Dreadlocked Darryal Dashiell, a
longtime regular who’s making a documentary about the last days of
Black Betty, was interviewing everyone. “It allowed so many musicians
to grow,” he said, out on the sidewalk. The fate of the bar is a
microcosm, what Dashiell called “one more story about a trend that
seems to be happening in this city—where every interaction is some kind
of commercial enterprise.”
Meanwhile, DJ Andrew “Monk-One” Mason wanders
the sidewalk in a “Black Betty” T-shirt, something he had added
underneath in tape. “It’s Cyrillic,” he said. Thoughtful and
soft-spoken, he said the letters loosely translated to “Black Betty
will never die and will live on forever.” He has DJ’d there for nine
years, including a well-loved Friday night party called Greenhouse he
described as “no pretension.”
“It’s totally sweet,” he said of
the wake. “We’ve gotten the bitter out of the way. What went on for 10
years was too amazing to go out on a bad note—we wanted to do a New
Orleans-style funeral.”
Although other area bars have
approached Mason about taking over the party, he has resisted. “I’m not
trying to replace [my] Friday nights because it can’t be replaced,” he
said. “You just can’t take it anywhere.”
anonymous
