Venue Review: Glasslands

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Overview
Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Address: 289 Kent Ave. (between S. 1st and S. 2nd)
Size: Medium (cap. 275)
Directions: L to Bedford, walk seven blocks south and four blocks west
Website: glasslands.com

Acoustics: A
Booking: D
Helpfulness to bands: N/A
Atmosphere: A-

Acoustics - Glasslands has pretty great acoustics, especially for a bizarrely shaped room. I don't know how they accomplished it, if it's the surfaces or the sound system or what, but everything sounds pretty distinct.

Booking - Booking at Glasslands is every kind of impossible. In my experience, they simply don't respond to most e-mails, even to say "no thanks." My experiences with them have mostly been frustrating. When they do communicate, they aren't terribly helpful either.

Helpfulness - It's a great venue, but booking a show there has never been worth the hassle, so I have no experience with this.

Atmosphere - Glasslands isn't as quite cool as one might expect for a venue that started out as a loft/DIY. It's a "community art space," and is accordingly cozy and relaxed, a fine atmosphere but not edgy. There's pretty good visibility, though, so you can actually see the band you came to see. The people are fairly chill and decent bands often do their under-the-radar shows here, so it's not a bad place to keep an eye on. That requires some patience, though - Glasslands wins the prize for most poorly organized calendar (it's not a calendar at all, it's a blog), so good luck figuring it out.

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