When we posted about the impending closing of Goodbye Blue Monday last week, we remarked that some crowdfunding might be in order to help save the beloved Bushwick bar. As it turns out, GBM manager Sunday Wright had the same idea, and has already raised $3,750 through a GoFundMe campaign at the time of this writing.
“We decided to start the campaign because we love Mondays, we love our jobs, and we love all the people that depend on Mondays,” Wright told ANIMAL. “There aren’t a whole lot of places like it left.”
The anything-goes bar/restaurant/venue/junk store owes the city $7,000 in fines by the end of the month, and faces an expiring lease and higher rent shortly after that. “It’s been a struggle to maintain a freeform booking venue since day one and i’m grateful that they took it to this point. I love the support it’s gathered and i’m confident they’ll do OK,” Goodbye Blue Monday founder and former owner Steve Trimboli said via email.
Those interested in donating can do so here.
This weekend will see a pair of benefit shows to help with the fundraising effort, with Goodbye Blue Monday breaking its no-cover-charge policy and asking for $5 at the door. Friday’s show features Space Meow, Buffie Roseanne, Abby Rock, Gold, Kung Fu Crimewave, and others, and Saturday night, the bar is hosting a rave.
Trimboli is vying for help from an unlikely source: Vampire Weekend, who played one of their earliest shows at the bar. “We’re hoping for them to at least acknowledge that in the press to help them fund their campaign,” he said.
In an interview with The Independent, the members of the band remember Goodbye Blue Monday as “a junk shop in Bushwick,” that’s “a hike for most people to get to,” and detail how a show there set off the chain reaction of buzz that ultimately led to a deal with XL Recordings for their self-titled debut album.
Now, Trimboli looks back at GBM’s nearly ten-year run with an air of inevitability, citing a neighborhood that’s becoming, in his words, a “hedge funds’ playground.”
“It’s nothing less than what you can expect in Brooklyn now, especially in the attainment of ‘cool,'” he wrote. “And it’s not everybody, but it’s enough buzzkills that bring more buzzkills, until that’s all that’s left.”
(Photo: @mercurialn)
