Output Brooklyn Closing at the End of 2018
Output, a beacon for house and techno that helped turn a once sleepy stretch of Williamsburg, Brooklyn into an international nightlife destination, will close at the end of the year, the club’s owners announced today.
“A confluence of factors contributed to the club’s misfortune,” founders Nicolas Matar, Bo Pittman, and Shawn Schwartz announced on Facebook, without going into specifics. “Rapidly shifting social trends, unfavorable market conditions and weakening financial outlooks coincided with the simultaneous emergence of multiple existential challenges unique to the club’s circumstances.”
While acknowledging that the closing, which will occur after one last New Year’s Eve party, “may seem shocking to many,” the owners said they’ve “seen the writing on the wall for some time,” and rejected the option of “taking great risks on uncertain outcomes just to keep the club open in some diminished capacity.”
When the club opened in 2013, it flew in the face of snobby lounges that focused on bottle service, and harkened back to the big-box clubbing days of Limelight and the Palladium, complete with a tooth-rattling Funktion-One sound system. As New York put it in its Best of New York issue that year, “The point here is to dance, not just see and be seen.” Later, Grub Street declared it the absolute best club in New York.
Even as fancy hotels and their rooftop bars sprouted up around it, Output continued to draw an array of local legends like Danny Tenaglia (spinning Dec. 25) and Francois K (Dec. 26) as well as international stars like John Digweed, who will close out the venue on New Year’s Eve. In the summer, its rooftop bar drew lines down the block.
Output’s single-story building at 74 Wythe Avenue sold for $7.4 millionin 2014. At the time, the building’s seller said the club would “continue normal operations as per a long-term lease that is in place.”
