DIY Music, Art Space To Reopen In Brooklyn After Shutdown, Burglary In Queens
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The Silent Barn do-it-yourself art collective will be moving to a new space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, after its location in Queens was shut down by police and later saw all its equipment stolen.
Earlier this month, the Silent Barn announced that it had signed a 10-year lease with an extension option on a property at 603 Bushwick Ave., a few blocks away from the Myrtle Avenue J-M-Z subway stop.
The three-story mixed-use space is "legally occupiable and completely insane," the venue said on its Web site.
"In addition to nightly concerts, Silent Barn will now be home to over a dozen studios for artists and entrepreneurs, eight residential tenants, and a large community garden," the venue said.
Founded in the mid-2000s, the Silent Barn had until last year occupied a space at 915 Wyckoff Ave. in Ridgewood, Queens. The Brooklyn Daily said the venue had gained notoriety for "noise music shows, space-age video game projects, and bizarre outsider art gallery openings."
But in the summer of last year, police raided the seven-year-old Queens space and shut it down, on the grounds that it was not zoned for concerts and residential use, the Brooklyn Daily reported. A few weeks later, as residents searched for new homes, burglars broke into the space and stole more than $20,000 worth of sound equipment and cash, the publication reported.
But instead of scattering as many DIY venues might, the operators of the Silent Barn sought a way to make the space legal.
After a lengthy search and a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds, Gothamist reported, the venue succeeded in reinventing itself.
"This space surpasses the wildest ambitions we ever had for what the Silent Barn can achieve," the venue Web site said. "We are ecstatic."
The Web site said the Silent Barn team is "smarter than more organized than ever."
"Without exaggeration, this new space makes the entire ordeal of the past year worth the wait - if everything happens for a reason, then 603 Bushwick is the reason why 915 Wyckoff was vacated last June," the Silent Barn said on its site.
The Silent Barn said on its Facebook page that it will open for nightly concerts on Jan. 1, and will start booking next week.
Will you be visiting the new Silent Barn? Leave your comments below...
