NYC

I Couldn’t Hear The Poets Amid The Unironic Fascism-fetishists At The Sports Bar

by K Hank Jost | Feb 1, 2024 1:52 pm

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Posted to: Poetry

The Writer’s Circle at Offside NYC
East Village
Manhattan
Jan. 31, 2024

Something’s happening in NYC right now. Whether it’s a blending of scenes that previously had very little to do with each other, or the last gasps of a living literary moment post-Covid. I cannot exactly diagnose it. I only know that things have gotten strange.

There’s been a slew of grander versions of what I witnessed last night. There was Madeleine Cash’s books release party, during which there were no readings. There was Car Crash Collective’s over booking the KGB Red Room with listed guests to the point that nearly no one from the street could get in. And then there was this thing last night — another over-crowded gathering of the uber-hip under the guise of independent art and culture.

At 30 years old, I’m already bordering on curmudgeon, so take all of this with that in mind. There’s no small risk that the following will read more like a description of a cool party that simply wasn’t my scene. That’s fine.

Last night, photographer Matthew Weinberger hosted a poetry reading in a sports bar. Offside, near Tompkins Square Park on Avenue A in the East Village, is the last place I’d ever expect any to host a reading of poetry by young up-and-coming literati.

My initial thought, though, given my own proclivities toward happenings and avant approaches, was that this stood to be quite clever. It’s the sort of thing the Situationists would have done.

But here the difference emerges. This was no invasion, no clandestine takeover of enemy territory. This, for the bar, must have simply amounted to a night of good, if not unusual, business. 

The list of readers: Max Isaacs, Katya, Peyton Gatewood, Dani Foster Meenhan, Nicholas Cordiero, Natalia Dmitrieva, Aine O’Leary, Calla Selicious, Grabrielle Narcisse, Valentina Ale, Finlay Mangan, Isabel Timmerman, Logan Taylor Brown, Bangs, Atom Vegas, Tully, Max Tulio, Montana, Cassidy, Roman D’Ambrosia, Death Recruiter, and Elliott Snyder. Enough readers to nearly get me to the minimum word count for one of these reviews. Each of these folks must’ve brought with them one guest, which — given the space Weinberger chose as venue — amounted to more than enough to fill the whole of the bar. Which is to say, further, that the reading itself was all but impossible to witness. 

This is the part of these sorts of articles where I would include a run-down of the performers. Here I would usually quote some pithy line uttered by a few of the readers, give a short analysis and estimation of a performer’s ethos and project. This is the place in these sorts of articles where the real benefit of my covering an event is most gleanable — where I can be most of service to the people who performed.

But, of course, I didn’t really see any of it. I hung around for an hour and a half, two hours, and saw nearly nothing of the performance.

Perhaps this is part of it, though. Perhaps this is one of those ​“art things.” Perhaps it’s beyond me. Most of the conversations I overheard were about what folks were watching or wearing. Television and fashion, fashion most of all. A gaggle of the rich and hip, talking merely about their habits of consumption.

I’m not gonna play old man here. But this eliding of the difference between types of events leaves me confused, somehow like I’ve been huckstered and pranked. I don’t know what it serves for the literary community, or if there is one even to serve anymore.

Until recently, there were places, for a while, where a large reading could be put together — where the party and presentation could be fused into a night engaging to all. Most recently there was Beckett’s. When I first arrived in NYC, there was The Glove.

Now there’s this and the increasingly unironic fascism-fetishists over at Sovereign House … Something is happening and I don’t understand it at all. 

Though, at the end of the day, perhaps — to paraphrase Gertrude Stein — a party is a party is a party.