PUBLIC HEARING – a Free Event in Herbert Von King Park Amphitheatre
photo by Kelly
We're done talking about the industry. It's time to build something new. On April 19, we're taking over Herbert Von King Park with a free public event. No warehouse, no club, no ticket price. Just a sound system, a full afternoon, and the amphitheater. It's a public space, and it belongs to all of us.
For years, the economics of nightlife have been going in one direction: up. Operating costs are through the roof, corporate ownership is on the rise, and access is getting tighter. Independent spaces are disappearing faster than you can say " gentrification". We've been tracking these numbers, and the question keeps coming up: if the infrastructure becomes too expensive to sustain, what's left for the public?
Unmixed has spent most of its existence inside these numbers: venue finances, bankruptcies, the slow consolidation of cultural space into fewer and fewer hands. That reporting kept circling the same question: what can we do about it?
On Sunday, April 19, we're hosting PUBLIC HEARING. It's an experiment, and it depends on who shows up. We're stripping away the ticketing platforms, corporate sponsorships, and keeping barriers to a minimum. The space will still be a public park, but with a sound system and some amazing music.
The afternoon opens with a discussion session from 1:00 to 2:00 PM to address the unsaid, unresolved tensions, and whatever the industry has left sitting in your chest. Want to take Teksupport and Brooklyn Mirage complaints out of the DMs and into the real world? We’re here to listen. Want to talk about PROs, copyrights, and royalties, and engage with our upcoming study? Then come early, email info@unmixed.org so we can gauge early attendance and divide the hour accordingly. The format honors one thing: face-to-face conversation.
By 2:00 PM, the floor belongs to the music. Incredibly talented NYC-based DJ and producer Sana takes the helm first, followed by Ashley Venom and Alex Wilcox (LIVE), whose secular energy carries the amphitheater through until 6:00 PM. Sunday will be sumptuous.
In parallel with the show, the afternoon will also have a live documentation. Members of the Unmixed team, in collaboration with the Earworm, will move through the crowd collecting short, on-the-ground responses to a single question: What song has been living rent-free in your head lately? It's like a video-polaroid-snapshot, designed to capture informal listening habits that often define the cultural moment more accurately than charts.
Public parks are civic infrastructure, funded for general use. Yet, their potential as cultural space is unevenly realized. Permitted festivals come and go, but the underlying capacity of these spaces to host sustained cultural activity remains largely untested.
The decision to bring a PUBLIC HEARING within a park is not an ode to the earlier eras of music culture, nor is it a replacement for traditional venues. It’s an experiment, where we need you to participate, to test the minimum requirements: how little infrastructure is necessary for culture to happen, and how much of what exists today reflects financial obligation rather than artistic necessity.
the Herbert Von King Park amphitheatre.
Everyone’s encouraged to bring their own beverages and whatever they require for comfort in an outdoor setting. The instruction is intentionally plain: BYOB, arrive early if conversation matters, stay if the music holds your attention. There are no tiers of access and no designated enclosures separating areas.
The event’s broader significance lies in the structure that supports it. PUBLIC HEARING attempts to measure whether public cultural life can still exist without commercial reinforcement. It is not presented as a permanent solution to the financial strain facing nightlife, nor as a substitute for the labor and investment required to operate independent venues. It is presented as evidence that alternative arrangements remain possible, if only temporarily.
Music is not free, and that's not the argument being made here. This is not a blueprint for how every event should look, and it is not a claim that the economics of nightlife can be wished away. It is a single data point: what's possible with a near-zero budget and a public permit. Success will be measured by the people who show up, stay, and share space without being asked for anything in return.
What remains uncertain is the simplest variable: whether people choose to show up.
