Trans-Pecos

Overview

All-ages experimental and community venue on Wyckoff Avenue, opened December 2013 in the former Silent Barn space by Todd Patrick and Sam Hillmer, positioning itself as a legal, cooperatively structured heir to Zebulon, Tonic, and the original Knitting Factory for the outer-borough DIY era.

Trans-Pecos occupies a one-story 1931 commercial building at 9–15 Wyckoff Avenue, a block from the L train at Halsey Street on the Ridgewood–Bushwick border of Queens. The space has a layered prehistory: the band Skeletons established it as the original Silent Barn in 2005, an apartment-basement DIY venue that Todd Patrick (Todd P) began booking in 2006 and took over the lease with John Chavez around 2007. The city evicted the Silent Barn in 2011 for zoning non-compliance. Patrick and experimental saxophonist–composer Sam Hillmer of the band Zs reopened the gutted, renovated building as Trans-Pecos in December 2013, stripping drop ceilings to expose dark-wood joists and vaulted space, adding windows, fixing heat and acoustics, and installing a backyard. The name is borrowed from the remote Trans-Pecos region of Far West Texas, an analog, per Patrick, for the 'final frontier' edge of North Brooklyn's DIY geography. The operating model is deliberately anti-commercial and pluralist. Patrick structured costs so the venue does not depend on high turnouts; income is diversified through space-rental to independent operators, the Red Lantern–affiliated café (later Nhà Mình, a Vietnamese café and gallery, by the 2020s), a cooperative woodworking shop in the rear annex, and artist studio leaseholders including Northern Spy Records. The bar received its liquor license roughly sixteen months after opening; community programming ran continuously throughout, including daytime rehearsals for AHRC New York City groups (adults with developmental disabilities), partnerships with local youth organizations, and after-school access. Hillmer has stated that 'community service is not incidental to Trans-Pecos' business model, but central to it.' The venue hosts two interior performance areas and a tree-canopied outdoor patio with capacity around 250. Programming is curated by an invited coalition rather than a single booker. At launch the core curatorial partners included Northern Spy Records (every Thursday), The Bunker (connoisseur-level Detroit and Chicago techno and house, limited to ~150, no photography), Words + Dreams, Chaos Bodies, and ESP TV; later rotating curators added no-wave figure James Chance, composer Hiro Kone (Nicky Mao), and guitarist Don Devore (Collapsing Scenery / Sick Feeling). The calendar spans noise, drone, free jazz, harsh metal, dancehall, deep house, and electronica, genres Patrick describes as united by 'quality and deep knowledge of the canon of intelligent music.' The venue explicitly positions itself in the lineage of Zebulon, Tonic, and the original Knitting Factory as a home for new and outside musics, not buzz-cycle indie. Sam Hillmer departed to co-found H0L0 (1090 Wyckoff Ave) in 2017, and Trans-Pecos continued under Todd Patrick's stewardship. As of 2025–26, the venue remains active on Resident Advisor and other listings with a full calendar spanning indie rock, electronic, noise, jazz, and community events, its liquor license renewed with an unblemished disciplinary record. Nhà Mình operates front-of-house Tuesday through Sunday. The building at 9–15 Wyckoff, unchanged since 1931 in its shell, now holds one of the longest continuous DIY tenancies in New York City, running from Skeletons' original 2005 collective through the present.

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