Big Snow (Photo: Lauren Carol Smith)
Sad news: on Saturday morning, Bushwick DIY venue Big Snow Buffalo Lodge tweeted that it was “closed for good.” The venue’s co-owner Yoni David now tells Bedford + Bowery that he was “caught in the line of fire” of a shooting outside the venue.
Speaking on the phone from his hospital bed, David explained that as he was opening the door to the venue on Wednesday night, a stray bullet passed through his left forearm and lodged in his left side. “My arm is shattered,” he said. “I basically have a titanium left arm now. There are a few more surgeries and physical therapy ahead.”
Despite being shot, David is looking on the bright side. “Luckily nobody got hurt except for me,” he says. “The people who have come to Big Snow and supported us, if any of them were the ones who got shot, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
The future of the venue — whether at 89 Varet Street or elsewhere — remains cloudy. “I loved doing what we were doing, loved working with the people we were working with,” David says, with an air of resignation. “The thing about Big Snow is it’s such a community based thing. In some way or another, you are collaborating with your peers at all times, because that’s just the way this community works. And that’s a beautiful thing. Maybe we’re the names on the lease, but that space belonged to New York.”
“I hope to God that continues–if that means opening a space again in the future, we’ll see,” he adds. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.”
Details were initially scarce about Big Snow’s closing; there were unconfirmed reports of a shooting outside the venue on Wednesday night, and the space had also dealt with flooding recently. BrooklynVegan ran with a post reporting that the victim of the shooting was “possibly a doorman,” which initiated a firestorm of speculation in the comments, where David eventually confirmed that he was the one who was shot and criticized BrooklynVegan for posting the story before Big Snow could release a statement about what went down.