The place now had just scored themselves a l iquor license and was beginning to seem less like a funky art space and more like a legit venue. The two founders, artist Brooke Baxter and Rolyn Hu, a musician, started the club at 289 Kent Avenue with “ very little startup and donated or recycled materials.” (Baxter was already running Glass House Gallery right around the corner, starting in 2004.) A couple years after opening, the partners shifted their attention to their new baby, Manhattan Inn, and Jake Rosenthal and Rami Haykal, under the name PopGun Presents, started booking at Glasslands. Some are run by the the old timers like Todd P, while others are the product of a new generation of bookers and music people ( Aviv).īut Glasslands is a different story altogether. Meanwhile, we’ve seen the next wave of DIY venues open up east of the Brooklyn waterfront: East Williamsburg ( Sunnyvale), Ridgewood ( Trans-Pecos), and Bushwick/Bed-Stuy (Palisades, The Gateway, Market Hotel 2.0). The DBA crew went on to make themselves a well-regarded documentary film, Goodnight Brooklyn, and have hinted that a new venue is on the horizon.
The Depreciation Guild at Glasslands in 2013 (Photo: Kristin Knoll) Since both Glasslands and DBA were artist-run venues without, heh, billions to speak of, all they could really do was say “Fuck Vice” and, in the latter’s case, rip up their personal collection of Vice magazines.Īfter the final show rang in 2015 on New Years Eve– featuring DIIV Sky Ferriera, Smith Westerns, and Beverly– the place closed, just a few weeks after DBA said byebye. (If you Google Glassland’s former address, you’ll find a “business” called “A Place to Bury Glasslands.” Ouch.) The culprit for Glasslands’ demise was a push for development on the waterfront– specifically, Vice Media was looking to expand their work space and managed to squash some of the last bits of cool cred remaining in their own neighborhood. It’ll be #blessed with $3 million worth of pure sparkle, including a sprawling roof, food and drink service, and an adjacent art space. Today the Glasslands team announced that it’s returning with a new venue in East Williamsburg, Elsewhere, set to open this fall– and it’s not just any old ramshackle DIY establishment, but a 24,000-square-foot affair in a former warehouse. It wasn’t so surprising– after 8 years of hosting indie rock, R&B, techno, you-name-it shows in their cavernous, blackened industrial confines, their neighborhood along Kent Avenue no longer felt like the “forgotten backwater” it did when they opened in 2006. It’s only been about a year and a half since the closure of Glasslands Gallery, the other DIY venue on the Williamsburg waterfront– the one that was the button-down oxford (second-hand, but you couldn’t tell) to Death By Audio’s torn-up band tee. Elsewhere, so far just a $3 million enigma wrapped in an upside-down pyramid cutting through waves.
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