21 Grand: Right Behind God’s Gym

Okay here’s the latest, preceded by a short synopsis of how this came to pass:

Saturday night (a week ago) we got visited by the Alcholic Beverage Action Team of the Oakland Police Dept. They have a history of shutting down venues. I think that is one of their main duties. They weren’t even there to visit us. They were looking into the restaurant/bar next door, and we just happened to be next door and having a show, and they entered the building while the bands were finishing loading out. They saw empty beer bottles and our donation jar and cooler.

It took until Tuesday to figure out how serious it was. We’ve had cops come by before, but none have threatened to shut us down before. This dude was doing that, and bandying about the phrase “public nuisance.” So we’re seriously trying to get legal with the city and not get busted.

Right now the situation is:

No alcohol at 21 Grand. No live music shows at 21 Grand. I got the Fire inspector to agree to let us have shows Thursday, Saturday, and Tuesday. He would only allow 49 people. But then no shows. Not until we get a building inspection and a zoning clearance (which involves getting a conditional use permit that costs $1917 – we’ve raised enough money to pay for that).

That is the decree of the Fire Inspector. OPD that issues special events permits are cool with us (so far) and the City Administrator that issues cabaret permits is cool with us. They’re willing to give us regular special events permits for shows as long as we diligently work to get our cabaret permit. We actually would only need to make a few minor corrections to meet fire code for a special event permit for 100 people, but because we’ve done the building out that we’ve done without permits – the Fire Inspector doesn’t want to sign off on something that’s someone else’s department – so now it’s 21 Grand vs. the Building department.

We’re hoping to get some one in the building department to come down and say, this place might not be up to code for a cabaret permit, but it’s okay for a special event. We don’t know if we can do this. We don’t know how soon. I think the guy that can do this is on vacation, and the other guy doesn’t even know where the guy on vacation keeps the informational forms about it or if they’re out of forms.

Basically, every show after Tuesday for the month of December is being cancelled or moved to another venue. I might have to do this for January. I should know more next week.

Even if we get the temporary stay, and can resume doing shows with special events permits, we will eventually need to get the place legal for a cabaret permit, and that might majorly suck in terms of time and expense and possible modifications. We don’t know.

We want to present shows other places while we can’t do them at 21 Grand, and are willing to staff, bring our equipment, clean up, and do the patented 21 Grand cat-herding and door-admission diligence. We are up for trying to get special events permits through using our non-profit status at other places. We also want to, uh, organize benefit shows for ourselves to help us raise the money to pay for all this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any further questions?

sl

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21 Grand’s 9th Annual Art Sale is this Friday, May 1st, from 7 to 10pm. There will be a preview reception on Thursday, April 30th, from 6 to 9pm. Here is a small sample of the more than 100 works for sale – all at affordable prices. We accept cash, checks and credit cards. The sale continues during the afternoons of Saturday and Sunday, May 2nd and 3rd, from 2-6pm.

John Casey

Anonymous

Jacqueline Gordon

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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