Market Hotel Brooklyn Bushwick Reopening

Longtime Brooklyn music promoter Todd Patrick (aka Todd P) is getting ready to reopen Bushwick’s Market Hotel, a once-DIY venue at 1140 Myrtle Avenue that was shuttered in 2010 for serving alcohol without a license.

Before its closure, the all-ages-welcome space was known as a hub for the Brooklyn DIY music community, frequently home to indie rock and punk shows by local and nationally touring acts.

It’s unclear whether the venue has already started booking a full calendar of shows, but it will be packed (at least) to capacity tonight as it hosts the beloved Pacific Northwest rock band Sleater-Kinney at the most intimate of the group’s five New York shows this week.

It’s been a long road to the venue’s resurgence. In 2011 Patrick received an anonymous $100,000 grant to renovate the space and get it up to code, but it wasn’t until 2013 that renovations officially began, according to Brooklyn Vegan.

In the last couple of weeks, renovation photos have been appearing on Market Hotel’s Twitter feed, including flipping on the building’s new electrical service, installing new doors on Broadway and Myrtle Avenue, and repurposing marble from its old bathroom walls as the surface of the venue’s new bar.

Since its initial closure, Market Hotel has hosted a couple of private shows, and the building has been home to artists-in-residence, though that presumably ended when renovations commenced. Patrick could not be reached for comment.

Another nearby and once-illegal DIY venue, Silent Barn, had an experience similar to Market Hotel’s. Its original location, in Ridgewood, was shut down by the city in 2011.

But the group behind it found a new location and in 2013 reopened at 603 Bushwick Avenue in Bushwick, a properly zoned and up-to-code space that’s used for performances as well as housing for several artists in residence. (Unfortunately, Silent Barn faced a setback earlier this fall, when a fire started in the upstairs apartments, but it’s now back up and running.)

Market Hotel Brooklyn Reopening Todd P
Todd P. Photo via Wikipedia

Also in the years since Market Hotel’s closure, several other indie venues in Williamsburg have shuttered — Death by Audio, 285 Kent and Glasslands among them — and many, like Shea Stadium, Palisades and Alphaville, have popped up in Bushwick. Patrick has been involved in many of them, in some capacity.

A celebrity in the underground Brooklyn music scene, Patrick is a prolific independent concert promoter known for all-ages shows in unusual venues. He also started music publication Showpaper, opened art gallery Otras Obras in Tijuana, and appeared in the 2009 music documentary Todd P Goes to Austin.

[Photos via Market Hotel]

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