Dianne Y.
Yelp
5 stars but MINUS 1 STAR BECAUSE OF RENOVATIONS ;P
Been to the New Parish a bunch of times, mainly for Wormhole Wednesday. 5 stars for the Wormhole crew.
!!! THE RENOVATIONS:
THE "SIDE ROOM" is now a kitchen. Brightly lit, white-walled kitchen. But I guess it's cool, you can now buy arugula salad sandwiches or whatever.
So now the side room dj set-up is in the courtyard, which, yeah, is cool, I guess. I wonder what they're gonna do when it rains. Just cancel the side room/courtyard stage?
THE RESTROOMS:
They SWITCHED the men's and women's room. So they have a security guard posted between the rooms to redirect everyone who is now confused. (Women's room used to be at the end of the hall, and men's used to be by the courtyard door--now they're switched.)
The bathrooms are all fancy now. Yeah, it's modern and clean and the toilet roll dispenser has a surface to put your drinks and phone, etc, and it's useful and nice. BUT, the previous dive-y/punk/janky restroom had a better vibe. All they really needed to do was fix the leaking toilets in the women's room. They didn't NEED to do this whole major renovation. I'm waiting for people to stick stickers and tag obscene poetry on the new bathroom stalls. Bring back co-creative artwork.
INSIDE the main room:
New railings upstairs/mezzanine with a little ledge to hold your drinks. I guess that's nice, but not necessary. Sure, thanks for the added utility.
They added lighting along the bottom of the stairway. That WOULD've been nice, but now you can see how dirty the carpet is.
I don't know if the renovations were in the works for a while or it only happened because of the new management (look up the East Bay Express articles about the owner). Things DO look nicer and cleaner, but I personally don't think it was all that necessary (I don't know if there were more things wrong with the venue other than the leaking toilets). It feels related to gentrification--trying to appeal to yuppies, rather than the original sort of punk/gritty vibe. Or it could just be that management wanted renovations to keep the venue competitive. I dunno. Whatever, I guess. Just feels a little too fancy and new right now.
A cool thing about the venue is that it's multi-purpose. In the daytime, it's used by Bicycle Coffee as a cafe.