ABC No Rio was founded in 1980 at 156 Rivington street in New York City's Lower East Side. It features a gallery space, a zine library, and plays host to a number of radical projects in New York City, including (but not limited to) weekly hardcore/punk matinees and the NYC Food Not Bombs collective. ABC No Rio seeks to be a community center for the Lower East Side, sponsoring projects and benefits for the community, as well as a center of radical activism in New York City, promoting "Do it yourself volunteerism, art and activism, without giving-in or selling-out to corporate sponsors."
History
Beginnings
ABC No Rio grew out of the 1979 Real Estate Show, in which a small collective of radical artists occupied an abandoned building at 123 Delancy st. and turned it into a gallery to show solidarity with working people in a critique of the city's land management system and a demonstration of what can be achieved through solidarity. The show was to explicitly "illuminate no legal issues" and it called for "no rights"; instead, it was "pre-emptive and insurectionary". The show opened to the public on January 1st, 1980; it was promptly shut down before the morning of January 2nd by the NYC Housing Preservation and Development Agency.
In the following negotiations with the HPD, the collective was granted the use of the building at 156 Rivington and has remained there ever since.
Punk and Hardcore
In December, 1989, ABC No Rio began to host weekly punk/hardcore matinees. For most of the 1980s, the NYC punk/hardcore scene had been focused around the Sunday matinees at CBGB's; having devolved into weekly bloodbaths due to gang violence, CBGB's stopped hosting these shows in November of 1989. The new shows at ABC No Rio were carefully set up to be devoid of the violence, homophobia, sexism, and machismo that took over the CBGB's matinees, and to this day follows a policy of booking only independent (ie non-major label) bands that do not in any way promote sexism, racism, homophobia, and so on. It is often considered the Gilman Street of the East Coast, having hosted and nurtured many of the bands in today's punk scene.
Current Legal Battles
In 1994, the city revoked ABC No Rio's commercial lease and stopped accepting their rent checks. The city planned on selling the building to Asian Americans for Equality for only $4000. Protests ensued, resulting in several arrests. ABC No Rio refused to give up the space and embarked on a project of raising money and reforming their image, to appear to be a more legitimate organization in the eyes of the city. In 1997, the city agreed to sell the building to ABC No Rio for $1 provided ABC could raise the money to renovate the building and bring it up to code. The details have not yet been fully worked out; ABC No Rio has sent in their proposal and other materials for the city's Uniform Land Use Review Process. Their proposal was certified by the City Planning commission on February 14, 2005, and will now travel through several layers of city government including the mayor's office before full approval. The review process is expected to conclude in October or November of 2005, by which time they must have raised $350,000 to begin Phase I of the renovation project. Despite all this, ABC No Rio's legal status remains precarious, as the city still will not accept their rent checks and they have no official permission to be currently occupying the building.
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