THANK YOU, SUZANNE FIOL

By PATRICK HAMBRECHT

download-2 Suzanne Fiol, founder of Issue Project Room, died of cancer on Monday. Issue is my favorite legal venue in NYC -- I've wandered in there and seen many bizarre, funny and beautiful things, including world-famous Pamelia Kurstin doing theremin stand-up comedy with Carla Rhodes-- and a personal favorite, a bunch of ornate pagan transvestites enacting fertility rituals for Mary Magdalene Day: a strange passion play with a nearly nude young man posing as a tree for a human maypole dance, all synched up to the sweet sounds of Brian Ferry. Suzanne and Zach Layton also let my band Flaming Fire do all manner of fun, obnoxious things at her space -- stuff we could never get away with anywhere else --including attack her charity Walkathon participants with megaphones and fire, just because we could. You can go there today and hear These Are Powers tell ghost stories. Anyway, Fiol was the greatest. She was bossy, funny, fearless, brilliant, loved to drink and party down. Even while in the late stages of cancer, she worked her ass off to find a huge new home for the venue -- a huge former Elks Lodge in the center of Brooklyn-- that may will finally replace what NYC lost when great venues like Tonic and CB's Gallery were torn down in the condo craze of the mid 2000s. There are lots of snooty, boring places to enjoy avant-garde music, but Issue is uniquely fun, because Suzanne was fun. I'll miss her a lot.
By PATRICK HAMBRECHT 2 years ago

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