Entertainment
A New Home for Music
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I OCTOBER 2017 35
Photo courtesy of DMNDR
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
While Manhattan and Brooklyn have
reputations for fostering thriving music
scenes, one Queens native is hoping
to create a home for musicians in the
“World’s Borough.”
South Ozone Park native John Be-litsky
has big plans for a 20,000-square-foot
former sushi factory in Long Island
City. While he’s still in the very early
stages of the design and planning
process, Belitsky envisions a space
where the music, art and food scenes
intersect.
Though his background is in real es-tate
development and design, Belitsky’s
first passion was music and art.
“I grew up poor, so pursuing arts
was just terrifying,” he said. “I took
a business track and throughout my
whole business career I was doing
art shows.”
In 2014, he started DMNDR, a
music website where photographers,
videographers and journalists could
post interviews, live sessions, show re-views
and photographs of their favorite
artists. Those interested in covering
shows sign up through his website
— PressPop — and are automatically
connected to artists’ publicists for
press passes.
Now, the DMNDR community is
made up of 200 people who cover
shows around the world. This space,
located on 36th Street, will act as a
home for the DMNDR community and
the artists they’ve fostered relation-ships
with, Belitsky said.
“This is now our home and it’s a real
home where we can support artists in
a real way, not in some nonprofit way
which is really annoying to me,” he
said. “The museumification of music
and art is absolutely problematic to
me on too many levels. These are not
sculptures; these are living people.”
Though a large component of
the plan includes a music venue for
touring musicians and mid-week jam
sessions, Belitsky wants to use the
sprawling space for a variety of pro-gramming.
In addition to a music venue, the
space will include a studio where
artists can come in and record live
sessions similar to the ones filmed
for DMNDR. The former sushi factory
also boasts a large kitchen, where
Belitsky said he will invite local chefs
to experiment with new recipes.
He’s in talks with Donnie D’Alessio,
the founder of Queens Comfort in
Astoria, to curate a list of local chefs
who can use the kitchen to test out
food on concert attendees and even
restaurateurs who may be interested
in investing in new eateries.
“I want to make this the lab,” he
said. “The food comes right in here, you
test it right on the spot and people who
are interested in trying stuff out get to
do that and it’s all local, community-based
restaurateurs.”
