Hell’s Kitchen is home to three famous historic music venues, all readily accessible from campus. But if you need another reason to head down and west to see a concert, saying you are hanging out in a neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen will always make you sound tough.
Hammerstein Ballroom
Built in 1906 by Oscar Hammerstein as the Metropolitan Opera, Hammerstein Ballroom is one of the most beautiful venues in the city with some of the best acoustics. Though it was once home to operas and, later, vaudeville acts, the Ballroom began attracting a more diverse set of acts starting in the 1940s—musicians from Perry Como to Bob Marley have performed there. The Hammerstein Ballroom is now housed in the Manhattan Center, a sort of giant entertainment center complete with recording and television studios, as well as another venue, The Grand. Getting tickets to performances at the Hammerstein can be a tricky and confusing ordeal because the venue does not have its own box office. Tickets must be purchased through Live Nation, a highly impersonal Web site. Still, it is often worth the trouble, as the Hammerstein tends to book exclusive shows. Upcoming concerts include Echo & the Bunnymen and Pixes—two bands you are unlikely to see anywhere else for a long time, unless you have a time machine to take you back to the ’80s. The Ballroom’s architecture—it is, after all, a 100-year-old opera house—makes standing in a sweaty crowd at a rock concert feel deceptively elegant.
Terminal 5
While the Hammerstein originated as an opera house, it is telling that Terminal 5 was formerly Club Exit, which was closed by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2003. The venue has cleaned up a bit since it opened in 2007 as part of The Bowery Presents, but it still maintains a multi-level warehouse-like club feeling. Getting to Terminal 5 is a bit of a trek—the walk from the Columbus Circle 1 station to 11th Avenue always feels longer than it should—but thousands of people flock there because of the excellent acts it attracts. Shows that would be relatively sedate affairs elsewhere quickly turn into mass dance parties at the 3,000-person capacity, 40,000-square-foot Terminal 5. An upcoming Peaches show is pretty much guaranteed to get out of hand in the best possible way. But, while Terminal 5 is a great place for mass get-downs, it is not at all intimate. The stage is set far back and the sight line from the audience is often obstructed by giant columns and throngs of loud drunk people. The acoustics are also less than ideal, mostly because the space is so gigantic and sprawling. But when you’re just going to a concert to dance, who needs to see or hear the artist?
Birdland
Birdland has become almost synonymous with jazz, lending its name to George Shearing’s standard “Lullaby of Birdland.” The venue was named in homage to Charlie Parker, or “Bird,” and opened in 1949 on West 52nd Street. With the dwindling popularity of jazz music in the 1960s, Birdland was forced to close its doors in 1965. The club reopened on 105th Street in 1986 but moved back to midtown in the ’90s for tradition’s sake. Though jazz isn’t the cultural phenomenon it was in Birdland’s heyday, the venue has seen the greatest contemporary jazz artists, including the late Oscar Peterson and Freddie Hubbard. The music and history come at a hefty price, though. There’s a cover charge plus a $10 food and drink minimum. If you chose to sit at the bar, you get one complimentary drink with the music price, avoiding the minimum. The 10th Annual Django Reinhardt Festival—which pays tribute to the French gypsy jazz guitarist and Woody Allen favorite—ends this Sunday.
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