21 Grand: Right Behind God’s Gym

Dennis Somera, who performed at last month’s New Reading Series, is featured in this article by Claire Light on KQED arts blog. The article is about Neo-Benshi, something several of our ever-name-shifting reading series’ writers/poets have been involved in.

The real challenge, okay challenges, with updating people on what’s going on with 21 Grand is translating the bureaucratic issues (and there are multiple bureaucracies at play with different, yet some overlapping, issues) into simple statements. The other challenge is that things are still up in the air.
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We would like to call your attention to the fact that this Friday is our 8th Annual Benefit Art Sale. Works by over 70 artists generously donated to support our exhibition program, nothing priced higher than $200. The sale opens at 7pm, with selling commencing at 7:30pm. For those of you who may be curious about the works available, we offer you a small web preview of selected works:

Fred Nocella
Andrew Phares
Diane Wren
Ben Reisman
Jeanne Lydon
Eliot Daughtry
John Casey, represented by Swarm Gallery
Damon Smith - contents of “boîte”
Kerri Lee Johnson

It’s not quite a festival, but we’ve got a veritable plethora of great music scheduled for July to celebrate 21 Grand’s 8th Anniversary, beginning with Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista on July 2nd, and continuing through the month with Citay, legendary guitarist, Peter Walker, percussionist William Hooker, and others to be announced.

Here’s the link to an article about 21 Grand, by Larry Kelp, though it requires a fair amount of scrolling.

For your convenience, and ours, the text:
A 21 Grand Experiment
Oakland’s Pivotal Avant-Garde Art Space Hangs in There

The address may have changed, twice, and it may have recently run a gauntlet through the city’s use-permit bureaucracy, but the unique arts and performance space 21 Grand has kept its name and lofty goals intact, providing a room in Oakland for visual and musical artists to push the boundaries. (more…)

A few weeks back, the SF Bay Guardian featured a well-meaning blog post about us. The author laments not getting out to our shows as often as she’d like. While we are well aware what materials pave the road to hell, we would be dishonest not to admit that we, too, don’t get out as often as we’d like. Plus, we’ve spent a lot of time pondering the phrase “egalitarianism begets mediocrity,” and greatly appreciate that the author feels we are an exception to that common occurrence.

This post was also about the benefit we held a few weeks ago at ATA which was a great success. Thanks to everyone who performed, attended, and left a significant quantity of high-quality discounted Valentine’s Day candy for us to eat for the next week.

21 Grand has been granted special events permits for most of our previously scheduled January shows. The others have been rescheduled or relocated. The most current information is on our calendar, here. One of the conditions imposed is that attendance is limited to 49 people. We will be taking reservations for all events, if you want to be sure to get in. RESERVATIONS ARE NOT NECESSARY, HOWEVER.

We are also working to put together benefit shows at other venues, so that we can raise money to pay for the significant costs of what we will have to do building-wise to appease the City of Oakland’s Building Department, including installing a second bathroom and making everything ADA-compliant.

21 Grand resumes event programming with this weekend’s 8th Annual T-10 Video Festival, curated by Kriss DeJong and eliot daughtry of Killer Banshee. Different programs Saturday and Sunday nights, both starting at 8:30pm.

If you like, peruse the press coverage:

Rachel Swan’s article in the East Bay Express.

Reyhan Harmanci does us proud in the SF Chronicle.

This was an interview conducted by Josh Wilson of the Expo for the Artist and Musician from 2005 that was edited and published in The Expo’s newspaper.

Profile — 21 Grand

21 Grand came up in the thick of the Bay Area’s dot-com spree. It was a period of excess, but also lots of cultural ferment. Tell us about the original motive, impulse and cultural/social/political moment that gave rise to 21 Grand. Also good is any background on what it took in terms of fundraising, motivating resources, finding volunteers, etc.

21 Grand began with six people brought together by JD Schreiber, who had a storefront gallery on Telegraph Ave. to form a larger collective, arts space. We wanted to do something in Oakland at a time when San Francisco was still pretty much the only place to go, though a lot of artists and people in general were leaving SF for Oakland because of the dot com effect. It was April of 2000. The 21 Grand Ave. space came first before the collective. It was available and it was cheap - $700/month for approximately 900 sq ft of storefront and about 1500 sq. ft. upstairs as potential studio space.

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First, major thanks to everyone who has donated money (you know who you are) and those who have donated time and expertise meeting with us about our current situation (Lori Z., Jen and Nicole, Ian, et al.). Thanks to Moe! for organizing the Rock Lotto, Aaron and the Fishtank for hosting, and everyone who played and attended for doing so. Thanks to Kimberly Chun for writing a article about us in the SF Bay Guardian. Thanks to David Downs for blogging about us for the SF Weekly.

We’re currently in a temporary holding pattern with the building department and should soon find out when and if they will let us obtain special events permits for shows. We may be limited to a capacity of 49 people until certain conditions are met. We don’t know yet.

We’re also looking for places (ideally in Oakland) to have benefit shows in the early part of next year.