brendan halpin

When I was a lad, I used to go to punk rock shows at the Jockey Club in Newport, Kentucky. At the time, Newport was an economically depressed, run-down, menacing place. There were dying strip clubs there, and dive bars, and a White Castle that was the second-scariest fast food place I ever set foot in. (The first was the McDonald’s at 40th and Walnut in Philadelphia, where serial killer Gary Heidnick used to find victims and where at least one customer was stabbed by an employee when I lived in the neighborhood).

The Jockey Club was a dive bar where someone had convinced the crochety old owner (known only as “Shorty”) to let them book punk rock shows. It was not a nice place. But it was fun and weirdly wholesome. There was sometimes overly enthusiastic moshing (which we called “slam dancing.” This term inspired the title of Wayne Wang’s underrated 80’s film noir Slam Dance, starring Tom Hulce!), but otherwise it was just a bunch of kids hanging around enjoying the music and thinking they were sophisticated as they sipped from bottles of Guinness or oil cans of Foster’s Lager.

The venue made a little money because people would pay to see this kind of music that couldn’t get booked at any other clubs. And people started and joined bands because they knew they’d have a place to play. That’s how you get a scene of independent artists doing their thing without corporate attention or interference.

This isn’t a lighting in a bottle phenomenon. It just requires cheap rents. The recent documentary Secret Mall Apartment shows how a similar art/performance scene grew up in disused warehouses in Providence. And then got displaced by development, which is what’s happened in so many cities.

Cheap rents are in extremely short supply in most major cities in the USA, and art and culture have suffered as a result.

But last night, I went to a pro wrestling show in Elmwood Place, a small municipality northwest of Downtown Cincinnati and got some hope. I pulled up in front of an empty storefront church. You could see the pews through the windows, and the owner had put up a big sign that said, “FOR RENT: RETAIL ONLY.” I passed two more empty storefronts on my way to the venue, which was an unmarked storefront.

I paid ten bucks cash at the door and walked into the venue. Grimy wall-to-wall carpeting covered the floor. The walls were stained enameled cinderblock. There was a tin ceiling that was rusted in spots and had paint peeling pretty much all over. And in the center of the space, a wrestling ring. Oh yeah, and like most indoor athletic facilities, especially carpeted ones, this place had a certain funk in the air—it smelled like feet and shaving cream.

I pulled up a chair in the front row next to a couple of kids who had brought signs. “This,” I thought, “is where the real shit happens.”

And it was! I enjoyed a really fun wrestling show with about 30 other fans, and I couldn’t help thinking of the Jockey Club. Not only because of my physical surroundings, although also that, but because I was watching art that people were making for love.

The gate from this event was probably 300 bucks. They might have cleared a little more than that from concessions, merch, and the 50/50 raffle. Nobody was here trying to make it big—they were just making art for people who loved it.

Now don’t get me wrong—I do believe artists should get paid. But, and I speak from experience as someone who was a professional writer, as soon as money enters the picture, it demands changes and compromises, and while you can still make great art under those circumstances, the lack of money allows you to be weird as hell, to say, yeah, I’m making this thing, and you can like it or not, but it is EXACTLY what I want it to be. It is what I want to put into the world.

Now look—maybe indie wrestling isn’t your thing. (though, if it is, head on over to kayfabe.ink and sign up for my newsletter. I’ll be writing up this very show in the next couple of days!) But somewhere near you (and, admittedly, if you live in a major city, it’s probably not in your city), people are making cool, weird, authentic art on a block where you can’t get a good cup of coffee. It’s not corporate, it’s not capitalist, and most importantly at this point, it’s not fascist, because of course fascism is all about conformity and cruelty.

Find the weirdos and go dig their art. Or, better yet, be one of those weirdos. Go start your own band! Put on a play! Paint something and hang it on the wall! Art makes us human and makes life bearable and meaningful. Go make some!