ABC No Rio

Last week, the New York Times published a story on ABC No Rio. And what was ABC No Rio? It was, according to the Times, an indie art collective, one part anarchist group, one part punk, one part performance art. In the late 1970s, its founders cut the lock on an abandoned building on the Lower East Side and held an art exhibit. The city then offered them the use of a different building, a building that, by all accounts, was falling apart, with massive leaks, rat problems, and drug users upstairs.

The collective hosted art, then hardcore punk shows and ‘zines, and all sorts of Lower East Side cultural stuff that is almost exactly the opposite of my personal aesthetic. (My downtown arts scene is the avant-garde jazz and dance scenes.)

Over time, the organization became more respectable (or, at least, less disreputable), until today it is having a four-story building constructed, paid for by NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

It’s an interesting story, but it left out the part I’m most interested in: in 1992, ABC No Rio became a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. The Times story doesn’t mention that, and doesn’t lay out exactly what was going on at the time–it seems to have just recently started hosting punk shows, and a year later the people who ran the punk shows took over leadership of the organization. They apparently aligned it with the squatter and anarchist movements, which doesn’t feel like the kind of leadership that would file a Form 1023.

So I’m curious about how, in 1992, ABC No Rio decided to become ABC No Rio, Inc., a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that had $81,000 of revenue and assets worth a little under $14 million. 

Samuel D. Brunson

Photo by Eden, Janine and Jim. CC BY 2.0