Ever since the world learned that Vice was taking over most of the block that housed Death By Audio, Glasslands, 285 Kent, indiescreen and the Muse, there’s been a little bit of tension between the media company and the DIY world. That and 10,000 “Isn’t THIS ironic?” jokes. Vice has remained mostly silent in the face of people complaining about them taking over the block, but an interview on Bedford + Bowery with DBA’s Edan Wilber in which he claimed that the venue wasn’t bought out was apparently a bridge too far for Vice, who, along with DBA’s landlord told BrooklynVegan a starkly different version of events.
In the Bedford + Bowery interview, Wilber told the site that there was no buyout, and that they were under the impression that they’d signed a two-year lease taking them through June of next year. Vice issued a statement of their own, claiming that DBA did take a buyout, and backed it up by putting BrooklynVegan in touch with a lawyer representing the venue’s landlord. The landlord’s lawyer claimed that DBA stopped paying rent in July, that the lease always ran through November 30 and that the two sides had “entered into a legal agreement, pursuant to which my client agreed to waive all of the rent DBA owed in exchange for DBA agreeing not to hold over in the premises after their lease expired.”
Just for good measure, BrooklynVegan went back to Vice to ask them about the situation, and a spokesperson dropped the L-bomb and said that the venue had “lied” about taking a buyout. Going by Worthington’s Law, we have to assume that Vice is right in this situation, at least until someone from DBA responds otherwise.
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Is DBA 100% in the right? No. Did vice come to them and say “here is money to leave” and then they took it and left? No. They had a dumb little legal battle in which nobody won.
DBA could have mentioned the rent thing in their article, but basically who cares. Vice is more guilty of spin in this case.
Vice is guilty of being an utterly generic magazine that ultimately took out a pretty neat performance venue.
There wasn’t space midtown for this soon to be milked out media outlet du jour?
Who’s bright idea at vice was it to locate the future Spin Magazine / Rolling Stone Magazine / George Magazine / et. al in a hip neighborhood when a glass tower in the 50’s would be infinitely suitable?
Anyway, in five years they’ll be folded into some other media asset group and eventually disposed of.