Cheap rent and a piano made a marginal bar into a scene’s seedbed

Evidence

The Five Spot was discovered in the mid-’50s as an alternative to the Cedar Bar, on University Place near Eighth Street, which had become a magnet for tourists and art groupies. There was no scene but there was a piano (and beer was 15 cents). The joint, which until 1955 had been beneath the Third Avenue El, was run by Joe and Iggy Termini, who inherited it from their father. It was small, with a capacity of one hundred. A neighborhood painter and amateur musician encouraged Joe Termini to apply for a cabaret license. Avant-garde jazzmen like David Amram and the pianist Cecil Taylor brought painters from the Cedar. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 83

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s reading purpose — the material conditions (cheap space, 15-cent beer, cabaret license) that produced the venue, usable as a datapoint on what makes scenes possible.