg, because that’s not me, that’s not where I’m going. This is my neighborhood, this is where I have to be.

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Like this? Read about more commercial spaces: Metropolis Soap Co., Breuckelen Distilling Co., Bushwick Print Lab

jerkhaus

oriana on 11 Mar ’11

neighborhood: sunset park | space type: music & living space | active: 2004–2011 | links: none (sorry!)

The Jerkhaus is an incredibly lived-in communal-housing and punk-show space. They’ve had almost sixty roommates over the seven years the house has been active, plus hundreds of crashers and couch-surfers and short- and long-term guests. Not to mention the bands that come through to play shows, and all the people who stop by for parties and gatherings of all kinds.

It’s housed in a fancy-looking brownstone, and in fact I was worried that I had the address wrong, until a couple of pierced boys with torn shirts let me in. It’s a terrific mess in there, full of bikes and records and ashtrays and posters and busted chandeliers and foam-leaking sofas and sagging stuffed animals and speakers and graffitied subway signs. It’s, in other words, an incredibly loved space.

Rudi and Kever, two of the Jerkhaus’s founders, were super nice and welcoming, and they chatted with me for a couple of hours.

 

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the Jerkhaus.
Kever: Well, it’s a punk house in Brooklyn. Tons of people have stayed here. It’s like an old-fashioned step on a bum’s path, like a hobo travel point. There’s a sign with a little picture of a chick rocking out with a guitar, a dude with a bindle, some space cleared out on the floor.
Rudi: People stop by and say, “Someone who used to live here like three years ago said we could stay here.” When we moved in it was really cheap, and we had plenty of space for people to sleep on the floor. Right after we moved in, the RNC took place, and there were all these people nobody knew staying here. We had all this soundproofing foam from the people who lived here before us, so we just laid it out and had pretty much one floor as a giant bed.
K: I like the idea that we were housing people who were going to the RNC to fuck it up, to protest.
R: It was cool being a part of that. At that point I didn’t have much of a mind to protest, so I stayed home and gave people towels and directions to the beer store, or I called my roommate’s mom to be like, “Dave’s in jail again, just letting you know. Don’t worry, he’ll have a vegan sandwich when he gets out, thanks to the Anti-Capitalist Kitchen,” which is what Food Not Bombs was called then.

brooklyn spaces: Has there been trouble over the years? Has anybody come in and fucked shit up?
K: Yeah, there’s been pains in the ass, but nothing too crazy. There’s been no theft of property, to my knowledge. No violence, really. It hasn’t been bad enough that I think people should be afraid to have a house like this.

brooklyn spaces: Did you set out from the start to have a space like this?
K: Yeah. But our landlord and the neighbors are a big reason that it’s been able to go on for so long.
R: We’ve always paid rent, and there’s always been someone the landlord could go to and say, “Don’t let your friends sleep on the roof,” or “No live music. Have a party, but don’t have live music.” Of course we’ve had live music anyway, but if there wasn’t a complaint, it didn’t really matter.

brooklyn spaces: How about the running of the space, like buying toilet paper or cleaning the kitchen. Is it all collective?
K: It is all over the place. We had house meetings for a little while, but they were the worst fucking thing in the world.
R: It just kind of became whoever buys toilet paper buys toilet paper.
K: The pains and joys of communal living.
R: I’ve left many notes, but I gave up. I have a different outlook on it now than I used to.
K: You learn to expand your comfort zone.
R: It’s not a bad thing. You know when you walk into a room where there’s cigarette butts all over the floor and beer cans everywhere? That means someone had fun. Probably ten people had fun.
K: Beautiful, Rudi!

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship with the neighborhood and the community?
R: I’m very proud to be a punk kid who has lived in southern Brooklyn for a long-ass time. I didn’t move here because there was a cool café or a hip bar nearby. I’ve seen the neighborhood change a lot; there’s not a lot of hipster-driven stuff here yet, but it’s coming. I’m glad that I lived here when I did because I think I got a much better feel of living in Brooklyn, like Brooklyn Brooklyn, not just an offshoot of the Lower East Side. I don’t know if that’s an asshole thing to say, but it does give me a sense of pride. I’m also glad that I lived in a place that had so many people being creative, even if they were just making a zine or trying to change the world by not bathing. A lot of weird people have lived here and had a lot of unsavory professions and made a lot of weird art and music, and I’m glad that they had the space to do that.

brooklyn spaces: So why is the Jerkhaus ending?
K: Our landlord’s selling the place.
R: The building is in considerable disrepair. A couple of months ago we were having toilet trouble, and when the landlord and the repair guy came in, they were like, “We have to fix the toilet right now because the floor is rotting out under it, and if someone sits on the toilet, it might fall through the floor.” The place was cheap when we moved in because the building was not in the best condition, and we obviously didn’t care. We just keep paying rent anyway. We’ve had bedbug infestations and all this other stuff, and the landlord has just been like, “Well, tough noogies. You’ve got horrible roommates.”
K: Right after we moved in, one of our roommates was like, “Hey guys, look what I found! Just lying in the street!” It was a mattress. So from the beginning of the whole thing we had bedbugs.
R: At the time you had to go to Washington Heights to get bedbug-specific killer, because bedbugs weren’t such an epidemic yet. Of course, since then, everyone and their mother has them.

brooklyn spaces: So you’re saying you had them before they were cool?
R: Pretty much, yeah. We pretty much started the trend.

brooklyn spaces: Is anyone going on from this to create the next incarnation of the Jerkhaus?
K: Fuck no. Others because they don’t have the ambition, and Rudi and I because we’ve already gotten all the love and joy we can get out of this place. We sucked it all right out. The burnout rate in this job is pretty high. I’m surprised I held it for as long as I did.
R: You’re the patron saint of Jerkhaus!
K: I’m the biggest jerk!

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Like this? Read about other communal living spaces: Hive NYC, Treehaus, Dead Herring

spectacle theater

oriana on 23 Feb ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: movie theater | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook

photo from Spectacle's blog

Spectacle is a tiny new nonprofit art theatre run by a collective of filmmakers, artists, editors, and performers. Their goal is to create new experiences through movies, and to rescue amazing film art from the wastelands of time. Their programming is eclectic and extremely unique, and their ethos is DIY everything; they make their own custom film posters, design their own fliers and calendars, put together their own film trailers, and set their own schedules and series. And they’re always looking for new contributors to help out: email spectacletheater@gmail.com to get involved!

I went over the weekend to see Baron Munchausen—nope, not the Terry Gilliam one. This one is actually called Baron Prásil, and is an animated masterpiece by forgotten Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman.

Eric from Secret Project Robot's poster for Hiroshi Teshigahara's Man without a Map.

This is part of a Zeman retrospective that Spectacle has in the works. In March they’ll be showing On the Comet, and in April, Deadly Invention. Akiva, a member of the Spectacle collective, told me that he considers Zeman to be “the most unsung and brilliant animator from the pre-computer era.”

Spectacle showcases “lost” movies that are not available on Netflix or DVD, like pre–Production Code films from Hollywood—including The Story of Temple Drake, starring Miriam Hopkins, and City Streets, written by Dashiell Hammett and starring Gary Cooper and Sylvia Sydney; midnight cult films (Tales of Ordinary Madness, The Sinful Dwarf); and a wide variety of international fare, like Kin Dza Dza, a bizarre steampunk fable shot in the deserts of Russia, and The Ruined Map, surrealist noir from Japan.

from Spectacle's blog

Spectacle also works with musicians to write new scores to old silent films, and they’re experimenting with “remixing” films—Tron was remixed and scored by DUBKNOWDUB; the entire Mad Max series will be spliced and condensed into forty minutes, and scored live.

Yet another series is the “Ethnographic Vid WWWorld”—live, themed events showcasing different areas of the world. They’ve done one on the Himalayas, which included a documentary about the lavish rituals of Magar healers, narrated by William Burroughs. Next up is the WWWorld of Mardi Gras, which will have footage of Carnaval throughout the years, along with live feeds from New Orleans today. After that is the WWWorld of Arabia: Revolt in the Desert, with five hours of footage from the recent riots and live accompaniment by an Arabic orchestra. (The proceeds from this last one will go to human rights organizations.)

from Spectacle's blog

Akiva says that Spectacle is interested in “turning collectors into curators.” In an age where we’re all sitting around showing each other YouTube clips on the kitchen table, Spectacle strives to create a forum to “explore the way that this brave new world of the Internet can allow you to make, say, a documentary about Indonesia without leaving the comfort of your own computer.”

 

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Like this? Read about more theatres: UnionDocs, Bushwick Starr, Clockworks Puppet Studio, South Oxford Space, Cave of Archaic Remnants

rubulad

oriana on 18 Feb ’11

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.

***

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

3rd ward

oriana on 16 Feb ’11

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: skillshare | active since: 2005 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Update October 2013: The story is still coming to light, but as of October 9th, 3rd Ward is closed, with the owner having absconded seemingly in the middle of the night with no warning, leaving members, teachers, and small businesses that run out of the space completely in the lurch. The story was broken by the New York Observer here, and there has been an outpouring of frustrated rage since then.

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3rd Ward is kind of a no-brainer, since it’s a wildly popular, well-publicized space, but as a pioneering skillshare, community, and event space, they definitely warrant covering here. And it’s an incredible place, with so much to offer. There’s no interview in this post, but please click through to learn all about this fabulous space!

3rd Ward is primarily a skillshare, and while membership isn’t cheap, it comes with great perks (a free bike!) and access to a whole host of facilities. (Non-members can also access many of the offerings, but it costs more.)

Their facilities include massive metal shop, a wood shop, a jewelry studio, and a textile studio. They’ve also got a bicycle shop that is available for drop-ins, a cavernous gallery space with rotating exhibits, and several studios for events. Plus they offer a vast array of classes, in everything from digital media to welding to pottery.

They also do tons of events, including myriad gallery shows, live drawing events, music performances, presentations, crazy parties, craft fairs, fundraisers, festivals, and so much more.

It’s a terrific gathering place, and has something awesome happening basically all the time.

Also check out this great interview (not done by me) with 3rd Ward’s co-founder.

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Like this? Read about other skillshares: Pioneer Works, Time’s Up, Urbanglass, Brooklyn Brainery, Arch P&D, Bushwick Print Lab, Gowanus Print Lab, Ger-Nis, Exapno

silent barn

oriana on 9 Feb ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: music space | active since: 2005 | links: website, facebook, twitter, myspace

update spring 2013: The Barn is back! Now in Bushwick, and bigger, more diverse, and more ambitious than ever. Read my profile of the new space here.

update October 2011: In July, the Silent Barn was completely ransacked. About $15,000 worth of equipment was stolen, and the space itself was violently sabotaged. But demonstrating the indomitability and resilience of the NYC DIY music scene, the people who run the Barn launched and completed a Kickstarter campaign in September, raising an incredible $40,000 toward a new space.

photo from Showpaper

Silent Barn is an all-ages music venue. It’s also a living space with a rotating cast of roommates, the walls feature dozens of murals by local artists, and there’s an intricate recording system with mics scattered throughout the house. Silent Barn is also home to a zine library with over 700 books, and the DIY videogame arcade Babycastles. It’s one of Todd P‘s many go-to venues.

This one is kind of a cheat, I know, because Ridgewood is of course in Queens. But Silent Barn is barely in Queens, literally across the street from Bushwick, and anyway, it really exemplifies the kind of space I started this blog to cover: relatively unknown, DIY-great, creative and fun and unique. Plus it turns out that one of the bookers (Jordan Michael, who is also the editorial director of the DIY music listings publication Showpaper) is a friend of a friend, and he was happy to let me poke around and take pictures, and he graciously chatted with me while setting up for the night’s show, plugging in mics, digging through buckets full of cables and wires, telling sundry band members where to load in, and arguing with other Silent Barn folks about who’s worse at setting up PAs and which bands have made the latest unreasonable demands. Interview below!

Juiceboxxx, photo from Fiddle While You Burn

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of the space?
Jordan: It was started six years ago by this band Skeletons. They lived here and used it as a practice space, and they started playing shows and having their friends play shows. Over time there’s been dozens of people who have moved in and out, and lots of people who get involved don’t actually live here, like myself. This isn’t really my project; it doesn’t really belong to anybody, it belongs to the community.

 

brooklyn spaces: How did you get involved?
Jordan: Me and Joe, who lives here, work together on Showpaper, which is basically a publication about DIY music spaces like this one. I also work with comics and zines, and I started the zine library here. About a year ago I curated some workshops with the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, they came here and did some workshops on making indie comics. Then I did a benefit show for the zine library where if people donated a zine they could get in for free, and that went really well, and I just realized I liked and was good at organizing bands. Organizing bands in a space like this is kind of like marbles. You know the game marbles, where there’s a circle that’s like a wall, and the marbles all just roll away on their own momentum out of the wall? It’s kind of like that.

brooklyn spaces: Is it always the same kind of music?
Jordan: No. Tonight’s show is indie-rock-punkish music, and the show I have Saturday night is all chiptune, and the last show I did was a mixture of hardcore punk and local hiphop, and the show before that was folk. So I’d say it’s just all good music. I don’t know, everybody’s called me a music snob my whole life, but now I’m a curator.

brooklyn spaces: You mentioned that there’s a system where all of the rooms are recorded, not just the show space. What’s that about?
Jordan: That’s Lucas’s project. He’s a cassette artist, and he’s in the band Woods. It’s a recording of the entire space at the same time, not just a recording of the bands that play. So on a Friday, you hear the Dominican restaurant next door playing bachata music and people screaming at each other.

brooklyn spaces: And it’s used for what? Just to have?
Jordan: To record. To survey.

Team Robespierre, photo from Brooklyn Vegan

brooklyn spaces: Since this is a blog about Brooklyn, do you have any opinion about whether a space like this could have happened somewhere other than Brooklyn?
Jordan: Yeah, it could have happened in Ridgewood! I mean, there’s tons of spaces like this, all over. One of my favorite things about doing this is getting to meet all the people that are participating in places like this from all over the world. They all have their different things, but they’re all similar. There’s a place in Bushwick called Shea Stadium, their sound booth is an actual recording booth, on their website they have professional recordings of all their live shows. There’s a place called the Rhinoceropolis in Denver that’s a lot like this, there’s The Smell in LA, there’s Whitehaus in Boston; in every city there’s a place like this. It’s normally run by people who are in bands and can’t get anybody to book them, so they just have their friends come over and play for them, and then their friends want to play, and then people who came to their friends’ show want to play, and it just becomes a thing. It can totally happen somewhere other than Brooklyn. Actually, I’d say one of my major pet peeves is when people talk about Brooklyn like it’s this wonderful Oz place, the only place where things like this can happen. There are tons of cities, like Athens, that have a much more historical independent music scene than New York. I don’t really think New York’s all that special, to be honest. I’m way more impressed by Philadelphia or Baltimore. All the people in Baltimore are doing cool shit all the time, and they’re in a lot more danger than we are here. This isn’t a great neighborhood; it’s not a bad neighborhood, but it’s not great. But Baltimore is horrible.

Wham City, photo from Hyperallergic

brooklyn spaces: Anything else you want to tell the world?
Jordan: Yeah, don’t hang out outside the doors. We’re not BYOB, don’t bring in your own beers. And don’t be a dick about it when I try to take your beers away from you; it’s my friend’s house, I can take away your beer. And I want to stress that we really don’t let kids drink here. And don’t smoke upstairs, people live here. Smoke downstairs! We let you smoke inside, just go downstairs, stop being a dick about it.

brooklyn spaces: So generally stop being a dick?
Jordan: Yeah, stop being a dick.

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Like this? Read about more music spaces: Shea Stadium, Death By Audio, Dead Herring, Fort Useless, Bushwick Music Studios, Newsonic Loft