Published
Fri, Sep 3, 2021, 18:26
- Unprecedented rainfall left some dance music spaces without power, others with flooded basements.
On Wednesday night, historic levels of rain caused varying degrees of damage to several key electronic music establishments across New York City.
Within just a few hours, Hurricane Ida's remnants battered areas of Brooklyn and Queens with an unprecedented 3.15 inches of rain per hour that quickly progressed into waist-level floodwaters. On Wednesday evening, New York issued its first ever Flash Flood Emergency, an emergency in which heavy rainfall poses a "severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage," but for some dance music venues and record shops, it was already too late.
In a recent Instagram post, Barbie Bertisch, DJ and manager of Greenpoint record shop Captured Tracks, writes that they "were halfway to lake status in Greenpoint by then." The shop suffered four inches of flooding, and was forced to shutter for the day while they vacuumed out water and attempted to salvage some records. "Extreme weather is only gonna get worse and I wonder what it'll take for lawmakers to take serious steps towards mitigating the harm we're causing." the post continues. "How many more have to lose everything in order for them to pay attention?"
After a six-year run at 100 White St, Tom Noble's Bushwick Superior Elevation record shop, has closed indefinitely due to flooding. "Bushwick shop is officially RIP," an Instagram post from the shop reads. "Thank you to all who came through. Stay tuned for next location."
On Wednesday night, Bushwick venue Bossa Nova Civic Club was hosting a techno event featuring DJs Boo Lean, Ma Sha, Kandylion and Honey B, when they started posting videos of fast-moving water developing into streams along Myrtle avenue. One video showed a group of dedicated attendees exiting an Uber and subsequently leaping over surging floodwater to enter the club. "Our entire basement was flooded about a foot deep," John Barclay tells me about the resulting damage in an email. "It took four guys a day to clean up the aftermath but we luckily survived with minimal damage."
East Williamsburg club Jupiter Disco closed on Thursday night, as they dealt with flooding and a power outage on their block. They're finally reopening tonight with a bi-monthly party called Newtype Rhythms, where Gooddroid, Doctor Jeep, Sheepshead and Kellen303 will play. Other venues, like Elsewhere and Nowadays were fortunate enough to not be terribly affected.