‘New Space, Same Spirit’

At one point, the spot on Eldert Street was a dairy plant. Throughout the years, the building has transformed time and time again, from a small textile mill to a venue run by a group called The Brown Note, who catered something called the “Tsunami Bass” experience. “The owner had split the building down the middle. This side was just a warehouse, and then that side was like an office you could enter from the alleyway on Wyckoff. If you were trying to register to get your food handler’s license, you could take a standardized test there. It was a place where you could come take standardized tests,” says Noel Allain about the corner they had found along the Bushwick-Ridgewood border. Now, some $2.2 million later, it would be the home for the new beginnings of the Bushwick Starr Theater, a group that’s been run by Allain and Sue Kessler since 2007.