Saint Vitus Bar, the legendary Brooklyn heavy metal venue that hosted countless emerging bands as well as club specials from Megadeth, Anthrax, Deafheaven, Killing Joke, Carcass, Against Me and, most famously, a “Nirvana reunion” featuring Joan Jett, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, St. Vincent and others playing with the band’s three surviving members, has permanently closed its old location in the borough’s Greenpoint neighborhood.
It appears that the venue's management will attempt to reopen it in a new location, although this information was not confirmed at the time of this article's publication.
The announcement was made official by the owners in an Instagram post on Saturday that read, “1120 Manhattan Ave. 2011-2024 – to be continued… Thanks to everyone who was a part of it. 🍻 Love and greetings, Arty, George, David” (its founding managers and booking agents Arty Shepherd, George Souleidis, and David Castillo). The venue was closed by the New York City Department of Buildings in February — mid-show — but has continued to play shows at other venues in the area.
The club was so popular that when its owners announced a $15,000 goal for COVID relief on Kickstarter in 2020, the club received more than $125,000 in donations.
The venue was operating as an “illegal food and drink establishment” in a space that was intended solely for use as a “commercial store and machinery storage,” city spokesman Andrew Rudansky told Gothamist.
Despite the menacing nature of much of the music the venue hosted, the two-room venue had a warm, welcoming, inclusive atmosphere and, most importantly, a great sense of humour. One of its most popular t-shirts read “Satan is Great / Whiskey is Great”, its logo was a skull with one eye and crossbones, and the venue was lined with hundreds of band posters and inverted crosses – we can recall one year it had a Christmas tree decorated with a giant, illuminated inverted cross.
In addition to thousands of concerts, the venue has also hosted parties, dance nights, karaoke and book events by the likes of John Lydon and Black Sabbath frontman Tony Iommi. Its first decade is celebrated in the book “St. Vitus Bar: The First Ten Years, an Oral and Visual History.”
The venue was founded in 2011 after attorney Pete Jakab, a music fan and member of the band Deadhead, inherited the building and fielded offers from the club’s owners and a bakery. Jakab chose the former, and the result is the closest spiritual resemblance to the original CBGB we’ve seen since that club’s glory days.
It was no coincidence that Nirvana’s surviving members chose St. Vitus Bar as the site of their 2014 “reunion” show after they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, just a few miles away. The subsequent show began just after 2 a.m.—due to the E Street Band’s arrogant decision to allow each of its nearly two dozen living members over 40 years to give a full acceptance speech, which took more than 90 minutes out of the already-lengthy Hall of Fame show—and ended at 4 a.m., with Jett, Gordon, St. Vincent, Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, and Dirty Tick’s John McCauley (who leads a Nirvana tribute band called Dirty Tick) playing a 19-song set.
While it's still unclear when or even if the venue will reopen, organizers are continuing to hold “Saint Vitus Presents” concerts at other venues in the area, such as the Knockdown Center and Elsewhere – head here for upcoming shows.
