Imagine an ordinary 40’ X 8’ shipping container — the individual standardized unit of globalization — gone missing from the shipping lanes of global capitalism and washed up on the shores of Bushwick, where it has been reimagined as a haven for non-monetary DIY art and community building…

Around the corner from the world famous Punk Alley, 7 BELVIDERE (pronounced Bell-VEE-da-ray), joined our scrappy punk neighbors for two years in trying to get by in the cutthroat NYC real estate market while making as much culture happen as possible in the tiniest space imaginable. The founders of the container space all met at the first iteration of the new Black Mountain School at Asheville, NC in summer of 2016, where through late night discussion we found that we were all seeking a different kind of art and activism space back in Brooklyn. Eight of us began renting the container together in Fall of 2017, paying the space’s relatively affordable rent out of pocket so that door prices would not be necessary at events. The space proved highly unlikely in many ways. Often draped wall to wall in pink satiny fabric and the home of a thrift store where everything was free, the space also was eventually outfitted with a woodstove in a futile attempt to ward off the winter cold in the un-insulated metal cube (Myriam Gurba, after her reading there, called the space "not unlike a chilly, if convivial vagina." But during its two years or so, the space hosted a wide variety of FREE readings, screenings, and meetings including The 25 Hour Free Store, Utopia School, Valentine’s Day letter writing for imprisoned sex workers, a trans women’s writing group, benefits for groups like RAINN, the Club A Kitchen (a group that distributes free food and NARCAN in Bushwick), and The Bermuda Triangle, a Brigadoon-like trans/queer speakeasy that at times appeared in and out of focus just up ahead on the horizon.