Rocking Revitalization

A couple nights ago, I went to the Black Cat on 14th Streeet NW to see Shonen Knife (they were pretty good but my Japanese is weak; I was also impressed with Visqueen, one of the opening acts) and it got me thinking about revitalizing raw areas through activities that resonate with grit.

We all know places like the Black Cat around the country, from Mercury Lounge in New York City (where you have to go if you want to see music that doesn't come to DC such as Julieta Venegas, one of my favorite rockenas in espanol) to the Theatre of Living Arts on South Street in Philadelphia (where I am going to see Gang of Four in May), insert the name of your favorite place and city here: ______________________________.

For a long time, I've felt that Black Cat and the 9:30 Club were essential to sparking the renaissance of the 14th and U Street area. Many people talk about the importance of the Reeves Center, which was built in 1986, but revitalization didn't begin in earnest on U Street until the mid-1990s, a full decade after the urban brutalist Reeves Center was constructed. The same goes for the rehabilitation and operation of the Lincoln Theater.

(Speaking of U Street, check out the PBS Virtual Tour of Shaw and the proposed Uptown Destination Arts District.)

I attribute a lot of this to the 9:30 Club, which was a major investment by Cellar Door (then a large concert presentation company with a national reputation; since then Cellar Door has been purchased by SFX Entertainment, which was then purchased by Clear Channel). This sent a clear vote of confidence to other investors that the area was worth investing in--many years before this happened more generally across the city when then Mayor Barry finally(?) was off the scene.

As importantly, it brought a lot of people to the area every week to see concerts.

I think music--rock, punk, hardcore especially--will attract people to rough areas, because patrons have no other choice if they want to see the act.

This might be less true for other forms of the performing arts such as plays. I think the demographics for theater might be more upscale and theater might not be quite the same driver for revitalization as is music. E.g., Studio Theatre was on 14th Street beginning in 1978, an awful long time before the area started changing. Other music clubs in the area include(d) Velvet Lounge, Metro Cafe, Republic Gardens (which closed when its proprietor opened Dream in Ivy City, and then later opened under different management). A couple years ago Saloun, a jazz place, moved to U Street from Georgetown and is now called Saloon.

It's important to own the building because you can be displaced. That happened to Metro Cafe (where I saw the now defunct band Dead Girles and Other Stories--if anybody knows what happened to them let me know, they were pretty good, more interesting than other local bands like Tuscadero). Now a condo building is being constructed--part new construction, part adaptive reuse--and I can't remember what's in the space now, maybe home furnishings?

The Nation, off South Capitol Street, once one of my favorite venues when it operated as the Capitol Ballroom (where I saw amazing concerts from the likes of David Bowie, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, L7, and Morrisey) is likely to become an office building because the owners (Potomac Investment Properties, which own 900 Second Street NE and other properties on the 200 and 300 blocks of I Street NE) realize the property is worth more as an office building.
After all, South Capitol is supposed to be redesigned as a major gateway into Washington.

Similarly, many gay-oriented clubs are likely to be displaced by the construction of the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, which is a continuing story in the Washington Blade and that has been covered by the Washington Post. Artists frequently complain that they are used to stabilize areas and once the areas begin improving, they lose out to the next wave of "gentrifiers."

Unlike a lot of old center cities, which usually had a large amount of industry and therefore a lot of big old buildings are around waiting to be used as something, Washington doesn't have a lot of big buildings suitable for music.

We need a music venue on H Street. I had tried with some others to open a place on the 1300 block, but the property owner thought the space was worth 3 times more than we did, and we couldn't make the numbers work. (More importantly, she refused to make a counteroffer to our initial lease proposal. While 5 months later she saw me on the street and asked me if I wanted to be a business partner in her opened now closed off-again on-again restaurant, the space has basically been empty for the 18 months since we were trying to negotiate with her.)

You work the numbers (rent, utilities, security, promotion, food, personnel, trash removal, licensing, etc.) and you say "Why do I have to do all this work to make no money?"