Premier Rock Forum

uniquebassplayer wrote:Anybody here have any recent experience with the Sacramento & Carroll building?

scary shit hole with a shitty elevator. i'm glad i'm out of there. i'm so sick of every practice space in the city being a fucking fire trap. while i'd like to see 90% of the bands i hear in these spaces burn to death, i'd rather not have the 10% of people i care about (myself included) burn to death.

this is where we practice. it's pretty MTV, and not as cheap as some spaces, but i feel safe, and i can't hear any other shitty band playing through the walls.

http://www.musicgarage.com

also, according to our bass player, who has a degree in design, that scary carol/sacramento building is a Frank Lloyd Wright building. it doesn't look like it, because it was some kind of experiment he did in poured concrete. there's also supposed to be some kind of bad ass mural in there somewhere, but we could never find it.

but it's still a scary death trap practice space w/ a shitty elevator

I recently moved out of the Carroll street building after several years of renting rooms there. It was OK--mainly because we jumped at the chance to get a room on the first floor right when they finished the first few of them. That elevator sucked. Used it to load gear out to a shitty show on a Tuesday only to find that the elevator had crapped out when we returned, and that happened more than once. It wasn't fun being on the top floor, carrying heavy ass gear up several flights of stairs in the middle of the night and then going to work the next day. Also the roof leaked on us up there.

After we moved down to the first floor, it was great though. We shared a huge heat/AC duct with a few bands though, which wasn't great for sound proofing, but oh well, we were fucking loud and won that war.

The only reason we moved out was that something better and more convenient came along, so we jumped on it.

turnbullac wrote:A couple of years ago, I used to practice at 16th and western. Our room was actually prety decent, big, with a huge window.

The only thing that made me uneasy was their rent collecting scheme. On the first of the month, you had to leave an envelope with cash (no checks, no money orders) in your room, and they were supposed to come by and collect it.

That just seemed really shady and unsafe. Of course, one of our last months as a band, our rent money dissapeared, and since it was all cash there was no way to track it, which resulted in a huge deal.

Hopefully they have changed that policy.

This is a great policy for a junkie with a crowbar with keys to the front door of the space.

i like sacto/carroll ok. sure, it looks like alcatraz, but it works for the most part (despite the elevator already mentioned, but we're on the second floor). the rooms are fairly deadened (unlike superior street; cinderblock mayhem..), it is heated/cooled well, and the main security guard is friendly and helpful. i hear people complaining that it's such a shithole from time to time, but they are pussies. i've played in places 5 times worse..

Thanks for all the info guys. Keep it coming if you've got more.

hopelesshomo wrote:also, according to our bass player, who has a degree in design, that scary carol/sacramento building is a Frank Lloyd Wright building. it doesn't look like it, because it was some kind of experiment he did in poured concrete. there's also supposed to be some kind of bad ass mural in there somewhere, but we could never find it.

but it's still a scary death trap practice space w/ a shitty elevator

I heard about the Frank Lloyd Wright angle too. Not about the mural though.

154- Like you the room we're considering is on the 2nd floor and it's right by the stairs. It seems to me it would almost be easier/ faster/ less effort to not even use the elevator to load in and out.

Overall my impression of the Carroll building was that it was dirtier than Superior Street, and even though only a few blocks away the surroundings felt a bit more sketchy.

Does there seem to be a higher than normal occurrence of car vandalism to any of you familiar with the place? That had crossed our minds while looking at all the broken glass out back.

Plus right now we're on the 1st floor at Superior and I have to say it was way noisier at the Carroll building with a lot of bleed coming in from the rooms next door. We typically rehearse pretty late and there aren't many, if any, other people in the building while we're there. So, in the 5+ years we've been there we haven't had any problems with noise from the other bands. I think that's also due to not only our late schedule, but being sandwiched between a room they use for storage with the room on our other side being just a session drummer that uses it to practice by himself.

it is a sketchy area, but my car has never had any problems. i often bike there, though. maybe ask the guys (or clients) of Chicago Mastering Service as their building is down the block..

i haven't had problems with other bands' noise, unless i'm demo'ing vocals or something and the band next door is playing. everytime i've been to superior street it's been really bad; it seems like there are always 50 bands playing at anytime. once i was jamming with a noise band and i could feel the electronic kick drum from a floor (or two) below us while we played.

but at least the hallways are more colorful!

p.s. a tip to minimise noise next door is to line the edges of the air vent with some foam. we just rolled up a foam thingy, stuffed it in there and left a hole for some air to get through. that's how most of the sound gets into those rooms.

as much as you'd like to think your car would get fucked with at Carol St my car was never fucked with.

and i've practiced at worse places than Carol St., without a doubt (like that place at North/Rockwell), but it still sucks. maybe i'm a little bitch or i'm getting too old. i just don't like walking into a building where it feels like Morlocks are going to eat my liver. i prefer to feel like i'm in a place where someone is trying to earn my money.

Thanks guys.

I'm glad to hear that it's pretty safe to park around there because we are definitely moving in. We just got word tonight from our roommates at Superior Street that they are breaking up and will be moving out.

We'll be there at the end of July or 1st of August. I'll pm the others practicing there so we can meet up a have a beer.