Bubble-icious

(Credit: Janette Valentine)

I first met Garo Gallo and Yvonne Colón … what, four years ago? Five? It seems like longer, but it's been a fairly eventful half-decade. Gallo and Colón started out with big but scattershot dreams: They were going to host a weekly concert series; publish a magazine called "By the Way;" promote Gallo's band, Dooms de Pop; give underground artists a chance to show their work; change the face of the South Florida arts and entertainment scene; take over the world, one event at a time; ad infinitum.

A couple of years ago, at a Halloween event in Stranahan Park that the pair put on in conjunction with the city of Fort Lauderdale, Gallo made an off-hand remark that he and Colón had their sights on a nearby warehouse, which they intended to convert into an art gallery/event space. At the time, I wrote off the statement as another grand idea buzzing around Gallo's manic brain, one that sounded great but would probably go nowhere fast. I have always rooted for the two—few people are as dedicated to building a local scene—but the idea sounded a bit too lofty.

So it was with a mix of chagrin and happiness for the duo that, this past Saturday, I attended the grand opening of Gallo and Colón's IWAN Concept Production Facility. This grand opening, an event they called the Bubble, came after a couple of years of negotiations followed by a couple of months of very hard work after finally procuring the space. The Bubble's bursting featured performances by the aforementioned Dooms de Pop, as well as other local musical luminaries such as the Holy Terrors, the Microdots, Call It Radar, The Bikes, Boise Bob and His Backyard Band, Raffa and Rainer, Fantastic Amazing and Mr. Entertainment. At the same time, a who's who of local artists had their work hanging on the warehouse's walls: Francesco LoCastro, Lisa "Coma Girl" Parrott, Peter Giovennco, Janette Valentine and about a dozen others. LoCastro was also responsible for a massive mural that now occupies the front of the space along Northeast Fourth Avenue.

"We've had the space for about two months," Gallo relayed in front of the mural, as I talked with him before stepping inside. "It's been 12-hour workdays since then, very little sleep. It took seven days just to clear out the chipped tiles—I think the place had been a floor-tiling store or something—and they just littered the place. There were shoulder-high piles of garbage. Branches from palm trees that don't even grow around here. I think they'd used it as a dumping ground."

For all that, the place now boasts a spacious feel, with little furnishings in the L-shaped space. Art hung on the walls throughout the room, and a space at the end of the shorter arm of the L was given over to a gift shop and a trio of large, red beanbag chairs, on which crashed several sweaty, half-drunk art lovers. As I entered, Call It Radar was playing a keyboard-heavy, dance-ready brand of rock at the far end of the long arm of the L. An open-air area in the space between the two arms featured an outdoor stage as well as a refreshment stand, brought to you by Red Bull. The show began at 1:30 p.m. and went on until 10 p.m., and more than 300 people had come and, in some cases, gone by the time I showed up at about 7 p.m.

After the Microdots hit the outdoor stage at about 8 p.m., the crowd grew thick in the back yard, made up mostly of the cigarette-sucking, tattoo-covered, heavily pierced, terminally thin folks who—for better or worse and sometimes both—I had come to see as my people over several years of writing a music column. Being as this space now covers politics or sports or whatever else I feel like more often than it covers music—meaning I am no longer as constant a presence at these sorts of things—the whole scene had a weird, sort of déjà vu quality about it, but I brushed that off with a few sangrías and soon felt at home. The Microdots, consisting of most of the membership of erstwhile Miami act Sayonara Tokyo, played a brand of frantic garage rock that should be familiar to those who knew the band under its former moniker.

Dooms de Pop was the last band to go on, at 9 p.m., and despite the clouds rolling in, the few drops of rain and the booming of distant thunder, the band set up shop on the outdoor stage and was promptly greeted by a downpour about halfway through its set. But a couple of large patio umbrellas, a covered area next to the stage, and the desperate thirst of people standing in line at the refreshment stand assured that the band had a crowd. Audio problems plagued an otherwise spot-on set for the punky, proggy act. (Yeah, I know those two things generally don't seem to go together, but in this case, it works.)

I cornered Colón, who stood watching Gallo's band, to ask about what the place would have going on in the coming days and how she has coped with refurbishing the site. "I learned how to fix up a toilet," the wispy woman responded happily. "Hammers, drills … I've really learned a lot. If you ever need any light construction work done, let me know."

As for the future, her plans are as lofty as ever. "We're doing seasonal events—this opening is our summer one—and we'll have feature artists that go up then and showcase for three months, and then we'll do smaller events weekly," she says. "The main idea is to work with artists on their products and to help them carry out their vision, though we do have some other fun events going on. The last Friday of the month we're doing a movie night, and we have someone who wants to do a vegan night. We want people to be able to do their own events with our space. … We're going to be taking submissions, seeing what artists want, and then working around that."

And though they have big plans for the space, I'm sure now that they'll pull them off. Now that they've transformed a warehouse filled with shoulder-high piles of trash into precisely the sort of underground art space that Broward County was utterly lacking until this moment, I'll never doubt the dream again.

The IWAN Concept Production Facility is located at 810 N.E. Fourth Ave. in Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-562-3804 or visit Independentworkingartistnetwork.com Contact Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com.