About 10 years ago I stopped going to shows

I had been living in Brooklyn since 2002, and the local music scene in NYC was firing on all cylinders throughout those years. I took full advantage of it—it was a great time and place for any music fan to spend their 20s. The neighborhood, Williamsburg, was the hub of all this, with a million great bands and a ton of venues. Whether it was a local band playing a bar or fairly massive acts playing an outdoor venue in the warmer months, there was never a lack of options for seeing shows.

However, around 2010 or so it seems things slowly started to change. One by one, the smaller clubs I frequented started to close down, replaced by condos, or banks, or chain stores. The changes really accelerated around 2013 with a wave of clubs like Glasslands, 285 Kent, and Death by Audio all shuttering in quick succession, and while there were still some spots left, the casualties started piling up and it couldn’t honestly be called a neighborhood for live music anymore. It was part of the natural 10to 15-year cycle that NYC has been going through for decades—my time here came just as the previous East Village/Lower East Side era was coming to a close and things were moving across the East River. Fast-forward another few years and it happened again, with the center of gravity moving east again, out of Williamsburg and into Bushwick.*