Saying Goodbye To The Acheron: This Weekend’s Wild Viking Funeral
Over the last six years, co-owners Bill Dozer and Dan Oestreich have built The Acheron into a punk oasis in the middle of concrete nowhere. On an empty strip of Waterbury Street in East Williamsburg, their venue played host to a impressive run of local, national, international, and legendary acts across the spectrum of dark, angry, passionate, or deranged music until two weeks ago, when they announced it was all coming to an abrupt end.
Unlike other late, lamented Brooklyn spots like Glasslands or Death by Audio (and maybe Palisades, too as of this summer) the closing wasn’t due to neighborhood friction, police pressure, or massive corporate expansion. In the end it was a mundane insurance dispute, and the raised rates that came with it, that made continuing on impossible. “We could get re-insured, but then the cost would be astronomical,” said Oestreich. Running these spaces for love instead of money can often be just that tenuous. And for an operation he calls “family-run,” bringing on outside investors, or potential corporate backing, is not something they considered a viable option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEeGoAddEA&authuser=1
Tonight, the venue holds it’s last pure punk show featuring Acheron regulars Aspects of War from Boston, alongside locals Warthog, Indignation, and Conspiracy. Tomorrow, they host an early metal bill that brings together acts from Seattle, Detroit, and Brooklyn, and another late show with stars of the subculture like Magrudergrind, Techgrinder, and Uniform that’ll be the spot’s final performance before the stage is razed and it’s absorbed back into extra space for Anchored Inn, the connected bar and music community hub next door.
There’ll be tickets available at the door for all of this weekend’s shows for what’s likely to be a wild Viking funeral. Oestreich hopes to pack in the room as best they can. “We want people to show up. At this point, what the fuck could happen?” he jokes. “I don’t want to turn anyone away this weekend. I like to think that if people really want to come this weekend it’s for the bands. Even if just an iota of it is for the space, that’s something. I want everyone to have some kind of final experience and leave thinking and feeling like it was as much for them as it was for us.”
Plus, it’s only an ending in part; the Acheron team will continue on as promoters, carrying out all the shows originally scheduled for Acheron across Brooklyn this summer and beyond. But Oestreich indulged us in some further Acheron reminiscing to mark the occasion just the same.
http://www.instagram.com/p/BHj6hQgBIfd/?taken-by=theacheronbk
How did you and Bill starting working together?
We kind of both got into this in the same way, just growing up going to shows, then starting to book shows. Bill started Acheron before me and once it opened, just as someone who booked a lot of punk shows in town, I was happy to have a new venue and booked one of the first shows for a band called Masakari from Cleveland. My old band Death First played it, and a couple others.
Growing up in Manhattan, were there spots he went to for punk shows as a kid that served as a model for what The Acheron would become?
I think I snuck into a show at CBGBs before I was 16. But seeing ABC NO Rio was kind of eye-opening in terms of what DIY could be. In terms of running this, I’ve been going on tour pretty nonstop since I finished school, and getting to see so many different venues around country and now around the world sort of picking and choosing things from them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdlYId8KP74