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City officials have busted Bad Girrls Studios for failure to comply with regulations. Is there room for an alternative arts scene in this red-tape-happy town?

by Ben Geman

Shortly after this newspaper hits the street, Jessica Brand will walk into West Roxbury District Court for a hearing to determine whether criminal charges against her will go forward. City officials are seeking charges against the performance artist for flouting several city licensing regulations. But to her supporters, the June 11 hearing is about something else: whether she'll be prosecuted for running an alternative art space.

The 26-year-old Brand is the executive director of Bad Girrls Studios, a second-floor space in Jamaica Plain that hosts a mix of music, spoken-word, and visual-arts shows. On two successive weekends this spring, police busted concerts at the space and found Brand in violation of fire, alcohol, building, and entertainment codes.

The case has effectively closed down the studio for more than a month, forcing Bad Girrls to scrap about a half-dozen concerts and poetry readings and suspend further scheduling. The police confiscated $712 in donations on May 1 -- the kind of donation Brand calls vital to the survival of the nonprofit (and decidedly uncommercial) space. And Brand says the bust was heavy-handed and intimidating, with Sergeant John Devaney "hostile and belligerent," according to a letter she sent out to supporters.

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Bad Girrls: an update

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Licensing officials and police look at the Bad Girrls case and see a would-be nightclub operating without the proper permits. But to anyone interested in Boston's alternative and underground arts scene, the bust raises a very different issue: the city's failure to recognize that there's a whole world of art that happens in the territory between galleries and nightclubs. Brand admits she didn't have the proper permits, but says she made a good-faith effort to comply with the law. It's just that the law, where multi-use art spaces are concerned, isn't necessarily clear -- and this kind of enforcement doesn't give arts groups the benefit of the doubt.

"There needs to be some kind of advocacy on the part of these organizations that recognizes that it is important to the city to support this kind of work," says performance artist Marilyn Arsem, a teacher at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts who founded Mobius Art Space, near the Fort Point Channel. "The full range of arts activities really makes for a healthy cultural life for the city."

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The trouble started on May 1, when Bad Girrls Studios hosted the jazz act Soul Live in its 1100-square-foot space, located not far from the Green Street T station.

Soul Live never finished their set. At about 10:30 p.m., according to police reports, Sergeant Devaney entered Bad Girrls to check the place out after reading about the show on a flier -- an investigation he calls "standard procedure." Four days later, Devaney wrote the following account of the show: "Upon entering the premises, I observed a line of people waiting to enter. I stood in line, and observed persons paying cash to enter, and getting hand stamped. I was told the cover charge was $8. Entered premises and observed a bar, with three gallons of wine, a case of various wines, and a keg of beer, from Blanchards, Allston, tag #52471. This was a cash bar."

A week later, a similar scene unfolded. The music was different -- it was a punk-rock show this time -- but the result was similar. Police found alcohol without a license (although not from a bar this time; Brand says patrons brought it with them). Again, they cited Bad Girrls for failure to obtain the right permits and licenses. This time, several people were arrested on charges ranging from indecent exposure to disorderly conduct.

City officials paint a picture of Bad Girrls operating as a de facto nightclub -- and, with the fire exit apparently blocked at the May 1 bust, an unsafe nightclub at that.

"I don't think they understood that what they were doing was a public-safety issue," Devaney said last week at a public hearing on the case before city licensing officials.

Sergeant Marci Perez pointed out that when the police came in to shut down the second show, the band performing led a chant she tactfully recalled as "expletive-the-police, expletive-the-police." ("You don't need the expletive, do you?" she asked the licensing officials.)

Both police reports and testimony at the hearing clearly underline the fact that officials perceive Bad Girrls as a nightclub in all but name. But for Bad Girrls supporters, painting the space as nothing more than a club obscures a crucial distinction. According to Brand, the "cash bar" and "cover charge" mentioned by Devaney were strictly voluntary donations, used to help defray the cost of putting on a non-commercial show and to keep the studio running. Sergeant Devaney himself acknowledges that he walked through the door in plain clothes and gave no money.

"Unlike a club, we are not trying to make a profit," said the space's associate director, Duncan Wilder Johnson, seated last Saturday in the studio's office. "We are trying to survive and be alive for the arts community and the community at large."

Indeed, Bad Girrls, say Brand and Johnson, was conceived as both a gallery/performance space and an arts advocacy group. Donations for concerts and shows cover the costs of the performances and help support other key pieces of the studio's mission: an arts program for young girls in Jamaica Plain; free drawing classes; and meeting space that can be used by groups such as the AIDS Action Committee and the Jamaica Plain Arts Council.

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In the small world of underground art and performance, the Bad Girrls case is being closely watched.

"There is a lot of music and performance that does not have a home," says Alan Nidle, director of the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge, which also hosts mixed media and "alternative" art. If even one venue is shut down, he says, it's a blow to the area's alternative arts community.

"Bad Girrls is one of the few places that really supports this stuff [mixed media and experimental art]," says Jamaica Plain artist Donna Ververka. "For people really involved in the performing arts, this is a really big deal."

"Obviously, the city is not trying to encourage this type of thing," adds Nidle. "What they want to do is go to bat for the status quo."

At the Bad Girrls hearing before licensing officials last week, the disconnect between the underground artists and the regulators was palpable. More than 50 supporters of the studio showed up. For half an hour, the eighth floor of City Hall -- usually populated by lawyers, business owners, and concerned neighbors attending zoning disputes and licensing hearings -- was the domain of a younger set with eyebrow piercings and purple hair.

"We definitely represent youth culture in the community," says Brand, "and we want to nurture it. It's a lot different when you have punk rockers in a space than chamber music."

Marilyn Arsem agrees, and suggests that the city treats establishment cultural organizations more gently than it does fringe ones when it comes to enforcing licensing codes. "If an inspector went to the Institute for Contemporary Arts on one of the nights of an opening," she says, "and saw that there were more people than there should be in the space, he or she would probably talk with someone, but not be as aggressive about it."

But the licensing dispute isn't just about building and fire codes; it's also about providing alcohol. And here another comparison is pertinent. Wine receptions are standard practice at openings and shows hosted by established -- and wealthy -- galleries on Newbury Street. And as long as they don't charge for alcohol or ask for donations, galleries require no city license.

But if you're not selling paintings for thousands of dollars, it's harder to afford free wine. And as soon as a space like Bad Girrls puts a donation jar out, it needs to secure a one-time alcohol license, which is granted at the city's discretion.

The result is that such nonprofit spaces, operating on a shoestring with volunteer staff, have to go through a lot of paperwork to do something that wealthier mainstream galleries take for granted. A sign on the front of the bare-bones Bad Girrls Studios reads WE NEED VOLUNTEERS . . . FOR EVERYTHING. According to Brand, getting up to speed with one-time entertainment licenses for each event could force them to cut back. "It means fewer events," she says. "We will have to be more selective. It's a shame."

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As the case progresses, a few things seem clear. One is that Brand really didn't know what permits she needed to host the May events. Police testimony shows that when police first came into the space on May 8, she was clearly confused about the regulations. "She was crying and she was upset and she said she did not feel she needed these licenses," said Sergeant Perez at the June 2 hearing before licensing officials.

Another thing is that she didn't do herself any favors by holding a punk-rock show a week after being cited.

But, ultimately, the case shows how hard it is for a layperson -- especially someone with a multi-purpose space -- to stay on the right side of the law. Brand claims to have made inquiries to city licensing officials, coming away with the impression that she was up to speed. "I don't know what else a human being can do but try and get the information and try and follow the law."

The good news is that the conflict may not be intractable. Esther Kaplan, the city's recently hired cultural-affairs commissioner, says she's begun working with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to produce and distribute information for groups like Bad Girrls.

"I think the licensing guidelines are relatively clear for a lot of organizations," says Kaplan. "I think there's a particular subgroup of organizations that perhaps fall a little between the cracks. . . . What's really important is to document and disseminate the information so we can reach out to those groups and make sure they know what they need to do to be in compliance with the law."

Arsem agrees that the effort is needed. And for now, with Brand yet to appear in court and the Bad Girrls case still pending, she believes that a spirit of cooperation between small, cutting-edge arts organizations and the city needs to be fostered. "Until the arts and humanities office really spearheads some kind of process that allows the issues to be put on the table in a non-punitive way, artists will get nervous," she says. "These are people with power. The city has the power to close down places and the power to levy fines and the power to file criminal complaints."

Brand, meanwhile, is trying to remain optimistic, about her own case and about the future of Bad Girrls. "Success brings attention," she says. "In a strange, weird way, I can look at this as a compliment."

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.