When did The Footlight open and how did you choose your location? How do you feel about Ridgewood?
I have been in the service industry and the music industry for my entire adult life. When I moved to ridgewood in 2013, I was getting to a point where I wanted to pursue my long time dream of owning my own bar and venue. I fell in love with ridgewood as soon as I moved in. It’s a great community with deep roots and a ton of thriving locally owned small businesses, some going back generations. It felt like a place I could call home and invest in, so I started planning my business and looking for locations in 2014. Signed the lease in Jan 2015 and finally opened the doors in July 2016.
Who helped start/open The Footlight and are there any people currently playing an important role?
The Footlight was an idea I had that took a village of folks to bring to life. We have/had a lot of investors along the way but the biggest impact was the community of artists, local business owners and long time friends that helped me build Footlight from the ground up. We never really had the money we needed but we had plenty of passionate people willing to get their hands dirty and help us get up and running.
CURRENTLY:
Eric Ryrie, the booking/house manager and Barry Marino, the FLTV Videographer are two of my oldest friends. Eric has been by my side since we opened footlight, learning the ropes together and figuring out what works. Barry actually helped reconstruct Footlight back in 2015 and even installed the ceiling.
Tim Shea (@timshea101, @footlight_drink_and_draw), the de facto Visual Artistic director, is my best friend, my life partner, my inspiration, and my cheerleader. Tim has found so many creative ways to contribute to our artistic vision. Tim hosts our weekly monday open mic. He created our in house Zine the Footlighter!!! He curated a drink and draw for years that he eventually made into the zine. He has wet vacced sewage with me, he has pulled weeds, he took over bar management and ordering for me when things were getting overwhelming. He’s an everyman and embodies the true spirit of footlight.
Kendra L Saunders, My girl friday, my marketing and life assistant. Always ready with a stellar insta post or music review as well as a pep talk, hug or some sparkles to make a shitty day brighter, she’s a true ray of light and will soon be our FLTV VJ!!!
Jessica Dennis & Ryan Gabel have been reliable, hard working, patient, wonderful bartenders and employees for years. We are so lucky to have such dedicated staff that were always willing to sit through some pretty experimental art on slow nights and bust their butts when it’s packed.
Victor Jardin is our go to weekday sound person and a magical centaur. I can’t wait to have him back behind the board playing obnoxious disco in between bands to drive me crazy.
Madison Odom, our weekend security, is a patient, calm, ninja who loves Buffy and Angel almost as much as I do.
We have countless others to name as part of our extended community but I would have to write a novel to describe them all and their individual contributions and I have already gone on too long just about my employees who I love dearly.
Can you give us a little backstory on who you are Laura?
Originally from Boston, graduated from Boston Arts Academy, 1st graduating class in ‘01, and ‘graduated’ from Berklee in ‘05(quotes are essential and inside joke for anyone who went to berklee). Performed under the moniker Bridget and the Squares(BatS) from 2007-2013. Also was a founding member of HAWT ME$$ in BK and still perform when I can with my BatS bandmate Kyle Thompson/Incredibly Elderly as STAB. I have worked in restaurants since I was 15 starting with working for my Dad in his Donut Shop, Donut Junction formerly in Needham, MA. I’ve lived in NYC since 2009, everything I did since moving here was working towards the goal of owning my own space.
We saw you have joined forces with others in your industry to create NIVA (National Independent Venues Association). Can you give us some more details and how can people help support it? (We see there are 2,000 charter members in all 50 states!)
I can give you the NIVA one sheet about the RESTART act and the federal relief that we are trying to get public and political support behind. As the numbers look right now we are looking at the potential closure of 90% of independent venues nationally by 2021 if we don’t secure dedicated funding for independent arts organizations. It’s a scary number. New York State alone needs 60MILLION to sustain our independent Venues. Mind you if they federally mandated mortgage relief, rent relief could be possible and most of that debt would go away. Expecting venues to pay full rent while making ZERO income is ridiculous. The banks have been bailed out how many times? They should be suspending or forgiving mortgages so landlords can in turn forgive rent.
Are you selling anything at the moment? (Drinks, food, merch)
We decided not to partake in outdoor dining or to go beverages. The risk of further violations, fees and fines as well as exposing our staff to health risks during a pandemic was just not worth the limited revenue we could make by being open at such a restricted capacity. I have a lot of friends in the industry that report on constant and vigilant inspections from multiple government agencies that all seem to have their own interpretation of the constantly changing laws. It’s unbelievable what the city and state are putting the service industry through right now.
We all feel a massive loss for live music these past few months, how as a venue have you been able to emotionally fill that void?
It’s been tough. Almost immediately after we decided to close for quarantine, we started collaborating with Artists to take over our Instagram Live feed and perform songs from their homes, bedrooms and bathrooms. We hosted an insta stories open mic and drink and draw for a while… but we were feeling like it wasn’t enough and the numbers were reflecting that after a few months.
What’s up with FLTV?! Can you tell us more about Withfriends memberships and your digital stage? You currently have a Kickstarter for FLTV (going on until WED 8/19 ). Can you tell us more about that and how else people can help?
So the insta live sessions gave us the idea. What if we could record these artists live at footlight without audience and edit in interviews and b-roll, basically upgrade this creative content and make it accessible to cast onto a TV or to a projector so the audience can have a better viewing experience? That’s how we started planning FLTV and so far we have A LOT of interest in creating content! We are so excited to collaborate with artists, promoters, comedians, dancers and more members of our community to make FLTV content. The kickstarter goal is to fundraise for some equipment but mostly to pay for staffing FLTV for the first few months.
I see on The Footlight’s “WithFriends” page people have 4 monetary options with benefits/perks. Feel the Love $15mo, See it Live $30mo, See it home in FLTV $60mo, & See it all $80mo. Can you tell us a little more about that and what was it like transitioning into this platform? (People can also make a one time donation too)
We have been using Withfriends as our ticket provider and sustaining membership program for a couple years. It’s definitely been a slow process working in sustaining memberships as a revenue stream for Footlight. To be totally honest, independent venues have NO data, no market research, no indication that live streaming or virtual creative content will make us or the artists any real revenue. It’s a scary jump without a net. We are confident that it’s a good idea and that we will be able to deliver an excellent product but our overhead to maintain the physical space is extremely high so it’s pretty daunting to think that this might be our only income for the indefinite future.
What advice would you give to musicians who are feeling lost without a stage to perform on?
Try not to isolate. Connect with other artists, talk to each other. I know we’re all tired of ZOOM but we can still give each other writing prompts or challenges. Record an album on your own in a month in your room, write a series of poems, songs, drawings about spoons or dogs or grass or air, or police violence or racism or feeling lonely or feeling happy to have the space to be creative without distraction??? Be resourceful, try to write a little bit everyday and even if you can’t just do the best you can to stay creative and connected to your community. My favorite book for creative writing and staying inspired is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (make sure you buy directly from the author or an independent bookstore, preferably black owned!)
What advice would you give to another venue at this moment?
Knowledge share. Reach out to each other. Share resources. We are one community that is irreplaceable to the extended arts community of NYC. We have so much value. Don’t let landlords kill the arts out of greed. We have to stick together.
What was the feeling like when you walked into The Footlight before it was The Footlight?
Oh gosh. It’s really eerie actually. When I was a kid, my friend Caitlin and I were really into candle magic and obsessed with the occult. We were in catholic school so obviously we wanted to be witches. Well we cast this spell on me to have prophetic dreams. I still don’t know what to believe but I had some really really awful dreams. I dreamt about car accidents I would eventually get into. I dreamt of my grandfather’s death 6 months before it happened. I also dreamt of the Footlight stage. It was rounded with strips and I was playing a keyboard with a band in the dream on that stage. The first time I walked into 465 Seneca it felt so familiar and I couldn’t place it. After I looked at a few spaces, I kept coming back to that one. Eventually I signed a lease and the first time I was in there by myself, I was sitting on the stage in the empty venue before reconstruction playing guitar and it hit me. Holy shit, this is the place from my dream. Now 465 Seneca has been a NIGHTMARE location for a multitude of reasons, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The community we have built in Footlight is something I could have never imagined. It’s a truly special place, floods, leaking roof, terrible landlord, pandemic aside, I regret nothing.
Have you owned/ran venues before?
This was my first baby and I think she’ll be an only child. I have bigger dreams dancing in my head of not for profit emerging artist spaces on a farm somewhere where we can grow our own food and prepare for the apocalypse.
What else is on your mind?
Gratitude. How much I appreciate you and our extended community and all the support we have gotten over the last 4 years.
What would you like to see the future hold for The Footlight?
As long as we can come to some agreement with our landlord, I see only positive things in the future for Footlight. I see us revamping the bar program, offering pressed grilled cheese sandwiches, craft cocktails, medicinal mocktails, pour over coffee and herbal tea. We want to restructure the interior to enable social distancing. We want to make FLTV into a viable source of revenue, maybe get it distributed on a larger platform, maybe also help other venues to offer similar content, build a network of emerging arts spaces that can reach a national or international audience. The options are limitless as long as we can keep our location for now. If not, we’ll be looking for another place to record FLTV content, because Footlight is not it’s leaky water damaged location, it’s the people and the community that make up the spirit of the Footlight.
With all the social unrest and more awareness on Black Lives Matter, how do you think venues help with the cause?
I feel that independent venues are an essential asset to the activist movement. We have hosted a multitude of fundraisers and rallies over the years for political and activist groups. We use our social media to amplify activist voices and causes. We want to continue to offer our space to activists on the right side of history. These are incredible times to be alive, terrifying but incredible. Anyway we can continue to be useful to our community and to those who are making change. We want to exist to take part in this essential work for years to come. Social change is a marathon, or two or four…
Any thoughts/words or feelings?
I hope everybody is doing ok, hanging in, staying positive and staying connected with people that love and support them. This too shall pass. <3
Links:
thefootlightbar.nyc
withfriends.co/the_footlight
www.kickstarter.com/projects/footlightertv/footlighter-tv-fltv-the-footlight-virtual-stage#
www.instagram.com/thefootlightbar
www.nivassoc.org
www.instagram.com/streetwannabes
(Title Photo Credit: Mama D)
