KGB Bar

Article

KGB Bar is a recurring venue in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 16 times across 16 issues between October 14, 2024 and January 14, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “from 7pm at KGB — The KGB Bar presents their monthly open mic”; “From 8pm at KGB Bar — Easy Paradise hosts their Holiday Spectacular Open Mic”; “Me - I was at KGB Bar. A stranger took the photo”. It most often appears alongside Night Club 101, Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Los Angeles.

Metadata

  • Category: Venues
  • Mention count: 16
  • Issue count: 16
  • First seen: October 14, 2024
  • Last seen: January 14, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

October 14, 2024 · Original source
Also from 7pm at KGB — The KGB Bar presents their monthly open mic, and annual haunted house open mic. Come in costume.
December 16, 2024 · Original source
From 8pm at KGB Bar — Easy Paradise hosts their Holiday Spectacular Open Mic.
From 7pm at KGB Bar — KGB Lit celebrates their Issue 22 Release. A lit journal from the best bar in New York. Follow the green light to the release party.
February 10, 2025 · Original source
Wednesday, February 5 Deep familiarity is many different things at many different moments, I am told today. I kind of disagree. I think there is a core of things. Actually, I really disagree. I really think that there is a core of things. New album by Desire today. New dress on my doorstep. I wake up in an apartment that is briefly all mine. Where were you a year ago today, my friends were asking at dinner yesterday. It's a reasonably interesting thing to consider. I like it best when a year ago feels very distant. Me - I was at KGB Bar. A stranger took the photo. I look very morose. In my memory I was very nervous, and also, I was very pleased. On a walk, trying to write, trying to pour out the sludge, seeking clarity - "I do not feel like writing a whole fucking retrospective every time I try to journal," I write. I am sorry all my details seem crude today. Rules for solitude are - pace in circles, pace on the treadmill, do not be combative in conversation with strangers, do not eavesdrop, sometimes you will not like what you hear. They are talking about murder suicide at pilates, the girl at pilates owned an animal shelter and her star employee murder suicided himself and his girlfriend. You know that cute blonde blogger, she is saying. She was the girlfriend. The guy seemed nice. You never know. Rules for solitude are do not listen to these things, stop listening to these things, you’re going to freak out if you keep on listening to these things. Later, I'm only here to pick up a phone charger, but there's a whole wall of people reading poems about bitter cynicism in this conference room. I apologize for my bitter cynicism, the woman reading is saying, and I hate being in these buildings after dark, I hate the corporate flair to these things. Powerade Zero on the desks. I would like to go lurk in a Chinatown basement. I would like to write an Alt Lit Novel. I would like to be very, very rude. "Would you like to read a list of people who have been censored," a woman at this strange event asks me. "Have you seen a phone charger?" I ask the women. "Now is not the time to be nihilistic," Madelyn’s friend told her yesterday, and I’m not nihilistic, and I'm sorry, and I'm really sorry, and I really really really need to leave now. Thursday, February 6 Ice and snow over my glass house this morning. I heard the sharp rain in the night. I am not surprised it froze over. I am enjoying waking up with - nowhere to go, no one to see. I wouldn't enjoy it for long, but it’s not too bad for now. Walking through this empty apartment and the only sound is me, and then ice falling off the roof overhead. It’s not a big deal, really, and I'm acting a little delusional and insane about the weight of it all, but it's just that I have never done this before - woken up in a building with no one to greet me. And I have tucked my phone far away so that the solitude can feel more complete. And I have cleaned the apartment, top to bottom. I've wrapped an old scarf all around my face and then I've gone for a walk - no matter that the streets are frozen. I do like the ice. I'm sorry. I do. I hope it lasts. The night is swirling and nice. I forgot to take note. Friday, February 7 My parents are here, and I am glowing with the happiness of it. Start the day slowly. I’ve become a bit reckless. I’ll do the dishes. I’ll take out the trash. Intrinsically sloppy, and I wish I wasn’t. When left to my own devices, a descent into chaos is not entirely inevitable. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, February 10 From 7pm - 9pm at Virginia’s — Date Time thinks it’s not too late to find a valentine. The three girls behind a new Feed Me featured speed dating endeavor present their second event, featuring two 45 min rounds of mingling. - “Everyone meets everyone, so get ready to meet a lover, a friend, or perhaps an enemy.” $5 ticket required for entry (proceeds to Direct Relief in LA), and 1 drink minimum to date.
March 12, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Red Room — Riley Mac and Montana James Thomas present the latest installment of Straight Girls, ft readings by Erin Pérez, Molly Soda, Gideon Jacobs, Benin Gardner, and Jordan Franklin.
And I acted a little crazy last week and there's the tendency to come to gasping for air, make all things new, make all things pure, I'm walking quickly on the treadmill and I am telling you how soon we'll find all things transformed. In the afternoon, in the street, my friend says my name and I jump. We’ve been floating all around hologram world today, you see, and you don’t see me, and I don’t see you, and then so it goes. We begin to walk along, my friend and I, and she tells me about the visions, delusions, the hypothesis, the fish market. My friends are very lucid when they tell me very strange stories. They are very lucid when I respond all high strung. "My Confession is that I removed myself from the organ donor registry," I told my table mates at the Cracks and Pomo dinner. They've seated me with the astrologers, a nice young writer who also knows very few people here, a few friends of David's, a few friends from the orbit of KGB Bar, and they are enthusiastic about my proclamation. This is a good evangelizing cause, one of my table mates says, and I say oh well I'd feel a bit bad if I evangelized people off the organ donor registry, but I was just thinking about the purgatory of the soul and I can't risk it. My table mates reassured me; most people don't think about this enough. Monday Everything was chaos, really, and I got nothing done for days and then I sprung to life on Sunday all I’m-All-New-Like, and what a whirling Sunday it was, stretching gently running fast confessing not at Church but confessing lots at KGB Bar, becoming, no, reverting back to I’m-All-Exactly-The-Same by the time it was past midnight. And I should have gone home earlier, obviously. And there’s some decadence in these worlds I immerse myself in, or not the worlds so much as in me, me within these worlds, the way I react to them. And so there’s no one but myself to blame, really. But I do blame myself. And I am Actually new today. Or, at least, I Know things now. They are talking about songbird soup in my Irish Literature class. I’m zoning out, honestly, and then I zone back in because I hear them talking about “songbird soup” and it sounds so beautiful, I really perk up when I hear this thing about Songbird Soup. But then the next thing they say is songbird soup was where they would literally net three hundred song birds and boil them all up, and it was a symbol of indulgence, it was a symbol of grotesque decadence and a symbol of ounee. Songbird soup was the illness, and wild whimsical lovely Ireland was the cure. And here I was only perking up because I wanted to guzzle down some songbird soup. And here I am thinking about myself again. Tuesday Rules for clarity are: a long walk and methylene blue and if you have vertigo then just go home, because you can’t fight through vertigo, storming through manhattan, all these bright lights will just make you spin. I like alcohol when it is like a potion. You drink an elixir and then things become a bit brighter and more glimmering and shiny and light but, I think how the body reacts to alcohol can be indicators of other things. I’m trying to treat this like a blessing . If I drink alcohol and the potion works opposite and I become sleepy and forlorn and my face turns all red, then it’s like a hack to knowing things about the state of myself. You can know these things by noticing reactions more generally, but I have not been too perceptive. And reactions are only a hack if you act accordingly. I am trying to think of things in very simple terms like, I am reacting to this potion badly these days so, I will try different forms of alchemy, instead. I get to the party early today and the plan is: I will help wash the fruits before the guests arrive. "you going to wash those fucking vegetables or not?" M. says, when I arrive. "very wifey. Is that the most you've ever cooked?" He's right, really. I ordered avocados on this app on my phone right to my doorstep today. You eat foods whole. You try to walk in the sun to collect these ingredients, though it isn't always possible. It really is that simple. Sunday And then, there are other things too. Another party, this one in an Italian restaurant that is far too crowded for the occasion but fun nonetheless. The opera later, the opera this weekend which is good, nice, the set design of the Moby Dick opera is quite impressive but the whole ordeal is a bit much, the ushers and the $27 bad champagne and I was kind of a bitch because David got a double shot of whisky and the opera people thought he said double shot of espresso because who does that at an opera, and then he said no I meant whisky, and then I said oh my god David, in a really bitchy way. Standing in this weird room being weird and judging everyone else. But we stayed for the second act on principle, no one really wanted to, but we can't become people who chug whiskey and leave the opera early. We can't become, in other words, deeply unpleasant people. And it’s deeply pleasant in the morning. And I’ll find myself back at godforsaken KGB Bar in a few days, I presume. I'll find myself back in sparkly sunny strange El Salvador in a week or two. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, March 12 From 6pm - 8pm at Anton Kern Gallery — Love Poems opens; a group exhibition curated by Chris Martin.
Monday Everything was chaos, really, and I got nothing done for days and then I sprung to life on Sunday all I’m-All-New-Like, and what a whirling Sunday it was, stretching gently running fast confessing not at Church but confessing lots at KGB Bar, becoming, no, reverting back to I’m-All-Exactly-The-Same by the time it was past midnight. And I should have gone home earlier, obviously. And there’s some decadence in these worlds I immerse myself in, or not the worlds so much as in me, me within these worlds, the way I react to them. And so there’s no one but myself to blame, really. But I do blame myself. And I am Actually new today. Or, at least, I Know things now. They are talking about songbird soup in my Irish Literature class. I’m zoning out, honestly, and then I zone back in because I hear them talking about “songbird soup” and it sounds so beautiful, I really perk up when I hear this thing about Songbird Soup. But then the next thing they say is songbird soup was where they would literally net three hundred song birds and boil them all up, and it was a symbol of indulgence, it was a symbol of grotesque decadence and a symbol of ounee. Songbird soup was the illness, and wild whimsical lovely Ireland was the cure. And here I was only perking up because I wanted to guzzle down some songbird soup. And here I am thinking about myself again. Tuesday Rules for clarity are: a long walk and methylene blue and if you have vertigo then just go home, because you can’t fight through vertigo, storming through manhattan, all these bright lights will just make you spin. I like alcohol when it is like a potion. You drink an elixir and then things become a bit brighter and more glimmering and shiny and light but, I think how the body reacts to alcohol can be indicators of other things. I’m trying to treat this like a blessing . If I drink alcohol and the potion works opposite and I become sleepy and forlorn and my face turns all red, then it’s like a hack to knowing things about the state of myself. You can know these things by noticing reactions more generally, but I have not been too perceptive. And reactions are only a hack if you act accordingly. I am trying to think of things in very simple terms like, I am reacting to this potion badly these days so, I will try different forms of alchemy, instead. I get to the party early today and the plan is: I will help wash the fruits before the guests arrive. "you going to wash those fucking vegetables or not?" M. says, when I arrive. "very wifey. Is that the most you've ever cooked?" He's right, really. I ordered avocados on this app on my phone right to my doorstep today. You eat foods whole. You try to walk in the sun to collect these ingredients, though it isn't always possible. It really is that simple. Sunday And then, there are other things too. Another party, this one in an Italian restaurant that is far too crowded for the occasion but fun nonetheless. The opera later, the opera this weekend which is good, nice, the set design of the Moby Dick opera is quite impressive but the whole ordeal is a bit much, the ushers and the $27 bad champagne and I was kind of a bitch because David got a double shot of whisky and the opera people thought he said double shot of espresso because who does that at an opera, and then he said no I meant whisky, and then I said oh my god David, in a really bitchy way. Standing in this weird room being weird and judging everyone else. But we stayed for the second act on principle, no one really wanted to, but we can't become people who chug whiskey and leave the opera early. We can't become, in other words, deeply unpleasant people. And it’s deeply pleasant in the morning. And I’ll find myself back at godforsaken KGB Bar in a few days, I presume. I'll find myself back in sparkly sunny strange El Salvador in a week or two. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, March 12 From 6pm - 8pm at Anton Kern Gallery — Love Poems opens; a group exhibition curated by Chris Martin.
March 25, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
May 21, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, May 12 At the Holiday Inn, there are Yakisoda noodles and banana cream pie snack pack jellos and krabby patties gummy candies and lances cream cheese and onion dip crackers. All the most disgusting snacks imaginable, and kind of perverted, too. I’m so particular and annoying with my sleeping issues that I always find myself at depressing hotels, even when there is a wonderful home down the road where I am welcome. I need a Big Bed and Isolation. I need Temperature Control. As a child, I liked things such as camping in birch forests and cramped little stone cottages in some village where my parents would find someone on the Internet to swap houses with. Unfortunately, I grew up into someone with severe and undiagnosable sleep disorders, and a taste for adventure that is rooted more in hedonism and less in fresh air. I feel really full and sleepy heading back to New York. Well, things are better than they were. Total nightmare policy. Total, blow up your life brother, policy. I was so addicted to writing in my google docs journal this weekend and now I have a lot of annoying slop to show for it. I call my dad in the sun outside the Starbucks in a Strip Mall. Stop thinking about things in such eternal terms, they tell me. You wouldn’t get in a car crash and say When Can I Go 100 Again, they remind me. Fiction, again - they are talking about somebody else. The idea of compromise no longer makes your blood boil. It’s an unsavory trait that it ever did in the first place. "The other alternative is that I just become a nightmare and you become perfect," I told him. "That is certainly an alternative," he told me. It is 11:30pm, and I am thinking about getting a job. I am thinking about the Current Body Red Light Mask and the Ayede heels from ssense.com. "What if I hadn’t simply crashed out," he said. "There would have been pros and cons to that," I said. There is a fire alarm and mauve curtains and two weird arched doorways because we booked a suite and so the architecture suggests some simulacra of something vaguely Roman. Marble. Plaster cut to look like marble. I go to buy water and they have turned off the creepy lights at the creepy pool. Tuesday, May 13 I was feeling really terrified, if I’m being honest about it. I was sitting on the sidewalk picking at my nails and drinking hot coffee in the hot sun, eight splenda, curdled almond milk. I was voicing concerns in a high pitched voice and I was losing track of the distinguishment between ideas imagined and conversations regurgitated. God forbid I have an original thought of my own - that part wasn't even on the table. It isn’t so dark and depressing anymore. Walk in the rain and everything is so green here. I’ll be back in the city tonight and there are better omens in the astrology these days around things like planes, the return, glass apartments in the sky. He leaves my keys on the bedside table at the hotel, and he’s still asleep when I pack up my things and leave to eat black coffee, turkey deli meat, garlic aioli, marcona almonds. We drive to his parent’s house and he gives me drumstick vanilla ice cream. Working on this laptop, surrounded by all this green. You know that every time you hit this vape it coats your lungs in sweet thick paste, I am telling him, as I hit his vape. The last time I wrote about hitting a vape I received an infuriating pseudo intellectual email about the verbiage "hit" as suggesting a sado-masochistic impulse in our digital age. "I wonder if soon, you'll be saying you 'Beat' or 'Pummeled' your vape?" the idiot email writer wrote. The email made me so mad. You're so stupid, I wanted to write back. We go for a walk in the bright green forest. There is a sweetness here. A coming-back-into-control that makes the out-of-control-ness feel so distant. Escape from Evil and two days later you mistake reprieve for salvation. Unless, you are not mistaken. It really could be that simple. What was it they were saying on The Internet? Break The Pattern Today Or The Loop Will Repeat Tomorrow. What was it I've been saying online? Edit Artificial Intelligence robot voice over text to speech words - "Taking My Party Boy Boyfriend On A Walking Tour Of The Cotswolds." I clarify that I've been defending his honor. We're crushing up the plastic water cups, and the hill is steep up the road. I clarify that there are people of extremes. It was very bad, but now it is very good, I am texting my mother. Honestly, I'm so sick of clarifying anything at all. You're a little more sober with it. You're a little more gentle about it. It transformed in two days. Imagine two weeks. Imagine a year. Imagine rushing even one second. I can control my consciousness. Though, it isn't my consciousness, really, that I've been concerned about. I'm glad we share a frame of mind. This plane is basically empty. Wednesday, May 14 We went to KGB late last night. Thursday, May 15 The woman who does yoga on her fire escape is out there with a cigarette, today. I’m not in a bad mood today. The apartment is a mess and I am concerned about my past. Things become steady, and then even bright. Friday, May 16 Well, I didn't write because I have been busy in real life. I've been imagining an identity rooted in delusions in the secret diary that stays offline. It is not so delusional. I am feeling so sincere. Rebecca is here. My sister is here. We went to KGB Bar and Fanelli Cafe and Funny Bar where we met a Gagosian guy turned AI guy, which I guess has kind of been my career arch too though I am not so pleased about that direction. We went to the party at Bowery where the waiter from Fanelli Cafe was the DJ and I had two vodka sodas then soda water with lime which might be all I do soon, though I keep on having all these cyclical conversations with myself about these things - consumption and gluttony - and there is little that more dull, so I will not bring it up again. I went to the sleep specialist and she giggled when I said I don't scream in my sleep if I am in the company of strangers. That's different but great, she said. Do I control my subconscious, I said. Stupid idiot, she said. I did actually go to all these parties, and I did call him from the bathroom. He'll be back in New York soon, making film and code and learning banjo. It's way better than the alternative, and I do feel very proud this week which is something I have not been able to say in a good long while. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Wednesday, May 21 From 7pm - 8:30pm at The Flea Theater (20 Thomas St) — I’ll be seeing Revolution: The Play. Sophia Englesberg is associate producer, and everything she touches is wonderful. Written and produced by Brett Neveu, directed by Rebecca Harris. The theater is next to The Odeon, so you can get my favorite martini before or after the show. - “Who celebrates their 26th birthday in the alley outside of her hairdressing place o’ work? Revolution interrogates and celebrates the very nature of creating community and building friendships in our ever-evolving, ever disconnecting world.”
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Cracks in Pomo hosts a launch party for the release of the zine vol. Iii. I’ll be reading, along with Valerie Stivers, Matthew Gasda, and Jonah Howell. Join for drinks, chats, and discounted zines for sale . RSVP here. If you can’t come, order a copy of the zine here
From 7pm at KGB Bar (Red Room) — Meg Spectre presents The Meg Spectre Spectacular - a musical-comedy show featuring Ivy Wolk, Amelia Ritthaler, Megan Bitchell, and Willie Zabar. You can read about Meg being brilliant and fun here. It’s a huge night at KGB. I’ll certainly be there! Will you?
May 27, 2025 · Original source
From 7:30pm at KGB Bar —- Me And My Victim screening, Q&A, and party - “Blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction, Me and My Victim is about co-directors and subjects, Maurane and Billy Pedlow, who are not quite friends and not quite lovers and the true, messy, and kind-of-fucked-up story about how they met.” After Party to follow the screening at Paul's Baby Grand. Hosted by Cassidy Grady.
July 06, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Bar — I will be reading at Confessions along with Mara Stoner, Sarah Fradkin, John Padula, Cassidy Grady, Annabel Boardman, and more.
July 18, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Will Higgins hosts Bit by Bit - a comedy show ft Grace O’Malley, Daniela Mora, Emily Wilson, and Noel B.
July 23, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
July 29, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm - 9pm at KGB Bar — Late To The Party Press hosts a reading, ft Jessica Defino, Abigail Mlinar, Leah Abrams, and Madeline Howard.
September 12, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Confessions is back with hosts Cassidy and Chloe. Ft readings by Julia Nightingale, Sam Forster, Neurothicca, Peter Gast, Asher Bentley, and Cassidy Grady.
October 06, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Riley Mac & Montana James Thomas present STRAIGHT GIRLS. Ft. Alex Auder, Maya Kotomori, Ruby Mccolister, Georgica Pettus, and True.
From 8pm - 11pm at KGB Bar — Grace Byron celebrates the launch of her new novel Herculine. Ft. Kilbourne, Zyra West, and Whitney Mallet. Party to follow on the first floor.
October 27, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm at KGB Bar — KGB Lit launches Issue 25; ft Vanessa Ogle, Joseph Hogan, Erica Cantley, Oliver Baer, Julia DeBenedictis, Braedan Houtman, Kaden Griggs, Ally Salvador, Jessie Askinazi.
December 22, 2025 · Original source
From 7pm - 9pm at KGB Red Room — GirlPox presents Open Text Night. Like an open mic night but it’s your real unhinged text messages… Emceed by Marc Rebillet. | RSVP here
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Riley Mac & Montana Thomas James bring back Straight Girls, with readings from Anna Birch, Whitney Mallett, Bunny Rogers, Sam Anderson, and Tilghman Goldsborough.
January 14, 2026 · Original source
From 7pm - 9pm at KGB Red Room — GirlPox presents Open Text Night. Like an open mic night but it’s your real unhinged text messages… Emceed by Marc Rebillet. | RSVP here
From 7pm at KGB Bar — Riley Mac & Montana Thomas James bring back Straight Girls, with readings from Anna Birch, Whitney Mallett, Bunny Rogers, Sam Anderson, and Tilghman Goldsborough.