Shea Stadium BK

Overview

All-ages DIY warehouse on Meadow Street that recorded every show it ever hosted (over 2,000 performances from 2009 to 2017) launching or early-platforming Big Thief, Parquet Courts, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, Blood Orange, and scores of others before gentrification and a landlord reversal permanently closed the Meadow Street location.

Shea Stadium BK occupied a second-floor loft in an unmarked industrial building at 20 Meadow Street in East Williamsburg's warehouse district, opened in spring 2009 by Adam Reich, Sean Heeney, and members of the So So Glos (brothers Alex and Ryan Levine and Zach Staggers). The name was an explicit tribute to the demolished Mets ballpark, torn down the same year the venue opened to make way for Citi Field parking. The space combined a live performance room with a functioning recording studio and rehearsal floor, and its founding premise was documentary: every set would be captured and eventually made freely available, building what became one of the most complete records of any underground music scene in New York City. By 2011 the archive had grown enough to warrant its own website, liveatsheastadium.com, which eventually indexed recordings from over 1,000 different artists. Day-to-day operations were shared between Reich, Nora Dabdoub (booking, scheduling, recording logistics), and Luke Chiaruttini, with Max Kagan also noted as a collaborator in the venue's mid-period. The So So Glos, who had earlier co-founded Market Hotel alongside promoter Todd P in 2007, used Shea as their rehearsal headquarters and recorded their debut album there with Reich and Heeney producing; Titus Andronicus also rehearsed in the space for years. The venue's all-ages, inclusively booked programming (consciously rejecting the 'cool kids club' model) made it a community anchor, and younger audiences under twenty were notably present on most nights. The building itself had a lofty, largely windowless main room with an upper deck; the landlord, who had occupied the block in the furniture trade since the early 1970s, was initially a supportive and stable presence. Over eight years Shea hosted well over 2,000 shows and became a documented early stage for artists who went on to significant careers: Parquet Courts, Big Thief, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, Blood Orange, DIIV, Speedy Ortiz, Screaming Females, Maggie Rogers, King Krule, Alex G, Whitney, and PWR BTTM among them; secret sets by Blood Orange and Julian Casablancas added to the lore. In 2013 Shea Stadium Records released the So So Glos' 'Blowout' LP, the first release on the venue's own label, expanding the space's identity beyond live performance into publishing. A podcast series called Sheananigans was also launched to excavate the archive with artist commentary. The end came in stages. On January 20–21, 2017 NYPD shut down shows for permit and code violations, mounting fines that co-founders described as 'no longer feasible' to absorb. In March 2017 a Kickstarter campaign raised over $100,000 (surpassing its $50,000 goal in under 24 hours) to fund a full legal renovation and permitting process. But just before renovation paperwork was to be filed, the landlord reversed course, stating he intended to open a nightclub on the ground floor and that the second-floor space was therefore unavailable. The Meadow Street location closed permanently in April 2017. The raised funds were intended to be used toward a relocation that, as of public record, did not materialize as a brick-and-mortar venue. In January 2022 Reich, Dabdoub, and Chiaruttini partnered with Blast Radio to launch 'Shea Rewind,' an audio series drawing on the full archive.

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