Helmut Kohli’s Lit:NY takes shape in the courtyard while Castle Braid residents hit the gym. — Photo by Paul Cox
When Castle Braid opened last September on the site of a former ribbon factory on Troutman Street, the residential complex for creatives provoked Bushwick’s cynical side. Could an artistic community be manufactured and packaged in luxury accomodations, or was it more likely that luxury condos were being dressed in the trappings of the Brooklyn art scene?
Half a year later, after converting the 144 units from doomed condos to attractive rentals with a little help from the State, the building is just a few tenants away from full capacity. In the eyes of its target market, at least, the case has been made. Now that they have sold Castle Braid to renters, the team are turning to the thornier task of selling it to the rest of Bushwick. Their tool of outreach is the Artillery, a program of classes, events and workshops sharing a little bit of the alt-art-school ambition of 3rd Ward. These will be complementary perks for residents but also open to the public, if at a small ticket price.
The first draft of the Artillery was a one-off art festival in September, when Williamsburg and Bushwick artists were invited to deck out empty units with their work. Now the festival is back to stay, launching as an ongoing program last Saturday. The Castle’s creative and marketing teams went all out with a full afternoon and evening of free events to bring in the outside world.
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To a first time visitor – of which there were many – the Castle presented a conflicted identity, walking a difficult line between warehouse-dwelling Bushwick art collective and the sort of all-inclusive lifestyle community more familiar to the state of Florida. The one side was cultivated not only through sheer attitude but also through the idiom of colorful freehand scrawlings on walls and windows, the basic gesture of irreverence employed in communal lofts and squats the world over. This did jump out amid condo-standard slate walls and designer furniture, but the idiom’s anarchic power has perhaps worn thin with its repetition everywhere from dorm rooms to Trader Joe’s. These funky touches did little to hide the necessary functions and excesses of the complex as a luxury apartment building – the exercise room and bocce court and conspicuously large dogs on the leash – which reminded outsiders that this was home to some of the most expensive rentals in Bushwick, and always begged the fundamental question: do artists really live here?
By way of evidence Saturday’s agenda presented some creations of residents and friends, dipping into film, fashion, music, comedy, and installation. The pair of film screenings played on the the building and its inhabitants and conveyed a certain clubbishness, albeit a self-aware one. A series of (non-resident) comedians who dropped in gave it a good try, somehow all settling on pot-smoking jokes as the proper material, but failed to rise above expectations (with the exception of harp-strumming David Cope, who took an awkward room and wrapped it around his little finger).
The real showpiece of the evening was an illuminated installation in the courtyard by Castle resident Helmut Kohli, making use of candles, flares and ice. The artist explained Lit:NY as a nod to Bushwick’s fiery past and herald of its renaissance, but it more immediately served as a sort of ribbon cutting, with Creative Director Leia Doran lighting the first flare. As the crowd grew – tenants and neighbors in uncertain ratios – a pair of fashion shows crossed the lobby, representing LES hip-hop boutique Coat of Arms and designer Anjia Jalac.
At the bottom of the agenda came a Purim dance party staged in one of the remaining vacant duplex units. This was decked out authentically enough to take everyone back to their awkward Jewish adolescence, real or imagined. In the one truly inspired move of the night, Castle Braid developer Mayer Schwartz invited along his rabbi to perform the traditional reading of the Book of Esther backed by beats from the DJ.
By this stage the crowd was a truly mixed bag: tenants, friends from Manhattan, friends of the DJ, walk-ins off the street, and in general anyone looking for a free bash on a Saturday night. Evidently, if there’s one thing that will win over the neighbors in Bushwick, it’s a new place to party. In this at least Castle Braid should be able to provide a service to the community, and faced with an open door, a dance floor, and enough booze to go around, cynicism can be put on hold.
plantgeeknyc March 2nd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
For all of you wondering….YES REAL ARTISTS LIVE IN CASTLEBRAID. I know it seems like a strange mismatch, stylistically, but neighbors here in the building know each other, collaborate on projects, and have fun. The fire exhibit in the courtyard was so beautiful! I hope you saw it!
rico March 3rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
BUSHWICK WILL BECOME JUST LIKE WILLYB FOR “SELL OUT” YUPPIES . IS SAD CAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE ARE PEOPLE WITH BALLZZZ WHO WANT TO GET AWAY FROM THE COMMERCIALLIZUMMMMMMM KISSASSS WANABEEEE
Professional Alternative March 3rd, 2010 at 11:58 am
This is a parody comment, right? The parodied subject being some kind of illiterate neanderthal who can’t form coherent thoughts. Yes?
Professional Alternative March 3rd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Anyway, Castle Braid is not very attractive, but as new construction goes it’s the best around. It’s expensive, but the apartments are nice. It probably has artists that live in it, but I’m sure they have real jobs. A lot to dislike, a lot to like, so mostly, I don’t care. It’s neither a grand cultural headquarters bringing salvation to a benighted neighborhood nor some gentrification boogeyman alien spaceship sent by Wall Street to crush authenticity and nonwhites.
It’s just a damn apartment building. People live in it. The end.
Mark March 4th, 2010 at 5:23 am
While I would still not give a final verdict on this place, it seems mighty strange(at this point) to catagorize it as ‘just a damn apt building’.
Let’s stop being so objectively subjective. Can’t we see something good when it hit us in the head?
Just a damn apt building huh, with residents collaborating in so many different creative projects like; making art auctions to benefit Haiti, performing classical music and jazz concerts, producing many short movies on a monthly basis, arranging comedy shows every Thursday evening, teaching classes in woodworking, graphic design, web design, doing fashion shows periodically, etc. etc.
Sure I’d like to see if this all will continue once the building is all rented out. But please let’s give credit where it’s due. This is NOT just a damn apt building by any stretch. It does come awfuly close to being a creative community if ever there was one.
At the same time I’d also take issue with your ‘not a gentrification boogeyman…’. How so? Isn’t it a very large scale gentrification catalyst? How does this not affect the neighborhood prices?
We can argue about the rights of ‘white people’ to live and make themselves comfortable in less expensive neighborhoods. We can argue about the value of having a cultural and economic mix. But we cannot debate if this project is a gentrification machine. Or, aren’t we doing that right now, hmm.
Professional Alternative March 4th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Okay, it’s just a large apartment building. It’s inevitable that more than just living would go on here, and I’m sure many significant collaborations are happening among the neighbors there. Fine, given. But so much more goes on all over the neighborhood, in secret, in plain view, and everywhere in between — it just doesn’t have a flash banner proclaiming so on the local website.
As for gentrification, I find it confusing when people see something like this, which is the result of certain economywide influences, as itself the catalyst of change. Gentrification/ upscaling happens for reasons other than some developer decides to build a fancy apartment building. It’s the other way around — his decision to do so is based on the trends he perceives. It’s larger than just this or that property.
As for your prices comment, there are many ways of looking at it. High-density upscale development like this may be keeping the pressure off Bushwick’s tenements. Otherwise landlords would be in an even bigger frenzy to toss out their low-paying tenants and gut renovate their properties as luxury abodes. Real estate pricing isn’t based on comparables, no matter what realtors say. It’s based on what people will pay. Just because there’s a $2500 2-bedroom on one side of Troutman doesn’t mean the 2-bed shack railroad across the street is worth more. So — and this is a theory — this affects neighborhood prices by keeping them LOWER than they might be. In that vein, my only problem is that it’s not denser. And that its street wall is fugly. Why no townhouses or storefronts on the street? Lame.
Mark March 5th, 2010 at 12:45 am
Inevitable my foot.
Are you not familiar with a typical large apt building where no one knows anyone?
When is the last time you went to a classical music concert done by residents collaborating? Or to an art auction to benefit a worthy cause (Haiti)?
Do all “large apartment buildings really have classes where residents teach each other their creative proffesional skills, running the gamut from music lessons to figure drawing to final cut pro.
Or do you happen to know that there’s an inter-building library where all residents can loan books to or from each other and comment on their own private social network.
All this and much more, in a building that opened just about 4 months ago.
Let’s put our money where our mouth is. How about this, if you do find a building comparable to this I’m ready to sponser a “flash banner proclaiming such on their local website”. But if you don’t find any such building, you will sponser CB’s ‘flash banner’ on this local website?
Maybe it may be worth your while to click on that overhead flash banner and check out what it’s all about? Go ahead and be bothered by the facts before you mete out judgement.
While it is self evident that one building does not gentrificaton make, it is surely true that a building like this plays a big role in the process.
Your theory is just that. Wouldn’t you pay more money to live on a block that has a few hundred genteel people living there? Wouldn’t you agree that if 5 such buildings go up then it changes the tone of the neighborhood and it will become a much more desired, hence expensive, place to live? isn’t that how gentrification happens the world over?
Professional Alternative March 5th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Okay, I relent a bit, because this particular building has conscious, caring management that actively encourages and subsidizes these activities and facilities. But the kind of person that would move in there is the type to respond favorably, thus my “bit.” I don’t think the same efforts by management in a building in the UES would have the same result.
What you and I are saying about gentrification is not mutually exclusive. Yes, concentrating upscale development on one street will likely make the other properties more valuable. But it’s not in a vacuum. You seem to be describing upscale development as a perpetual motion machine, where I am seeing it as part of a larger process. If development such as this were a self-fulfilling prophecy, why not just build fancy towers in Brownville or East New York and fill it with the “genteel”?
For the record, I would not want to live on that block of Troutman no matter who my neighbors were because I hate the scale, orientation, and architecture of the buildings going up there. But then I’m more aesthetically sensitive than most.
sjp March 6th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Mark,
There are at least 3 fairly large-scale collaborative lofts in Bushwick (and god knows how many small ones there are). While everything that is going on at Castle Braid is great, you have to admit that it’s a bit…contrived. Contrived in the sense that you all didn’t get together one day and say, “hey, we should all start an artist’s collective today and build it with our own blood/sweat/tears.” Some developers just handed you some video cameras and a shared space where you guys can play around and have fun. There’s no commitment there. It’s nice, but nothing worth getting high and mighty as if this is something you conceived of and executed yourself.
Like Paul said, this is reminiscent of a Florida lifestyle development. Instead of the pool and the bridge club and the karaoke night, we now have a whole new generation’s worth of culture to co-opt and sell! Gallery openings! Live music! A “graffiti wall!” How safely SUBVERSIVE.
MIke Steyels March 7th, 2010 at 5:35 am
http://bk.ly/bGL
“866 Eastern Parkway, a mixed use building with 57 condo units in a Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 35 residents have created profiles [on a private social] network. They have publicly used the site to try and organize halloween parties, set up an art class…”
Mark March 7th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Miss Parker,
Please help me find those ’3 fairly large collaborative lofts’.
Please realize that having a few resident parties over the course of a few years doesn’t cut it for me.
Having a classical music concert, Jazz concert, art auctions and openings, major art installations like the drivway gate (check it out) or the courtyard candles and torch installations, in-building library, all kinds of classes by neighbors for neighbors, comedy once a week, own private social network, all in the course of four months, Now your talking.
Nobody is high and mighty here. I was just asking Professional (Paul?) to see it for what it is. Not ‘just a damn apt building where people live’.
Why should it matter who put it in motion? How far into the psyche of the Guggenheim Museum founders will you delve before you will agree that it is a place of art and creativity, and that the exhibitions are not CONTRIVED?
I fully agree that we have to give this more time to see if this continues along in the direction it has taken. It is a point I made in my very first response here. But we shouldn’t be so concerned with the PURITY of intentions, especially if we don’t know what the intentions are.
“A Graffiti Wall” “safely subversive”, hmm, how big of a wall are you thinking? 25 linear feet? Fifty maybe? Well my guesstimate is that it’s closer to 1,000 linear feet. Graffiti artists are constantly changing and adding different pieces. Sorry I just don’t think this is something to be sneezed at. Waking up every morning to many amazing graffiti pieces, rotating periodically, is something to be excited about, it surely excites me.
Then again, if you really require SUBVERSIVE, how about you tell us here where your car/truck is located and some graffiti artists will be glad to oblige. Or you’d rather have them subversive on ‘other’ people’s property? (NIMBY, huh?)
Now let me reiterate, my final verdict on this development still has a long way coming. It will depend on the Developers/Management continuing to foster these things until the people living here will make it their own. But “a typical large apt building”, this is not.