Faced by stratospheric rents and a daunting failure rate, a duo of nightlife legends started Mister Saturday Night— the dance club/nightclub equivalent of the pop-up store
by Alice Forstead
According to real estate information aggregator Triple Mint, rents in Dumbo, both residential and commercial, experienced a stunning 18% growth in 2014 (Last year’s figures are not available at time of press). That same year witnessed a 13% price hike in the Downtown area, with roughly equivalent increases in Williamsburg, Green point, Park Slope, and other near-Manhattan areas. It’s not at all uncommon for corner lot commercial rents of just 1,000 square feet to top $20,000 in the hottest areas. And as any entrepreneur who has prospected space over the last decade will attest, this isn’t a recent phenomenon, either; CPEX Real Estate Services recently reported that no fewer than nine retail corridors in northern Brooklyn have experienced a doubling of average rents over just the last five years. These rapidly increasing business expenses are, of course, a significant contributor to the 80% restaurant/bar failure rate in the first five years of operation.
Now members of the New York City nightclub legends pantheon, Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter neatly sidestepped the daunting issue of signing long-term leases for club space in 2008 by inventing the dance club/nightclub equivalent of the pop-up store—an ever-in-motion model in which events were hosted throughout the city. They called the novel concept
Mister Saturday Night.
“We decided that we were going to do everything from front to back ourselves and we were going to go out there and create the type of party, the type of experience, the type of community we had in our heads,” Harkin Explained to the Irish Times (a longtime DJ and nightclub impresario, he is from Derry in Northern Ireland). With an eye to advancing the borough’s long-frustratingly slim dance scene, the two took on considerable responsibilities in the new business, from DJing to stocking bars to hiring security…from exploring loft spaces to marketing and promotion. The overall concept, happily, was a hit from the beginning, and Mister Saturday night has in its now eight-year run hosted some of the most famous parties in the Northeast, and has also hybridized its concept to take over what Carter and Harkin hope will be a permanent space: Nowadays in Ridgewood Queens, just over the border from Bush wick. Closed until spring, Nowadays was intended to be the home for another years-old expansion of the brand, Mister Sunday, a typically daytime party which until this year was also held in various locations throughout the borough and city, most famously in a grassy lot off Carroll Street adjoining the Gowanus Canal. The DJ duo’s brand brainchild also found accommodations for a time at Industry City near the waterfront (though not for this year).
New York producer/performer Anthony Naples’s six-hour set for the Mister Saturday Night Show on November 21 at The Silent Barn in Bushwick was telling in many respects. Sold out weeks before the event, it was also an opportunity for Harkin and Carter to highlight the recent amplification of their roving party concept—its expansion into a record label. The two released Naples’s early EP, Mad Disrespect, back in 2012, along with another 12-inch the following year. The eponymous label has since grown to encompass dance-ready writers and performers like General Ladd, Nebraska, and Archie Pelago, all of whom had releases last year.
Mister Saturday Night’s next show, scheduled for February 21, will be held at Shea Stadium BK on Meadow Street in East Williamsburg… a recording studio/all-ages space dedicated to live performances.
“It’s actually an intimate edition of Mister Sunday,” offered the MSN blog. “We’re going to set up a big-old sound system and have Eamon and Justin just air out their bags of wax for the afternoon and evening.”
Mister Saturday Night / Mister Sunday
mistersaturdaynight.com