This year, Opening Ceremony turned 10! We are marking our birthday with a commemorative Rizzoli BOOK, which is now available. Check out these b-day cards from our friends and family. Today's comes from Kathy Grayson [left] of The Hole.
"I think I first met Humberto at the Hole, a weird, wonderful, and unfortunately brief bar/club on 2nd Avenue that closed in 2004. The place was a huge navy blue gymnasium of a space that Dash Snow first took me to in 2002 or so, and I met just about everyone there. The blur surrounding these early years makes everything a magical blur of fun and friends in my drug and alcohol smeared memory. I remember the Hole being the only place where the different subcultural groups in NYC all went and all got along: the lesbians, the IRAK graffiti crew, Spencer Sweeney, and the club weirdo contingent, Ryan McGinley, Teddy Liuliakis, Leo and the New Jersey team, punks, hippies, jocks even—all coming together in this huge, destroyed, lawless, and ugly place. There were holes in the walls, graffiti on everything, coke snorted off the bar, and people having sex—It was AWESOME!
In 2010, when Jeffrey Deitch closed Deitch gallery to go to LA, I had to open my own space in NYC to fill the hole left by the huge Deitch activities. I wanted the gallery to be seen as a meeting place for everyone: a community center with a lawless, renegade spirit, so I called it The Hole. The day I got the keys we had an illegal basement party with the band Salem. We partied it up in the grimy basement to celebrate The Hole filling the hole, or something [like that].
2002 was the year I moved to NYC after college and started connecting with the art and nightlife and creative community here. I met Brendan Fowler who played a Deitch after party in Agathe Snow’s mom's old empty restaurant. I met Dash when he tackled Brendan while Brendan was performing. I met everyone fun through Dash. A whole mycelium of activity opened up when I pulled that mushroom. I remember going to Sway every Sunday night to hear Ben Cho play The Smiths and Morrissey and losing my favorite black hoodie behind one of the benches. I remember Dash dancing to "The Last of the Famous International Playboys" on the table, kicking beer, and purses everywhere.
I remember going to Good World (now closed) down on Canal [Street] and something almost every night because Terence Koh lived across the street, and you could do whatever you wanted there without getting hassled. I remember meeting Aurel Schmidt when she was one of SWOON's assistants, cutting out Mylar in our Deitch Brooklyn studio, and then going to Tim Barber's house where she was staying to sell her first drawing to a museum. Aurel always looked amazing because she traded drawings for Opening Ceremony clothes, back when she couldn't afford them. I helped Terence do his window installation at OC and brought him a big bottle of Patrón in my coat and snuck drinks with him in between his sculptural interventions. I remember going with Rosson Crow to buy matching Topshop jackets out of their loft because we couldn’t wait for the Frieze Art Fair to buy Topshop, which wasn't then available in the States.