Initial Impressions on a Space in Transition

Standing outside of the Silent Barn is an experience in itself. Nine stops deep into Brooklyn on the L line gets you across the street from a scrap yard, complete with a junked car spray-painted red, white and blue on top of an elevated trailer. You stand in front of a broken-knobbed door attached to graffit tagged, unidentified building. The only sign for the Silent barn is “(…)” followed by a tiny drawing of a barn, written in black sharpie ink.

The lack of visual stimulus endes immediately once you enter the space. A whirling juxtaposition of colors, shapes and words is splashed across the walls; it appears as if the decorator was a demented circus clown tripping on LSD. And that’s a good thing.

When there’s a show going on, the Barn is stuffed with Brooklyn’s chaotic cross-sampling of hipsters. The crowd includes tranvestites in their 50’s, but once the music starts playing, everyone starts thrashing like they’re sixteen again. An hour before the show, the place is only just starting to buzz. Todd P and the roommates are building a stage in the middle of the kitchen, caually taking drags off cigarettes and sips off bottles of Budweiser. Various audio cables are being plugged into their respective outlets, and the happy melancholy of an indie rock band is permeating from speakers positioned throughout the living room.

Walking around the Silent Barn, you get the sense that you are in such a fragile, temporary space. It can’t last, it won’t last – eventually the place will go down, be shut down, or worse, turned into a Starbucks like Williamsburg and further west.

No time is this fragile component of the Barn more noticable than when the place is in transition from apartment to underground party space. Bedroom doors are not yet padlocked, and people are relaxing on couches, that at least in this light, still look comfortable and clean, before a dancing hipster spills his beer (or maybe his vomit) all over them.

It’s nice to have this twilight time as a frame of reference, and it punctuates what the term DIY means in Brooklyn; five roommates turning their couch and arcade game filled living room into a self-styled venue featuring acts touring the likes of the Knitting Factory, Bowery Ballroom and other New York City music landmarks.

On Saturday, Pterodactyl, Numbers, Team Robespierre, Bears and Brown Recluse Sings will be playing. Doors open at 8:00 PM, and more posts to come after the show.