After a dinner with friends in Bushwick I agree, somewhat reluctantly, to accompany J. to a concert where she’s planned to meet a few other people. It’s a cold night, and the venue is a dilapidated warehouse of some sort, and when we arrive the last band is already finishing up their set, an electronic/drum duo (frenetic, breakneck pace, abstract graphic video projection). We stand for a few moments in front of the stage – it’s late, and there are only a couple-dozen audience members left – then make our way to the makeshift bar at the back, where J. runs into one of her friends. I stand idly by as they two of them drink cans of cheap beer, their conversation inaudible to me against the thumping drone of the band. Instead I turn my attention to the venue: whitewashed brick walls, high ceilings, mismatched, salvaged furniture, hand-painted signs, and an overall funky, freewheeling art school vibe. Unheated. My friend and I are quite possibly the oldest audience members in the place. The scene hearkens back to my art school days in San Francisco, and I recognize the same sense of DIY adventurousness, the warehouse culture that thrived in the SoMa neighborhood, where one could, on any given night, pay a few bucks to see an unknown band, a piece of avant-garde theater, or an S&M circus show. Were it not for the omnipresence of digital screens and the slightly different version of electronica, this scene could easily be transposed to the one I knew so well twenty years ago…