The Avenue B Lifer, Abby Ehmann and Her New Music Room
Abby Ehmann closed her sober bar in July and opened a music room in September, farther down the same avenue
On the night of Saturday, September 12, a soul band plays to a full house at 50 Avenue B. Stephanie Marie and the Double Knit Players run through Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, and Steely Dan, with a horn section called the Hot Buttered Horns. DJ Crystal Clear warms up the room. Upstairs, cocktails go out at $17. Downstairs, a well drink costs $9.
The room is called B Scene. It belongs to Abby Ehmann, and it is the latest move in a long career spent keeping the East Village's lights on after dark.
Three Decades in the East Village
Ehmann told the neighborhood blog EV Grieve in a 2016 interview that she had lived in the East Village since 1989. Her first bartending job came in 1992, she said, after she was laid off from the ad business and the Village Idiot hired her as a barmaid. Over the years she also built a reputation as a writer, an editor, and a party producer.
In 2016 she took over the old Boxcar Lounge space at 168 Avenue B and opened Lucky. She told EV Grieve at the time that the bar would have no theme at all and that its mood would come from the people pouring the drinks and the music on the stereo. She planned to stock the jukebox with mixes commissioned from DJs, each one a tribute to a lost downtown room like Mars Bar, Downtown Beirut, or Jackie 60. Her stated goal was a bar for people who felt the city had run out of bars for them.
That idea of a refuge has followed her ever since. In January 2022 she opened Hekate Café and Elixir Lounge across the street from Lucky at 167 Avenue B. It was a sober friendly place, with a mystical streak and a menu built for people who wanted a night out without the alcohol. For a while it stood out in the city's growing alcohol free scene.
Then the scene caught up. In May, Ehmann told EV Grieve that Hekate was not making enough money, and that more bars were now offering low proof and nonalcoholic drinks of their own. The café served its last customers on July 5. Her staff did not scatter. The plan, EV Grieve reported, was for them to follow her down the avenue.
A Basement Built by Neighbors
B Scene sits at 50 Avenue B, between Third and Fourth Streets, in a building that once housed Lovecraft, Joey Bats Cafe, and China 1. According to amNewYork, Ehmann helped with the renovation herself and painted over the old decor. The club's manager, Morgan Liebman, a longtime producer of the F*Bomb concert series, spent the summer living in the basement to get the place ready.
The space runs across two floors and three rooms, each holding roughly 80 people. Upstairs is the Starlight Lounge, a cocktail room with a seasonal list from bar manager Juan Castillo. One drink, the Orchard Sunset, mixes Calvados, aged rum, spiced cider, and rosemary honey. Downstairs is a stage room for live music and a second room that was still being finished at opening. The venue can also screen films, and amNewYork reports the second downstairs room should be ready for private events in October.
Liebman framed the whole project as a neighborhood effort. He told amNewYork that the money, the labor, and the staff all came from East Village veterans, and he tied the opening to the area's comeback after COVID closed so many of its independent music rooms.
This is such a great thing for the neighborhood.
That line came from bandleader Stephanie Marie Hall, speaking to amNewYork after the opening weekend. She also said she was grateful that Abby wants the room to be a space for everyone.
Even the name is borrowed with care. It comes from the B Scene Zine, Scott Orr's chronicle of the East Village, and Orr gave Ehmann his blessing to use it.
The Calendar Tells the Story
What Ehmann plans to put on the stage says a lot about who she is building for. She listed the lineup for amNewYork. A book event. Jazz fusion. A drag king night. An autumnal equinox ritual. The Anti-Hoot. The goth party that used to live at Lucky is moving downstairs, and so is the free live music series on Sundays. Hekate's sober programming is making the trip too, EV Grieve reported in May.
It is a mixed bill. It reads less like a booking strategy and more like a list of friends who needed a room.
On the hunt for new spaces, Ehmann was candid. "I've looked at other places and I always have all kinds of crazy ideas," she told amNewYork. About Hekate, she was just as plain. "We just weren't making any money."
That frankness is part of her appeal. Plenty of operators open rooms with a mood board and an exit plan. Ehmann has spent more than three decades in the East Village, pouring drinks, throwing parties, and opening doors for people who did not fit anywhere else. When one idea stopped paying the rent, she did not leave the avenue. She moved down the avenue and started again.
For a neighborhood that has watched so many of its rooms disappear, a story we traced in our look at the archivist of lost clubs, that counts for something. Jewelry designer Susanne Klevorick, quoted in the same report, compared the feeling to the old days at CBGB and Max's Kansas City, places where you went without knowing who was on the bill. You can read the full amNewYork report on the opening for the rest of the scene.
When one idea stopped paying the rent, she did not leave the avenue.
Lucky is still up the street. Hekate is gone. And on Avenue B, between Third and Fourth, there is a new basement with a stage, a DJ, and a woman who, by her own account, has lived in the neighborhood since 1989.
