285 Closes, DIY Grows Up: What’s Next for the DIY Scene? Going Legit.
For those coveting spots on the Park Places of Brooklyn’s Monopoly board, where there’s pressure to sell enough tickets to pay hefty rents, things get even trickier. Nestled at the intersection of Broadway and Bedford, Baby’s All Right melds a DIY-esque booking mindset into a proper club space. Led by former Pianos booker Billy Jones and the recurrent outside promoter (including 285 Kent’s head curator Ric Leichtung), there’s a scrappy ethos that enables local bands of various draws to play alongside the occasional national act, but it’s dressed in Cinderella’s gown—a room with meticulous zodiac-themed décor, LED walls, and artisanal bar food—to lure a wider crowd. When every detail wasn’t ready at the start of CMJ in October, owners opted to reshuffle bands and push the opening to later that week; gone were the spur-of-the-moment DIY gigs of yesteryear.
Blocks from McCarren Park in Greenpoint, Brooklyn Bazaar operates as Baby’s inversion: an unfinished 24,000-square-foot warehouse—the kind often associated with underground parties—housing a weekly pop-up market whose profit allows for simultaneous free shows. “As counterintuitive as it sounds, not charging a cover is what allows us to put on shows with really exciting acts and cool sponsors, in part due to the massive exposure potential,” says Duncan Rich, who oversees booking at the Bazaar. The sheer size of the space combines “a large-scale operation with the immersive experience of a place with a free spirit… connecting bands and audiences that wouldn’t normally find each other.”
We’re beginning to see that the astute business sense needed for a venue to survive in gentrified Brooklyn needn’t undercut a community-minded mission. Roe explains that when Silent Barn turned to crowdsourcing there was an immediate sense of higher accountability. “We had to bring DIY from a state of hiding into a sustainable, fully transparent level of functioning,” he says. The youth-fueled scene isn’t dying… its ever-changing environment is just forcing it to grow up into a more cautious young adult.