The Village Underground

Gerde's Folk City, the club that helped launch acts from Bob Dylan to Sonic Youth, moved to 130 West 3rd Street in 1970, or 1971 by another account, into what had been "a seedy strip joint"^{1, 2}. It closed in 1987¹.

When the space became available in 2000, Noam Dworman, who owned Cafe Wha?, saw a chance to rekindle the musical importance of Greenwich Village³. He built the Village Underground in the old Folk City's basement, from the bottom up to the standards of the most demanding performers, without any assurance that anybody important would want to play a 225-seat room³. In May 2010, with the Fat Black Pussycat upstairs, it co-hosted a Folk City anniversary celebration².

Then came the comedians. In April 2013 the Comedy Cellar started Friday and Saturday comedy shows in the room, which kept its official name and, for much of the week, its music⁴. By 2023 Dworman owned three comedy clubs on the one block: the Comedy Cellar, the Village Underground and the Fat Black Pussycat⁵. Today it's the larger of the Comedy Cellar's two rooms; on the night we checked, its shows ran from 6pm to 11:55^{6, 7}.