the Butchershop Floor

Starting in 2001 4bz Latimer began renting a property at 195 E. 26th Avenue in [Vancouver], BC. Previously the site had hosted all kinds of businesses since being built in 1930, but most recently it had been a market where meat and seafood was sold. 4bz adapted it into a live/work art studio called "The Butchershop Floor" in reference to the site's historical use and sublet portions of the space for other visual artists to spend a month living on-site (literally wriggling out of nooks built into the walls) and creating artworks, then selling them at month's-end exhibitions and covering their rent. But after a few years of this, supplemented with fees from hosting site rentals for local Burning Man community functions, the administrative work and endless turnover was turning into a bit of a grind. 4bz began headhunting for successors that would allow his TAZ project to continue while allowing him to bug out.

Cthulu discovered the space in late 2003, after being invited there to lend some improvised accordion scoring to a live experimental performance by the Puppet Tuesday Collective (whose core constitutes the now-acclaimed Mind of a Snail troupe) while contemplating what the next move for experimental and emerging arts in Vancouver would look like now that [the Living Closet] was winding down. Not long afterwards he found himself invited to join the steering committee of the "Butchershop 20", a group of twenty emerging creatives with varying and complementary skill sets who were charged with pooling their talents (and member dues) and keeping the dream of an East Van art space alive and sustainable. The 20 additionally included Chad Oakenfold, Jse Scott, Ehren Salazar, Alex Cieslik, Michael Undem, Sam Philips, Ben Frey, Justin Adam, Cara Yeates, Char Hoyt, Jason O'Brien, Wes Cameron and Matthew Robertson (as "until we have a helicopter"), Aleese Nessler, and Justin Muir, among others. The proposed model was that each of the 20 would fund one twentieth of the space's month operating costs through "member dues" and be challenged to earn it back through activities there every month. (How great an idea that seems to you depends on how excited you are to be trapped on a hamster wheel of endless hustle, indefinitely. But on paper it looked like a good deal: initially upon first signing the lease, we only needed to generate $50 in revenues daily.)

The Butchershop 20 operated by consensus, which Cthulu knew from his time administering Mistigris and the Living Closet meant that it ultimately would be governed by whoever was left standing after attrition took its toll. (In situations like this, a benevolent tyranny is really called for, as you can't necessarily get 20 artists to agree that there needs to be toilet paper in the bathroom!) Cthulu racked his brains trying to figure out a way to replicate 20 GOTO 10's ANSI exhibition at this art gallery (gallery profit model: retaining a commission on exhibited works that are sold. But how do we "sell" digital art that has been given away freely for decades? Where were NFTs when we needed them!) but ultimately, serving exclusively on the events committee, he was cordoned away from input on the visual art programming. Instead, he presented the monthly 57 Varieties open stage series and Vancouver installments of Jim Munroe's Perpetual Motion Roadshow, in addition to sporadic concert bookings and one-off programs (eg. a Towel Day listening party of the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio serial.)

A lot of amazing art was exhibited, a ton of incredible music was played, many interesting plays were staged, and incredible amounts of complaints from NIMBYs in the surrounding residential neighbourhood rolled in, but three years of this glorious nonsense was enough for most of the 20, and in 2006 a rump of the 20 (consisting of two: Ehren and Alex... tightening up the number of cooks in the kitchen meant 18 fewer people to veto your proposals!) took over operations as the Little Mountain Gallery, though Cthulu kept close ties with them and his acoustic musical ensemble [the Creaking Planks] became the unofficial house band for art openings there and their "Hidden Agenda" variety show series. Seven years later, Ryan Beil took over operation of the space, which had gradually transitioned from a weird underground art gallery to a weird underground comedy club, and it continued operating in that vein until the building was sold and physically knocked down. Its doors closed for the last time Dec 31 2021, but as of 2024 the comedy club has a new home in Gastown under the same name, an ongoing legacy whose roots are completely obscured.

https://www.littlemountaingallery.com/