Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, July 2, 2011
10pm until late
Free

You know how we’re always joking about how one day we’ll get a door for our bathroom? Well, folks, we are happy to report: what once was a joke is now a fact. Our bathroom, it has a door. We’re not saying this is any more reason to come down to Betalevel for Swap Meet (your bathroom at home, we wager, has a door as well), but we are saying that Betalevel is that much more classy of a place now. We have always been classy, true, but now we’re “bathroom with door” classy. Ooh la la. So, you know, maybe this Swap Meet you want to don your top hat or some pearls? Some spats or a monocle would not be totally uncalled for. You bring the fancy; we provide the classy; and we’ll all scream along together to Puttin’ on the Ritz.

Edit: we just checked our karaoke list and there is actually a shocking (shocking!) absence of Taco songs (we assume he had more than just that one). Instead, we’ll simply have to sing Rasputin. We know we have that one.

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts + Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, April 16, 2011
10pm until late
Free

Ah, spring. At long last we have been granted reprieve from our season of rain and cold and sullen indoorsitude. And as the Earth’s axis tilts in relation to the sun, so too our apprehension of the world: everything seems brighter and friendlier and happier and like it might just be, finally, in the end, okay. The flowers, they are in bloom. The birds, they are a’singing.

Oh, how the birds do love a good song. That is why we almost — almost — decided to make this a birds-only Swap Meet. But then we remembered what happened last time we did that, with the guano everywhere and the general confusion over how to use our bathroom’s magnetic “door” (birds being the insane clowns of the animal kingdom). Thus, instead, this is a people-only Swap Meet — for people! So throw off that blanket, closet those galoshes, and come out into the world, to be with people, singing, in a basement. Spring!

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts+Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, January 22, 2011
10pm until late
Free

Ah, the good old days, when men were men, our country was strong, and Swap Meet was once a month. Remember those days?

Yeah, it’s a bit foggy for us too.

And really, the more we think about it, the more we remember that those days of old weren’t always so good; that men qua men certainly weren’t all that great (they were kind of dicks most of the time, no?); and our country, our bleepin’ country, seemed to have something to prove regarding its strength, so it kept getting itself embroiled in questionable wars and whatnot. And Swap Meet? Well, frankly, there were times that the end of the month would roll around and the thought would occur to us: Didn’t we just do one of these things? That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun, but it often didn’t inspire the thrill, the excitement, the sheer pent up frenzy of desire that singing Men Without Hats in a back alley basement in Chinatown should engender.

So we decided to no longer do it on any regular schedule. We’d only do it “when we felt like it.” And generally, since then, that has been about every other month or so. But busy schedules and vacations and holidays and weather-induced malaise have conspired to create a nearly four-month gap since our last Swap Meet. And, let us tell you, we are jonesin’ bad. We’ve got the shakes. We’ve got the sweats. We passed by that copy shop downtown where they do karaoke in the back and a couple of us had crazy heart palpitations and started hallucinating. It’s serious.

But, thankfully, the stars and our calendars have finally aligned: this weekend we can get our fix.

Oh, the sweet ecstasy of song. Our spoon runneth over. You say there is no spoon; we say you can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your hands.

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts+Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, August 21, 2010
10pm until late
Free

Google made its surprising net neutrality “compromise” the same week that Max Headroom was released on DVD? At least megacorps still have a sense of humor.

But, seriously folks, you’re looking at this all wrong. What they’re really saying is that you, when you’re out in the world, mobile, should be with people, not the internet. Because, let’s face it, you want to be downloading and they want you to buy stuff or watch Justin Bieber videos or, you know, buy stuff. That’s what they’re going to prioritize. But that data you want to receive, that you want to give – the exchanges you want to make – should be done face-to-face, live, in person. Google isn’t making an argument against net neutrality but an argument for… SWAP MEET.

Thank you, Google. We appreciate your support. We’ll be toasting you this Saturday with a MexiCoke and a song.

Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-catch the wave!

What Is It?

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts+Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list

FANTASTIC FREEDOM SWAP!

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, July 3, 2010
10pm until late
Free

Still bummed that the U.S. national team got eliminated from the World Cup? Well, what’s wrong with you? This is AMERICUH. And we don’t like football unless it’s OUR football — with the swine-skin ball and the tight pantalons and the beefy men wrestling each other to the ground — not that effete, European “soccer” stuff.

And this is the weekend that we celebrate all that is great about America. Like AMERICAN football and grilled meats and things exploding and songs by John Cougar Mellencamp and FREEDOM. You like freedom, don’t you? Okay, then let’s sing about it. Together. In a basement. The way the founding fathers intended it.

And don’t worry, you can Tivo the Tour de France. Sissy.

What Is It?

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts+Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list

Saturday, January 3
10pm until late
Free

It’s all about the little things. For example, the way we got the Betalevel bathroom window to close all the way.

Now you may be asking yourself: “bathroom?” But come now, let’s not split hairs. Let’s appreciate what we have! Friends, family, trading music in a back-alley bunker, all the free homemade karaoke you can sing. And yes, a “bathroom” window that now closes all the way, helping us keep things just a little more cozy at this fog-shrouded winter Swap Meet.

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing

Here’s the house karaoke list.

Please note:
According to recent legal decisions, inducing anyone to use physical space for the purpose of sharing music may render the space-time continuum illegal. Use the space-time continuum at your own risk.

Make Swap Meet your friend