Littlefield celebrates ten years

People dance on Littlefield's Dance floor

Littlefield, the performance space located at 635 Sackett St. in Gowanus, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a week-and-a-half-long festival that featured live music, comedy shows and dance parties.

“We couldn’t fit all our history and programing into one week; there were so many people we wanted to work with,” said co-owner Julie Kim. “We hoped we covered all the genres. That week and a half should capture the essence of Littlefield.”

The venue was originally a dream for Kim and her business partner Scott Koshnoodi, who both shared a love for music and had great experiences with the music scene in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s. The duo first met in engineering school and met again at a consulting firm where they worked as environmental engineers.

2016 Mural by John Felix Arnold-III. Photo credit to Eric Michael Pearson.

“We opened officially in 2009 at the peak of the Great Recession. It was really tough and a big challenge for us because we were new to do this and new to a neighborhood that was predominantly industrial – we were one of the first commercial spaces to come in,” explained Kim, who grew up in New York. “There was no foot traffic so we really had to adapt. What our original vision for the space was to initially just showcase live music, but without the foot traffic here it was really difficult to compete with the larger, more established music venues.”

So they switched gears and began hosting comedy shows, which seemed to resonate with the Gowanus neighborhood. Their goal was to do something weekly and team up with individuals who were just as hungry to succeed as they were.

Littlefield hosted “Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen” for two years, which did really well. Then they brought on comedian Wyatt Cenac to take over, after his four years as a correspondent and writer with “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

Now they have “Butterboy” with Jo Firestone, Aparna Nancherla & Maeve Higgins every Monday night. While Littlefield became known for comedy, they also host live music shows and other programming that wouldn’t be found in a typical music venue. For example, they host “Punderdome” (competitive spontaneous pun-making), “Drunk Science” (when intoxicated comedians compete to present the best scientific dissertation to real scientists), “Mortified” (telling embarrassing, horrific childhood stories to strangers), and “Dig Deeper” (bringing back 1960s/1970s soul singers and bands).

2013 Cibo Matto. Photo credit to Eric Michael Pearson.

“Littlefield morphed into a destination, rather than just a neighborhood venue,” Kim said. “I love that we are not only known for comedy but as a place where we can nurture talent and get to see some of these really amazing performers in all mediums come through.”

The celebration concluded with comedian Kurt Braunohler. Kim said she saw Braunohler and Kristen Schaal grow each week at Littlefield as they perfected their craft before taking their comedy show to California.

In an interview, Braunohler reminisced about his time there, explaining how he and his comedy partner Schaal had been looking for a new home for their show “Hot Tub with Kurt and Kristen” when they found the Gowanus venue.

“We both just fell in love with the space and then we ended up running our show there two full years before moving to L.A. It was tough because when we moved to L.A., we wanted to find a place that was exactly like Littlefield – that just doesn’t exist.”

Braunohler, who was also the comedy consultant and an actor in the 2017 rom-com The Big Sick, noted that all the stand-up comedy scenes were filmed at Littlefield.

With 10 years officially in the history books for Kim and Koshnoodi, they hope to further elevate Littlefield in its new location with both new and old musical acts, in addition to the comedy.

“We’ve really been pushing live music because we have noticed a shift in nightlife and live music, especially in South Brooklyn. We’re trying to bring that back and trying to create a community for musicians,” Kim told us. “We’re trying to encompass the whole notion of truly being a performing arts space. We always want to give everyone an amazing experience, regardless of what they’re there to see.”

 

Top photo from the David Bowie Tribute Party in 2019. Photo credit to Tucker W. Mitchell.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Comments are closed.

READ OUR FULL PRINT EDITION

Our Sister Publication

a word from our sponsors!

Latest Media Guide!

Where to find the Star-Revue

Instagram

How many have visited our site?

wordpress hit counter

Social Media

Most Popular

On Key

Related Posts

Film: “Union” documents SI union organizers vs. Amazon, by Dante A. Ciampaglia

Our tech-dominated society is generous with its glimpses of dystopia. But there’s something especially chilling about the captive audience meetings in the documentary Union, which screened at the New York Film Festival and is currently playing at IFC Center. Chronicling the fight of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), led by Chris Smalls, to organize the Amazon fulfillment warehouse in Staten

An ode to the bar at the edge of the world, review by Oscar Fock

It smells like harbor, I thought as I walked out to the end of the pier to which the barge now known as the Waterfront Museum was docked. Unmistakable were they, even for someone like me — maybe particularly for someone like me, who’s always lived far enough from the ocean to never get used to its sensory impressions, but

Quinn on Books: In Search of Lost Time

Review of “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance,” by Kevin Brown Review by Michael Quinn   “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” – Countée Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” Come Thanksgiving, thoughts naturally turn to family and the communities that shape us. Kevin Brown’s “Countée Cullen’s Harlem Renaissance” is a

MUSIC: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Mothers of reinvention. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” according to writer George Eliot, who spoke from experience. Born in the UK in 1819, Mary Ann Evans found her audience using the masculine pen name in order to avoid the scrutiny of the patriarchal literati. Reinvention, of style if not self, is in the air