“You’re probably getting used to hearing news like this in Williamsburg, so we’ll cut right to the chase . . .”
So begins the obituary for Glasslands, a self-described “homegrown community art space turned psychedelic venue partyhaus” which established itself during the mid-aughts at 289 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg — and, due to a sudden lease termination, hosted its very last performance at the end of 2014. Glasslands’ closure follows the recent, forced shuttering of two other Brooklyn “DIY” music venues, Death by Audio and 285 Kent. Clustered within a single building along the Brooklyn waterfront, the site of these bygone venues will soon be home to Vice Media — parent company of the perennially cool Vice Magazine — who have begun to convert the gritty spaces into a sprawling office complex. In the words of 285 Kent founder Ric Leichtung, these venues were situated amongst “the breeding grounds of American hipster culture,” a milieu which helped launch Brooklyn into the international public imagination, and ignited local interest in harnessing Brooklyn’s bohemian art and music culture as a tool for economic revitalization. This trajectory isn’t necessarily unique to Brooklyn; in many cities, DIY venues set up shop in inexpensive corners of the urban core, often anticipating — and, in the eyes of some, instigating — waves of reinvestment and gentrification. In the case of north Brooklyn, these waves significantly transformed the urban landscape from a “forgotten backwater, scattered with old warehouses” into one of New York City’s hottest real estate markets.
Ultimately, the closure of these spaces is not too surprising. All-ages DIY spaces are often (and certainly in the case of Death By Audio and 285 Kent) pseudo-legal and ephemeral by nature. Without the start-up capital to meet municipal standards of legitimate operation, these unregulated, ad hoc venues often skirt the boundaries of city code and strive to avoid negative, yet sometimes inevitable, interactions with law enforcement over noise complaints or acceptance of donations. However, the sheer amount of attention that has been generated by the closure of these venues is astonishing. The last series of shows at 285 Kent, which were covered locally by the New Yorker, New York Times, and Village Voice (to name just a few) became a nationally-recognized event in the realm of music journalism. That such small, rough-hewn, “homegrown community art space[s]” have gained renown at such a scale exemplifies the success of “Brooklyn cool,” and the increasing mainstream appeal of its artisanal spirit.