On April 13th, 2007 Tonic was forced to close after more than 9 years as a home for avant-garde, creative, and experimental music in dowtown NYC. I have seen some of the greatest concerts of my life at Tonic.

From Tonic’s website:

We simply can no longer afford the rent and all of the other costs associated with doing business on the Lower East Side.

The neighborhood around us has been increasingly consumed by “luxury condominiums”, boutique hotels and glass towers, all making the value of our salvaged space worth more then our business could ever realistically support. We have also been repeatedly harassed by the city’s Quality of Life Task Force which resulted in the debilitating closing of the ))sub((tonic lounge in January. Coincidentally, this campaign began as our immediate neighbor, the Blue Condominium building - a symbol of the new Lower East Side - prepared to open its doors.

As Gothamist reports, there was a press conference on the steps of City Hall yesterday “in response to the eviction and closing of Tonic, the downtown venue that shut its doors after nine years. A committee of musicians, cultural activists, and supporters made a call for public and political intervention to protect new music/indie/avant/jazz in New York City and to ask the city to provide a minimum 200 capacity, centrally located venue for experimental music.” From the press release, the coalition is asking:

1. that the city council adopt a general principle similar to European cultural policy: that NYC’s new music and experimental jazz/indie musical culture is a unique asset, an essential part of the city’s history, economy, and identity, and not to be left entirely at the mercy of market forces.

2. that the city recognize the damage done to its cultural heritage and status as a ‘cultural capitol’ by the displacement of venues central to experimental musics, and act now to protect those venues still left from displacement either by providing funding sufficient to allow them to withstand the explosion of commercial rents, or by legislation forcing landlords to restrict rents of culturally valuable venues, or both.

3. that New York City intervene to preserve 107 Norfolk Street as an experimental music venue, or make available a comparably sized and centrally located space for that purpose.

Sign the petition here.