Our Wicked Lady

Overview

A former scaffolding-workers' warehouse rebuilt from a dirt floor up by three Brooklyn Bowl alumni (Zach Glass, Keith Hamilton, and Wayne Gordon of Daptone Records) into a ten-year anchor of North Brooklyn's indie-rock, punk, and soul scene, with rehearsal rooms, artist studios, and a year-round retractable rooftop bar.

Our Wicked Lady opened on July 8, 2015 at 153 Morgan Avenue in East Williamsburg, the product of roughly two years of gut renovation by co-founders Zach Glass (musician, Bugs in the Dark), Keith Hamilton (filmmaker), and Wayne Gordon (producer and head engineer at Daptone Records), all of whom had met as managers and bartenders at Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg. The building (a single-story warehouse previously used as a scaffolding-workers training center) had a dirt floor, no staircase to the roof, and virtually no plumbing or electricity when the trio took possession. They rebuilt it into a 1,200-square-foot ground-floor bar, multiple band rehearsal rooms, six upstairs artist studios, and a 1,600-square-foot roof deck that would become the venue's most distinctive feature, eventually fitted with a motorized retractable roof cover and year-round heat. A Kickstarter campaign (listing all three founders) helped finance the rooftop build-out; the owners consistently described sound as the budget priority, as Glass later put it, 'the sound was always where we put the money, so the sound was always good.' The roughly 200-capacity ground floor hosted touring and emerging indie, punk, garage-rock, and soul acts, King Khan & BBQ Show, The Budos Band, Thee Sacred Souls, Bass Drum of Death, Hank Wood and the Hammerheads, Wreckless Eric, The Mystery Lights, and early appearances by SKORTS, The Thing, and Dead Tooth, among hundreds of others. The venue's hybrid model (bar plus rehearsal space plus studios plus rooftop) positioned it as an artist-services operation as much as a nightlife destination, and Keith Hamilton articulated it plainly: 'My main motivation in opening OWL was to create a safe space that supported local artists.' Recurring programming shaped its identity: Jonathan Toubin's New York Night Train brought the Soul Scream series to the rooftop on summer Sundays beginning around 2016, spinning original 45rpm soul and R&B records to a dance crowd above the Bushwick rooftops; the venue also hosted hip-hop nights, the Thursdays for the Cause charitable benefit series (10% of bar sales plus door to rotating nonprofits), karaoke, comedy, and the annual Winter Madness battle-of-the-bands tournament in February. Wayne Gordon's role became less prominent in later years; by the time of the venue's closure campaign, Glass and Hamilton were described as the co-owners. Our Wicked Lady survived COVID-19 (with significant accumulated debt) but a post-pandemic shift in patron behavior (less spending, earlier departures, fewer weekly visits) made recovery impossible. Glass and Hamilton launched a GoFundMe in December 2024, raising $42,241 of a $65,000 goal; a community fundraising benefit and a charity vinyl compilation on Favorite Friend Records followed. A near-sale to a new owner was blocked by the landlord, who made clear he did not want music to continue on his property. The last show was July 21, 2025, almost exactly ten years to the day from the July 8, 2015 grand opening. OWL Presents, the venue's booking arm, continued operating out of the Spare Room at The Gutter BK after the closure.

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