Bash Compactor: Bye Bye, Betty

They thought they had the place another 10 years. Sandy Glover and Bud Schmeling, owners of Black Betty, the Williamsburg bar, Mediterranean restaurant and homegrown music joint, had even signed a lease. But the landlord left it open to other bidders, so they lost it to someone willing to pay more. But at midnight on June 15, that was no longer a worry. The solemn part was over, and patrons and musicians were gathered for a raucous wake. Nearly 80 people spilled out onto the sidewalk on Metropolitan Avenue; it was too crowded to get inside. Some peered in the windows; the place was packed, the people inside squashed against the glass. Self-described “dirty gospel” band

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Reverend Vince Anderson and His Live Choir was playing.

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.”