![]() ![]() The closure of Greenwich Village’s jazz clubs, in particular, would be a major cultural loss for New York City. “While the PPP program was well-meaning and helped a lot of industries, it will not save ours.” Photograph: Shutterstock “There is just no way, no amount of business acumen, creativity or determination to allow us to last forever with the rents we get charged with no revenue and no meaningful help,” she added. This time, however, it’s a situation akin to eminent domain, where the “government has taken our business but they’re leaving us hanging up to dry,” she said. If they invest in us now, we can be part of the economic renewal that happens when the country reopens again.”įix Schaefer, who owns three music venues in D.C., said that she has seen mom-and-pop businesses make it through all kinds of difficult situations but have found a way to keep afloat and recalibrate. “We have zero income, enormous overhead and no vision of when we can reopen. “Our businesses were the very first to close and will be the very last to reopen-if we’re lucky enough to exist through it,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, the spokesperson for NIVA. (Specifically, it supports the RESTART Act, the Save Our Stages Act, and the Entertainment New Credit Opportunity for Relief & Economic Sustainability Act.) Through, two million emails have been sent to legislators asking for federal assistance. NIVA, which was formed by venue owners and musicians during the pandemic shutdown, is pushing the federal government to provide long-term assistance to shuttered venues, relief through tax credits, and a continuation of unemployment insurance benefits. More than New York City 70 venues have joined NIVA, including jazz venues like The Village Vanguard, Joe’s Pub, Birdland, Blue Note, Cafe Wha?, Arthur’s Tavern and other Village clubs like Groove, City Winery, Terra Blues and The Bitter End. And of NIVA’s 2,800 members (independent venues across the nation) including The Village Vanguard, 90 percent of them say they’ll be forced to close permanently in a few months without federal funding. It’s a whole different world.” Photograph: Courtesy Creative Commons/Flickr/inazakiraĪccording to the National Independent Venue Association, Pollstar is estimating a $9 billion loss in ticket sales alone, not counting food and beverage revenue, if these spaces remain shuttered through 2020. We’re finding that it’s very hard to find your audience, to keep your audience, and to grow your audience. ![]() I think there was a misapprehension that we’d open the flood gates and people would just come, but nothing could be further from the truth. “It’s a crowded ’s a bumpy stream and way more difficult than we ever imagined it would be. “We took a deep breath and realized is not like our leader said-it’s not going to disappear-so we talked about a pivot: going from being a club where people come in to what now looks like a studio,” Gordon said. In order to stream sets live and charge $10 per ticket, the club had to invest in major video and sound equipment. It was a necessary adaptation that hasn’t given the space the return it was hoping for. The Village Vanguard has had to pivot to streaming performances online to keep some sort of revenue stream and stay connected to its community. It’s cold comfort to be able to say we’re all in the same boat.” “I couldn’t deal with the idea of closing for a month, let alone where we are, let alone there is no foreseeable end to this,” Gordon tells us. For now, they’re all surviving on donations and small ticket sales for live-streamed performances, but if things remain this way, closure could be imminent. Deborah Gordon and her fellow music venue owners are waiting for the government to greenlight reopenings, or at the very least provide some financial assistance. The beloved club, like other music venues in New York City, has been sitting empty since mid-March with no end in sight. Known for its intimate atmosphere, the venue lets musicians and audience members jive together, with just 123 seats in the entire space. Since then, it’s become a fundamental piece of the Greenwich Village jazz scene under the management of Gordon’s wife Lorraine and daughter, Deborah. Her father, Max Gordon, opened the small club in 1935 for poets and artists, but it became a major jazz hotspot by the 1950s, eventually welcoming musicians like Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk to its stage. The Village Vanguard has seen and survived it all-wars, floods, fires, economic downturns, and the fallout from the September 11 attacks-but the current forced closure of music venues might just be the thing that breaks the camel’s back, according to owner Deborah Gordon.
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