Verboten

Overview

Williamsburg techno and house club grown from a decade-long roving pop-up series by founders Jen Schiffer and John Perez; a 10,000-square-foot former metal shop with a Martin Audio system and sprung wood dance floor, it ranked #92 in DJ Mag's Top 100 Clubs before a 2016 state tax seizure and fraud allegations against its founders.

Verboten began not as a room but as a booking and production collective, founded by Jen Schiffer and John Perez, who have said they got engaged in a club in Ibiza after Schiffer fell in love with techno at DC10 in 2001, running warehouse parties and multi-act showcases at spaces across New York City for roughly a decade before committing to a permanent address. The roving series held events at the Highline Ballroom, Sullivan Room, and other Manhattan and Brooklyn venues, establishing a roster of international residents that would carry over into the permanent space: Brad Miller (host of the Push the Night party), Matthew Dear (who ran his Subversions series there), Davide Squillace, Ida Engberg, Lee Curtiss, Guy Gerber, Carl Craig, and Matt Tolfrey among the names most closely associated with the brand. The brick-and-mortar club at 54 North 11th Street opened on March 14, 2014 in a 10,000-square-foot former metal manufacturing shop in the heart of North Williamsburg's then-thriving club corridor. The build-out by Latent Productions retained the industrial bones (exposed brick, skylights, a rusted-steel street facade) while installing a two-room configuration: the larger Control Room, designed for main-stage programming with panoramic edge-blended HD projection and 3D video mapping by Waking Dream; and the adjacent Cabaret Bar, a warmer, more intimate space with its own independent sound system. The signature acoustic feature was a 1,400-square-foot sprung wood dance floor reputedly reclaimed from a Thomas Edison phonograph factory, its provenance asserted in press materials but not independently verified by archival sources. The sound system, a full Martin Audio rig specified by resident Matthew Dear and installed by ITI Audio, included dual hangs of W8LM line-array cabinets, W8LMD downfill boxes, WMX hybrid-folded-horn subwoofers, and W8VDQ rear-fill enclosures, configured for a room that could hold approximately 750 people. The capacity, street-level location, and dual-room programming model placed Verboten closer to Output's blueprint than to the locked-down underground approach of Nowadays or Bossa Nova Civic Club. The opening night on March 14 featured Crosstown Rebels' Rebel Rave night headlined by label boss Damian Lazarus alongside Francesca Lombardo, Fur Coat, Ida Engberg, and Pattern Drama, with a projection-mapped version of the Crosstown Rebels globe anchoring the visual production, an immediate signal of Verboten's aspiration toward festival-caliber booking in a club format. The two years that followed brought Seth Troxler, Chris Liebing, Solomun, Davide Squillace with Seth Troxler and Martin Buttrich, and Maceo Plex, as well as the StageONE outdoor festival series at 50 Kent on the Williamsburg waterfront, three events in summer 2015 headlined by Sasha's Last Night on Earth marathon (with Joris Voorn), a Jamie xx and Maya Jane Coles double bill, and a Carl Craig Detroit Love / Matthew Dear Subversions all-day pairing featuring Audion, Magda, Moodymann, and Floorplan. An Art Basel edition followed in Miami in December 2015. The club ranked #92 in DJ Mag's Top 100 Clubs 2016 poll. The permanent space ran for just over two years before collapsing under accumulated financial and legal pressure. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance seized the premises on March 30, 2016, posting a notice on the door for three open sales-tax warrants totaling $360,378.05. Schiffer and Perez filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the following day, allowing the club to briefly reopen, but Schiffer was subsequently arrested in April 2016 for allegedly writing five fraudulent checks totaling $31,000. Investors simultaneously accused the couple of concealing revenue, rerouting deposits into personal accounts, and recording fraudulent expenditures, accusations Schiffer contested. Separately, a class-action suit filed by Wigdor LLP on behalf of sixteen former employees alleged unpaid wages, withheld tips, and sexual harassment; the suit also documented allegations that Schiffer had told staff she had 'promised the police there wouldn't be Black people at this club,' a reported exchange that drew national press coverage and implicated discriminatory door policy. Former Pacha NYC owner Eddie Dean purchased the space out of bankruptcy for approximately $1.2 million; Schimanski, named after a cult German TV detective, opened at 54 North 11th Street in October 2016 with a Dynacord sound system and a programming model more explicitly rooted in warehouse aesthetics.

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