INTERVIEW WITH KGB BAR’S PROPRIETORS
Published in the exhibitor booklet for the 2022 East Village Zine Fair, with illustration by Hayley Earnest.

It will show you what it wants to be

Denis Woychuk and Lori Schwarz, the husband-and-wife team behind KGB Bar, sit down with Em Brill, a poet who runs a reading series at the bar, to talk about how the Fourth Street spot became the place to be for writers in New York.

Em: I know you have a history with this building. When you got the opportunity to take over this place, what made you decide to take the leap and say yes?

Denis: New York City fucking real estate, man. You want the short version or the long version?

Em: Either’s good.

Denis: So KGB’s predecessor was the Ukrainian Labor Home, a center for lefty Ukrainians. They knew me because my father used to drink there. In fact, I had my first drink there when I was five. I spit it up and all the old men laughed.

I opened an art gallery in what is now the Kraine Theater on the first floor in the ’80s. Artists would come to the parties I’d throw there every Friday night, and we’d hang out in the bar. There’d be these little old ladies, pushing 80, making homemade vareniki by hand, and you could get a soup, salad, meat, potatoes, a vegetable and a shot of vodka for $5.

I had taught writing at Pratt Institute, and I was in law school at night at Fordham. The gallery was my entertainment. I liked the vibe that artists had, the creative energy of “let’s do this because we want to, not because we can bill for it,” which was the law school vibe. “If you can’t bill for it, it’s not worth doing.” What kind of life is that?

I spent about $50,000 a year, maybe $55,000, running the gallery, and I made back maybe $50,000. Great business plan. But I liked it. I liked this building. Though I didn’t even think about real estate in law school. I thought, “Who cares about real estate?”

Lori: But didn’t you have a plan when you were younger to own this building someday?

Denis: Well, you know, I’m from poor people, so the idea of getting things, owning stuff — My father owned everything that he could keep in a brown paper bag. He was maybe the poorest person I ever knew.

Anyway, when I finished law school, I got a corporate job. And I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna kill myself.”

Em: [laughs] I relate.

Denis: So I left my corporate job, and I went to work at a mental hospital for the criminally insane. I kind of liked it and was good at it. But I was starting to have bad dreams. I mean, I had a client that boiled his girlfriend and served her as soup.

Em: Holy shit.

Denis: Yeah. So my gallery was the main source of income for the Ukrainian Labor Home, and they were aging out. I said, “Can I take over this building?” They said, “OK, well, we’re in it for five more years.”

So five years go by, and then I say, “OK, I’m ready to exercise my option.” And they say, “What option?” I say, “We have an agreement.” “Where is it? Show us the agreement.” There was a board of directors for the Ukrainian Labor Home, and it had switched. The board voted on it, and they voted unanimously against. This is 1988. So, fuck you very much, I leave. In 1992, they call me and say, “Look, we’re having some difficulties paying our bills. Could you come back, please?” I say, “If you’ll give me an option to buy.” So I get an option to buy.

In ’93, I make a plan to open a speakeasy in the bar, which used to be Lucky Luciano’s “Luciano’s Palm Casino” before the Ukranian Labor Home came in in 1948. It’s got the original stained glass behind the bar from 1920. I decide I’m not having a sign, because I want there to be the whole speakeasy vibe. So I think, “What am I going to call a bar without a sign?"

Spy Bar in SoHo is pretty hot around this time. I can’t call it Spy, but that name goes along with the idea that you have to know about it — spies know about shit that other people don’t know, right? And even more specific than Spy Bar is KGB, the spy organization of the Soviet Union.

The New York State Liquor Authority and New York Department of State require you to justify a corporate name. Like, you can’t call your bar Houlihan’s unless your name is Houlihan. But I happened to have a corporation registered called the Kraine Gallery. So it’s “Kraine Gallery Bar, doing business as KGB Bar.” It started in ’93. And the first reading was in ’94.

Em: Did you change the decor at all? Are you the reason that it’s red?

Denis: Yeah, I went with the black and red theme, because it really pissed off the other Ukrainians in the neighborhood. I almost had some rumbles — they were very anti-Russia. But I was like, hey, it’s communist nostalgia. Look at all this great paraphernalia that I have. Most of it was hidden away in the building. Those are authentic World War II posters, photographs of Brezhnev. All this commie stuff, to me, was interesting. And at the time, the East Village was relatively radical — more edgy, more dangerous. There was more of a fucked up, vibrant, violent street life. People used to come from Harlem to cop their drugs here. It was crazy.

Em: Tell me how the readings got started.

Denis: I’m a writer, and one of the reasons I wanted a bar was because I was inspired by the Beats and the Abstract Expressionists. I was living in Brooklyn, which could have been Indiana at the time, it was so provincial. I thought, I’d like to be part of a scene.

Nobody was doing readings. And I thought, writers are lonely. To come to a place and be welcomed by fans, it’s such a rising feeling. It’s so rewarding to actually have human contact after the isolation. I get it.

Frank Browning did the first reading with my buddy Melvin Bukiet, and for some reason beyond my understanding, the New York Times was there, and they reported “New Reading Series at KGB Bar in the East Village.”

Lori: Did Rebecca Donner come in at that time?

Denis: No, she came in some years later. Melvin was so afraid of her.

Lori: She’s gorgeous.

Em: I love a scary literary woman. I aspire to be one.

Lori: You’re there, girl.

Denis: So we started doing this fiction night. Ken Foster did a good job with that, though he was a bit of a Columbia snob. It was very popular, and I just loved it — so many stories. I really got to study the voice of the writer.

Then Star Black and David Lehman were here one night and they said, “Why don’t you have a poetry series?” I said, “Well, that’s a good question. Why don’t you run one?” They said, “OK.” And, immediately, the next week, Ken says, “What’s this I hear? A poetry series? You’re diluting the brand.” I said, “Ken, settle down. First of all, it’s my brand, not yours. And second of all, it’s not fiction, it’s poetry.”

Em: Oh, writers are so funny.

Denis: Then in 2000, George Plimpton of the Paris Review was asked to judge the best literary event in New York. And he says, “Well, it’s between the 92nd Street Y and KGB Bar. I considered the lineups and the atmosphere. The lineups are equivalent, but the 92nd Street Y charges $15 to get in, and KGB Bar is free, and they have drinks, so I’m going to give it to KGB Bar.”

Then, in 2002, we got eight pages in the New York Times Magazine — “The Writers of KGB” — in, check it, the fashion section. Suddenly, writers are like, “You got to put up a sign, dude, my agent cannot find it. You’re not just a local bar now.” So I put up that little sign. And it’s been there for 21 years.

How did you find out about KGB? How long had you been coming before you started curating readings here?

Em: I’ve been coming here since 2014. I found out about it through Tyrant Books — I had heard KGB was Gian’s favorite bar, and I was interested in his scene, so I started coming to readings.

Denis: In a few words, tell me — what’s Tyrant Books to you?

Em: To me, and I think, to my generation, they’re a legendary New York independent publisher. Like, Gian knew what was cool. He identified and cultivated writers who he knew had promise outside of the mainstream publishing system, because of love for literature, and for excitement and possibility.

It was this very fresh, almost renegade sort of energy that didn’t care about publishing world pieties. He wasn’t interested in that, he was interested in purely the work, and bringing in people who are going to kind of shock you, but shock you awake, you know?

With the literary world, each generation brings in the younger generation, because the younger generation is looking at the older generation and admiring them and being like, “I want to be like them.” So that was me with the Tyrant generation. I was in my late teens, early 20s when they were first doing stuff, and I was like, “That’s so cool, that’s the real New York literary world thing.” And that was kind of an inroad into the literary world for me.

Denis: Cool.

Em: The coolest shit I’ve ever seen at readings has been at KGB, whether it’s cool in a “this is so sick” way, or cool in a “what the fuck? I’ve never seen anything like this, and I don’t even know if I like it, but I will remember it” way. Like, once I saw this drunk writer get up to the podium and go on a rant about the state of the publishing world as her reading, and she started crying during it. People were like, “Is this performance art or is this real?”

There’s always just been something about the vibe here. You’ve talked about how when you were thinking about getting this place, you were attracted to the vibe, and we’ve talked about KGB’s history, like you’ve told me that Emma Goldman used to host meetings in what is now the Red Room —

Denis: The Secret Society of Anarchists.

Em: Yeah. It has this countercultural history and this avant garde spirit to it, which is something I've always loved about it. I'm wondering how you think that vibe has become so potent here.

Denis: I think if you’re open, things can happen. If you let people who are talented do what they want, they do a much better job than if you say “Do it this way.” People want to do it their own way.

Lori: As long as it’s legal, people can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want here. As long as they don’t break stuff and it’s legal. And that’s what we want. I don’t want to micromanage anybody. It’s not my show, it’s their show.

Em: I love that. I mean, as a curator, that’s the thing you want to hear: “We trust you, you have free rein, do what you want.” It’s so affirming, and I think it lets the best art come through, because you’re not running up against limitations. You can dream as big as you can.

Lori: Yeah, you’re the creator.

Em: Lori, can you talk about how you got involved with KGB?

Lori: I had a showroom and represented emerging designers. When I met Denis, I was doing that. He was building out the Red Room when we first started dating. I would throw on a skirt and top and come in here and wait tables on nights that they didn’t have a waitress. And Dan, who’s worked at KGB since ’94, taught me how to bartend. Eventually, we realized that we needed a detail-oriented person to run event bookings. And my business was starting to change, so I had time.

Denis and I have very similar management styles. For one, we’re all about emerging everything. We love it, we’re stoked on it, we get off on it. When I was in the fashion business, I specialized in giving opportunities to talented designers that didn’t have the money and nobody knew who they were. Being able to spot the next big thing and give them a chance is what my career has been about, really. I segued into a different genre, but it’s all the same skills. I learned how to do this by doing it.

One thing Denis verbalized for me about running a business, which was a theme I felt I had encountered in the fashion world too, was “it will show you what it wants to be.” The creative direction of the Red Room, when it first opened, was really only going to be “speakeasy / Prohibition era.” At that time, it was a trend, but it didn’t last. So we had to open it up. It’s showing us what it wants to be, and we have to allow that to happen.

Denis: Space is like a child in that way. You can want it to be what you want it to be, but it wants to be what it wants to be. It turns out the Kraine did not want to be an art gallery, it wanted to be a theater. You got to give your kid the shot that it wants. Your kid might want to be a painter or a doctor and you want it to be an elephant. But it can’t be an elephant.

Em: Lori, you told me you felt like the Red Room stage is spiritually intended to host weddings. Because you and Denis got married there, and then Rachel [Rabbit White] and Nico [Walker] did a restaging of their wedding there.

Lori: I do feel that. I feel so many things about Den and me and what’s going on here. Because we are really meant to do this together — we get it. It’s so unusual to meet somebody who you can do this with, it’s so fucking weird.

I was so honored that Rachel and Nico wanted to do their wedding here. I feel like this space is about people becoming what they’re supposed to be. And I think a wedding is a spiritual transaction. It’s more than just a handshake — you’re making a vow.

I just love being a part of people’s destiny. For me, that involves giving people space to learn how to use their resources, whatever they are. KGB is a space that creates the opportunity to do that. And that’s why the only rules for curators are that people have got to buy drinks, and you have got to fill the room. And that’s it. Beyond that, do whatever the fuck you want.

Em: Well, that’s a great place to end it on.

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DID YOU KNOW…

Longtime KGB bartender Dan Christian once opened for David Foster Wallace with a “fairly incoherent, paranoid rant” during a reading in the 1990s.
The first reading of Fight Club took place at KGB Bar. Chuck Palahniuk is reading at KGB again this October.
Denis, the founder of KGB, has written several books, including several children’s books and a memoir of his time as an attorney for the criminally insane.

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Denis and Lori wish to thank all the writers, performers, bar patrons, bartenders, musicians, and curators who have kept KGB going strong since the 1990s and helped it weather the storm of the pandemic. They couldn’t have done it without you.