SOUTHPAW Closing: If Park Slope is “Over”… Then Why are Union Hall, Bell House, and The Rock Shop Thriving?

Snoop Dogg and Mikey Palms, Southpaw

So this guy is Southpaw co-owner Mikey Palms (no… the one on the right). Palms just confirmed that his music venue on Fifth Avenue near Sterling Place is being shut down after more than 10 years.

“I’m kind of over Park Slope — it’s not a destination for nightlife anymore,” Mikey told The Brooklyn Paper.

What’s replacing it? New York City Kids, which does  tutoring and rock climbing. So everyone’s knee-jerk reaction (including ours) was: blame the baby pushers.

“It’s just getting out of control,” Jessica said on F’ed in Park Slope. “(Screamers in strollers) are pushing us out just like they were pushed out of their mother’s vaginas.”

But here’s the thing–Park Slope has a thriving music scene. “I’m sure that there’s a larger metaphor here about the neighborhood … becoming more of a playground for kids than for adults,” Here’s Park Slope says. “One thing that can’t be overlooked, though, is the fact that Southpaw was suffering while other local venues, like Union Hall, The Bell House, and The Rock Shop, thrive, and you can’t blame that on the neighborhood, Mikey.”

“I think saying ‘there is no nightlife here’ is an overstatement and maybe an excuse of why they are closing,” Frank Gallo of Park Slope children’s band, Rolie Polie Guacamole told the Park Slope Patch (who may have missed the irony of getting a reax from the leader of a kid’s band). “I wouldn’t say nightlife is dead here, (and) it is certainly not the same neighborhood it was in the 1990s … But when you go out to a bar in Park Slope it is packed.”

Gothamist criticized Southpaw’s owners for handing the space to a children’s play place: “is it a little bit messed up that Southpaw essentially venue-blocked the neighborhood by not allowing another one to take over the space?” Southpaw’s other co-owner, Matthew Roff, told Gothamist that it would have been “very difficult emotionally to see folks take control of the space if using it in the same capacity as we did … we felt that the children’s business would use the space wisely.”

“Very difficult emotionally”? Really? Not exactly buying this as the driving reason behind the business decision.

So what really happened? Apparently, money was a big factor: Roff told the New York Times that Southpaw has no problem packing the place any night of the week, but added that “there’s a lot of work that goes into keeping a business like this going … I don’t think any place in New York for live music is really bringing in enough revenue these days.” The Times said Roff will now focus on Public Assembly, the club he owns in Williamsburg.

So that’s it for Southpaw. Someone could write an entire book, or at least a decent Wikipedia entry, about all the memorable gigs that have taken place at Southpaw, not least of which is the time Dave Chappelle jumped on stage at Southpaw and, for two hours, did an impromptu riff on a newspaper somebody handed him.