The Story Of Vanishing Point
The Vanishing Point was a venue in Bushwick, Brooklyn which was born, lived and died over the course of a few months. It hosted concerts and parties five and sometimes six nights a week during that time. Although it is now closed, its founders PJ and Stephan continue to book shows under the name Vanishing Point Presents. I sat down with them to get the full story.
Marcus (the interviewer): What inspired you to open up a new venue?
PJ: It's essentially an organic kind of progression from, you know, a seed of an idea. First of all, there was nothing new or brilliant or genius about it. I have to say that this was not an ego trip. I love ego if you want to build things, but we didn't create anything new. But we did do it a little differently and that's what our goal was.
M: So what would you say the difference was, the thing which was unique about Vanishing Point?
PJ: Well we wanted to take the dozen DIY places that already exist in the different manifestations and we wanted to do the same idea but just a little bigger, and a little better, and a little more “real legitimate club style”. In other words we didn't want to, as much as I love places where the walls are falling down around you, we didn't want to have that as a regular permanent thing if we were going to be so serious. We wanted to make it more substantial. But still underground.
As far as the finding of the place it was a prototypical DIY progression. We had been looking for warehouse places for a while and you know, we had a few leads. I went to a show that I had heard about, I don't know where. It was a really cool show, a band I love called Other Passengers at a place called Olivo Refrigeration. It's down under the [Williamsburg] bridge. It's a refrigerator repair shop, literally. Talk about DIY.
Anyway. So I'm there to see the show in that prototypical space, and I happen to chat with this guy, and I say what we're trying to do. And he goes “Hey, did you check out this area?” and “I thought I saw some signs for big spaces”, etc. So the next day I go ride by it, and see a couple of signs, sure enough. End up calling one of them. And this guy's like “Yeah, great.” One thing leads to another: that's the one we rented! It's all part of this entire circle of music and alternative and DIY. It was perfect. It was a natural flow, absolutely perfect.
M: There were some spaces I've seen that looked like, or are, places where people actually live. Whereas Vanishing Point had artwork actually painted on the walls. I know you had lasers and so on. How much of that was you guys?
Stephan: We built the stage...
PJ: We built everything together.
S: ...the bar, sound booth, everything...
PJ: True DIY.
S: ...just the two of us.
M: Did you literally have to build everything? Because I remember the bathrooms looked like maybe they were the sample bathrooms you'd see at Lowe's.
PJ: I have to say that our landlord was amazing. He built those for us. He asked us how many we wanted, and he didn't charge us. He just said "okay we'll build 'em". That's the one thing, we had to have bathrooms...
M: Oh obviously, yes.
PJ: He built those. But from then on, the real stuff which makes the venue a venue, Stephan and I built it in the middle of the Summer, every day, occasionally running outside when the ice-cream truck jingle would come by. We built the stage. That thing will withstand a nuclear blast, it's still there! We built the sound booth, we built the bar, we, you know, bought used furniture, we went and got it, and you know, everything.
M: All right. Stephan, you were in charge of booking bands?
S: Yes, mostly.
M: How often did you start out having bands? Like how many times a week, at first?
S: At first we were open just two, three nights a week and at some point I started to get like twenty e-mails a day. Spent two hours a day on the Internet just replying, marking my calendar.
M: So then it built up to the point where almost every day you had shows there.
S: I don't think we had any bands on Sundays and Mondays.
PJ: Maybe a little bit, remember some Sunday shows.
S: Like, once in a while. But mostly it was from Tuesday till Saturday. We were happy about that because we were there like, five nights straight, and it's hard to really work there every day.
M: Were they touring bands or was it mostly local bands?
S: Mostly local bands, but...
PJ: A few that were getting the buzz, like um, who's the band from Seattle?
S: Voyager One.
PJ: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, Voyager One.
M: So now, what happened to end all that?
PJ: New Year's Eve was a tremendous... it was fun for a while but then it got out of control, and we learned a lesson from that.
The next party we had was from one of the people who was part of this high school crowd. They wanted to do a party there, just a party. Now, Stephan disagreed, he didn't want to do it, and I said okay, I understand that but I kinda wanted to do it. And I admit, it was going to be a good party. Obviously the money was good, it was also a good vibe. It was a very well run party. I have to say, the kids who ran it were genius. They were so organized. We learned our lesson, we got the right security, two of them. The typical problems of DIY, people out front causing problems, attracting attention, we did not have that.
The problem was there were two rival parties – this is so cliché – high school parties going on that night. The other one gets shut down, a bunch of kids came over. One of the – this is exactly what happened – one girl could not get in for whatever reason. Again, because it was a well-run party. She was a 15-year-old girl who maybe was wasted. The people said "No, you can't get in".
She ended up calling the police. Now, in any DIY, I don't care if there are 30-year-olds there or 15-year-olds there, when someone calls the police, as opposed to the police showing up and saying "Turn the music down" or whatever, if someone calls the police, then they come in with an army. That is exactly what happened. And once the cops saw that it was filled with 300 people, in a warehouse ... you know.
M: So did the booking idea occur to you immediately?
PJ: Well our name had a presence.
S: It happened gently. This [holds up a poster] was the first Vanishing Point Presents show...
M: All right, February 14th.
S: ...just because I had some great bills to book at Vanishing Point and I didn't want to cancel. I have friends at Public Assembly, Matchless, Cameo. I didn't want to cancel them because I would feel bad, because a lot the bands expect us to help.
It happened that I had two shows in April, two shows in May. Then I was like thinking ahead: why not continue booking like once in a while, like once in a month, just solid lineups, in different venues under "Vanishing Point Presents"?
PJ: Because everybody was constantly asking. You know, I got a call two weeks ago from two people who left a message which said "We want to do a show, is Vanishing Point available?" They hadn't even heard, and this was like six months later! So our name is out there. We talked about it and he's so good at booking, we said "let's keep the name alive". And it still is. People like it and respect it. I love that, it gives us a great feeling. So he continued doing that and it was a great way to extend it, you know, until something new is created.
As of December 2009, Vanishing Point Presents is taking a couple of months off, but they say they will be back.
