While you party down this weekend, the club owners of North Brooklyn will be working hard to make that partying possible — and offering up a dizzyingly diverse array of cutting-edge music, to boot. (For starters, did anyone else catch John Carpenter’s soundtrack composer, Alan Howarth, doing the Halloween theme song at 285 Kent last night? Just beyond awesome.) Last week at the Newsroom, we spoke to some of our favorite nightlife impresarios: from left to right in the video above, you’ve got Peter Shapiro of Brooklyn Bowl, Jify Shah of Cameo, Jake Rosenthal of Glasslands, John Barclay of Bossa Nova Civic Club, and Todd Patrick of 285 Kent and Market Hotel.
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285 kent
The Best Brooklyn Bands We Saw at CMJ
Ava Luna (Photo: Gustavo Ponce)
CMJ seems to have been a success this year — or at least, that’s what a handful of Brooklyn club owners said when we spoke to them earlier this week. Peter Shapiro said Steven Spielberg dropped into Brooklyn Bowl, Jake Rosenthal said Glasslands was sold out every night, and Todd P seems to have come around to the fest.
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Monday: An Evening With the Owners of the Night
Sure, it’s fun to sit around remembering CBGB and the Mudd Club, but what about the great clubs and creative hubs of today? Join us Monday at the B+B Newsroom as five trailblazers of North Brooklyn nightlife discuss the state of play circa 2013.
John Barclay will be coming off of a win this week’s Paper Nightlife Awards, where his Bossa Nova Civic Club scored Best New Club (New York considers it the Best Dance Club, period, and gave it another shout-out in last month’s Everything Guide to Dancing).
Barclay operated 285 Kent before legendary DIY promoter Todd Patrick (aka Todd P) turned it into a nightly destination for all-ages indie rock shows. Patrick, also the founder of Showpaper, is now in the midst of reopening beloved underground spot Market Hotel as a fully licensed indie music venue; last month he announced he was also reopening the original location of Silent Barn as a yet-to-be-named artist’s studio space and an all-ages venue for avant-garde and experimental music.
Also joining us will be Peter Shapiro, who owned celebrated Tribeca club Wetlands before opening Brooklyn Bowl in 2009. A couple of months ago, the bowl-o-drome announced its expansion to London and Las Vegas. Shapiro, also the publisher of Relix magazine and a founder of the Great GoogaMooga, recently relaunched Lower East Side burlesque mecca The Slipper Room and the venerable Capitol Theatre in Port Chester.
Jify Shah will be coming off of a blockbuster week at his Williamsburg venue, Cameo, which just hosted CMJ showcases by some B+B favorites (Mexican Summer, Cascine, Wild Honey Pie, etc.). In addition to attracting some of Brooklyn’s most exciting indie-rock and electronic acts and DJs, Cameo is New York‘s Best Stand-Up spot of 2010, thanks to house fixture Max Silvestri.
In 2008, Jake Rosenthal co-founded PopGun Presents, which produces concerts, parties, festivals and events around town. He and his partner Rami Haykal began booking Glasslands — one of B+B’s favorite places to catch a show — in 2009 and assumed ownership of the Williamsburg venue last year.
We’ll get the party started Monday at 7 p.m., at 155 Grand St., off of Bedford Ave., in Williamsburg.
Dark-Pop Duo Weeknight Will Take You into the Weekend
Since October of 2011, Andy Simmons and Holly MacGibbon have been making dark, beautiful pop rock together as Weeknight. After a busy summer of finishing up a forthcoming debut album and touring the U.S. with Montreal shoegaze-pop outfit Valleys, the burgeoning Bushwick duo spoke to us ahead of their show at 285 Kent tonight, where they’ll be sharing the bill with another Montreal-based act, Blue Hawaii.
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Here’s What’s Popping Off This Fourth of July Weekend
(Photo: Scott Lynch)
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Todd P : Boyd Rice Show Will Go On Even Though He ‘Sucks As a Human Being’
Todd P just sent out an epic missive explaining why 285 Kent won’t be among the venues canceling Cold Cave shows due to the addition of controversial opening act Boyd Rice. Patrick says that since Cold Cave added the provocative noise musician to the bill of tomorrow night’s show, 285 Kent has been subject to a “small uproar” involving “multiple oblique threats, several curse-laden late night crank calls, anonymous threatening text messages.”
But even though Rice, per Patrick, is a “washed up 80’s era troll” who “has spent the last 30 or so years saying truly disgusting things – everything from palling around with the KKK to wearing Nazi uniforms to advocating the subjugation of women and the efficacy of rape,” the show must go on in the interest of free speech. There will, however, be “literature at tables set up in the lobby, explaining who Boyd Rice is and what his shameful history entails.” Read the entire letter for yourself — it’s a doozy.
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