CB Lets Club Cumming Sing Again, With Some Restrictions

A drag queen let me into Community Board 3’s State Liquor Authority licensing committee meeting on Monday night. Inside, she was joined by a bevy of others who came out in droves to support Club Cumming, actor Alan Cumming’s East Village bar that recently ran into trouble due to their liquor license lacking a stipulation to allow live music and DJs.

Cabaret, comedy, and more have been commonplace at Club Cumming since it opened about six months ago. Shortly after Page Six reported that the SLA was investigating the bar for not complying with its listed Method of Operation, a component of a liquor license that stipulates what type of establishment holds the license and what it can do, Club Cumming halted all their live performances on March 23 until they could seek a license alteration from Community Board 3.

“We wanted this to be an essential part of the East Village, a revival of what the East Village means to us,” said Alan Cumming. “We will work with you; we have tried to comply since we realized there was a violation.” He requested the committee help them keep supplying “the employment and the joy.”

Nearly a dozen people spoke in support of the bar’s presence (and performances) in the neighborhood, most of which are longtime East Village residents. There would presumably have been more, but it was so crowded the committee made many people wait outside, craning their necks to hear the meeting from an open window.

“It’s a great place for artists, and I think that’s incredibly lacking in the East Village,” said Emile, who has lived on a nearby block since 1984. Adam Feldman, a staff theater critic and editor for Time Out New York, said he’s been covering the city’s performance scene for 20 years and deemed it “in danger,” especially in historic hubs like the East Village.

Performance spaces “have been disappearing everywhere,” Feldman said, “and I am overjoyed, truly, with what has been happening at Club Cumming. People of all different kinds are welcome there, in a way I have not seen personally in a long time.”

“It’s hard to even read Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York,” said Abby, a current bar owner who has lived on 4th and A since 1994. “I don’t want to live in a neighborhood of Targets and Starbucks. Given that there’s an empty storefront on every block in this neighborhood right now, we should be encouraging small business and not trying to drive them out of business.”

Many others touted the bar’s appeal as an “LGBTQ community center,” or a place where performing artists can find a “steady lucrative creative outlet.” A common thread in all the speeches was that this bar brings an artistic presence and “vibrancy” to a neighborhood where that is becoming rarer and rarer.

“We’re being asked to legalize what we may have never approved,” said committee chair Alexandra Militano, who said if the bar approached them as their prior iteration, EasternBloc, asking for the Method of Operation change before opening Club Cumming, they still may not have said yes.

Ultimately, CB3’s SLA and DCA four present committee members did vote unanimously to grant the license alteration, which would allow live music and DJs “provided they are not scheduled and that there are no ticket sales or entrance fees.” The committee stated this was because the bar’s zoning “does not provide” for them, and they lacked the power to change that.

Though the notorious cabaret law outlawing dancing without a license was recently repealed, and a Nightlife Mayor has been officially elected, a web of convoluted licensing and zoning requirements still remain for those trying to operate a business in New York City. It was repeatedly emphasized that Club Cumming’s problem had nothing to do with complaints, but with “compliance.” In fact, it was the bar’s “incredible publicity” that led Militano to look into the usage situation.

“The bottom line is how [the Department of Buildings] interprets it,” stated District Manager Susan Stetzer. Historically, Militano added, the DOB has not allowed scheduled performances and ticketed events to exist in a residential area, even at spaces licensed to have live music and DJs. Club Cumming’s address, 505 East 6th Street, is in zoning area R7B, a type of “residential district.”

This would not change much for the bar’s open mic-style events, which have seen drop-in performances from Broadway composers and actors and even recently Emma Stone and Paul McCartney, but other events may have to switch things up. At the meeting, Club Cumming co-owner Daniel Nardicio expressed concerns about the space’s ability to properly compensate talent now.

“The weekends have nothing on Mondays in the Club,” says Cat, a regular performer at the bar’s weekly showtunes-driven piano night, literally called Mondays in the Club. She tells me the lack of “scheduled performances” wouldn’t hurt the bar’s spirit, but they’d have to adapt and rebrand. Hector Lionel, another Monday regular, agreed but echoed Nardicio’s worries about paying performers.

“All I can say now is that board’s ruling is confusing,” says Jason Napoli Brooks, an author and a curator of The Enclave, a reading series founded in 2006 that moved to Club Cumming from Cake Shop in February. “Does the board expect the club to have only impromptu performances and dance parties?” Still, he tells B+B he’s trying to stay optimistic until he has a clearer picture of the future. Benjamin Maisani, one of Club Cumming’s co-owners, clarified to B+B that this “doesn’t accurately reflect what goes on at Club Cumming,” explaining the bar previously only offered performance-based programming, not dance parties.

Though their victory came with a few conditions, Club Cumming’s owners and supporters nevertheless headed straight to their haven after the nearly two hours of discussion. There, everyone drank for free, excited chatter abounded, and Cumming himself led the crowd in a celebratory sing-along.

If anyone thought people’s love for this bar was hammed up for the Community Board, it would only take a few minutes among the crowd to be swiftly proven wrong. Everyone I spoke with at Club Cumming reiterated the earlier praise heaped upon the bar. Though their beloved club may not be able to go back to exactly the way it was before, the energy in the room was victorious for now.

Update, April 11: The original version of this post was revised to add a clarifying comment by one of Club Cumming’s co-owners.

Update, April 12: The original version of this post misidentified Abby as a former rather than current bar owner.