Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy
Renovations continue at 101 Avenue A, where the owners of Williamsburg's Baby's All Right are teaming up with the Knitting Factory for a new venue called Night Club 101 between Sixth Street and Seventh Street.
Club staff invited EVG inside the former Pyramid Club and Baker Falls for a work-in-progress sneak preview of the space, set to debut tonight with a friends and family NYE party featuring headliners (and EVG fave) Water From Your Eyes.
The original bar remains, though it has been shortened to fit the space and create a bigger entryway...
There are new doors between the bar and the club with pyramid cutouts to pay homage to the original club (top photo and below...)
The main room for live music and DJ sets, with an Olympic-ring color palette, is much brighter. It also has a new stage with additional soundproofing, new lights, speakers, and a sound system.
There's also a small VIP nook on the main floor...
Downstairs, patrons will find another bar, with a lounge and DJ booth for afterparties.
The space will host live music, DJs, themed dance nights, art shows, and "community-building events." Shows are expected to start in the New Year. (Daryl Johns will play a night here on Jan. 9. His show at Baby's All Right on Jan. 10 is sold out.)
Keep an eye on Night Club 101's Instagram account for show updates. 
As we first reported in October, Baker Falls moved on from here after a year in the space. East Village resident Nick Bodor has set up shop at 192 Allen St. between Houston and Stanton — the former Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 — where he's creating his "decrepit-manor in the woods fever-dream alt-rock concept."
Baker Falls, which featured a bar, cafe, and live performances, anchored the Knitting Factory's latest iteration at the longtime former home of the Pyramid Club. The venue closed in late July for extra soundproofing.
The Pyramid closed in October 2022 after 40-plus years in business between Sixth Street and Seventh Street. The club ushered in an era of socially conscious drag performances featuring Lady Bunny, Lypsinka, and RuPaul, among many other trailblazers. As a music venue, the Pyramid hosted Nirvana's first NYC show in 1989.
Previously on EV Grieve:
30 comments:
I'm glad they're keeping homages to Pyramid with some of the design, though it's also pretty hard to see the space so... different than it used to be. I'm sure this is why I'm not rich, but had I been those landlords who owned the building and already had everything they needed in life, I would've kept the little club going as a love letter to the neighborhood rather than try to Ebenezer my way into just a few more bucks.
For music history books, there was a Club 101, a live R&B and Funk joint in the West Village, on 101 7th Avenue South, in the late 90's to mid 00's.
This should be Club Nico. Nico lived on the 2nd floor when she was with the Velvet Underground.
Enough of the socialist cryings. What exactly do you know about the owners finances?
Time to let go, y'all "hanging to some clown from the 60's"
And here come the bootlickers. Keep doing tricks for your late stage capitalist masters, dog.
So, a group does a gut renovation that looked quite expensive, leaves after a year because of noise insulation issues (that surely should have been looked closely at during the design phase.) But still has enough cash resources to take over another space that failed. Followed by a different group going into the first space and turning into something as sterile as a Soho art gallery in the eighties. Okay!
Do you even know where you are? 🙄
I'd go with Chez Nico. She was proper Euro-trash years before it was a thing.
Why do you guys always write out the street name … Sixth / Seventh street instead of 6th/ 7th? Just curious
It's a style preference... it's also Associated Press style (school of journalism dork). Per the Stylebook: Spell out and capitalize First through Ninth when used as street names; use figures for 10th and above: 7 Fifth Ave., 100 21st St.
I thought the interior of the Pyramid Club had received landmark designation (I had never before heard of such a thing, but swear I read it somewhere), making permanent interior changes illegal (because of previous historical significance to the space); Baker Falls didn't really change the space much at all. Just curious. And who has that lovely painted twin cobra sculpture that had been over the outside door in the 80s-90s? (If I'm remembering correctly.) Would welcome any details/corrections here. Thanks.
Wow, completely different. Loved the darkness and grime! Just a memory now. CBGB'S, Coney Island High, The Pyramid all just flotsam in the sea.
Ehhh, well...time goes on...new memories ☺️
That's interesting! Now I want to be an AP style dork too!!
That color scheme is just awful.
Ok then. Chez Nico it is.
We will literally have Clowns on Wed Jan 15th at Baker Falls... 2025 style with avant clown night Idiots' Hour ... seriously, check it out.
Nico was not the most evolved human.
@EVHO In case you haven't heard Nico was the lead singer on the most influential debut album of all time- The Velvet Undergound & Nico. As Brian Eno said, " The VU&N only sold 20,000 copies, buy everyone who bought it formed a band."
That was the best question on 2024!
Something tells me that carpet guy will be a little out of place in this new joint.
🤓🤓
@XTC "most influential debut album of all time"
Please Please Me would like a word.
Pyramid outlasted every other punk venue by many years. Granted many of the later years where spent entertaining NYU students, frat kids, and tourists dancing to 80s top forty but it was still there. I’m glad it will continue to have live music but it’s no tribute to Pyramid history. In looking at the sound treatment I can see in the picture there’s no way that’s going to make it quieter outside the club. Hopefully it sounds better inside but…I’m skeptical. As a trained audio engineer and having been in that room many times performing and seeing bands both while Pyramid and Baker Falls I will be very surprised but reserving judgement until I hear it. For a little more history, it was originally built as a German Pilsner brewery feeding off the natural freshwater spring that ran through the area. And just before being Pyramid it was the New Rican Village where many great NYC Latino musicians would hangout and play including Jerry and Andy Gonzalez. I’ve been told it’s where they formulated the Fort Apache Band. Pyramid was also where Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers played their first NYC shows….and where a lot of other really cool and historic shit happened. Definitely and important part of NYC music history.
9:05 You're wrong, I am the master of my own domain.
And late stage capitalism is a concept that was invented a 100 years ago, so you live at thar stage all your life. Nothing new about this overused dates term.
I love a copyediting question. When editorial has really gone to shit, someone still cares.
Not the Pyramid anymore, more like Palace of Versailles. Clearly, the days of downing a pint of McSorley's and a well shot in this space while getting eardrums blown out by three Marshall stacks and with the other ear listening to a local who's been drunk since the 1950s tell you his life story, are far behind us.
I like the red, yellow and blue color scheme of the main room. Very Mondrian.
It needed to be purged and brightened up. Baker Falls was the wrong brand to inherit that place. BF should have opened across the street at the old Sidewalks, and fed off of the legacy of great folk and open mics over there. The Baker aesthetic was too dark and Upper West Side for the old Pyramid, and the downstairs still reeked of old beer and funk. Some here may find that nostalgic, but I found it sad and depressing. So I hope this new crew spends the money to really soundproof and sage! Get the hobgoblins out and make it a fun place to dance again
Can't wait!
I mean as a person. I know who she was an an artist.
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