Walking on East 4th Street, one building’s name stands out from the rest. Although its Soviet-themed interiors hint otherwise, the KGB Bar doesn’t technically refer to the USSR’s secret police, but instead, to owner Denis Woychuk’s art gallery.
A former attorney, current artist, and the son of Ukrainian immigrants, Denis has a long history with the building.
“This has been Ukrainian Labor Home’s headquarters for many, many years,” he tells me. As a child, his father was a janitor for ULH. While attending law school, Denis opened an art gallery there and named it for his heritage: the Kraine Gallery. Ten years later, after ULH’s members were too old to continue running the bar, Denis took over. “They thought sundown was time to go to bed, and that’s the time to get up!” he laughs.
As Denis writes on KGB’s website, “What do you call a place that’s almost impossible to find without special knowledge or a guide, a place with a history of left wing radicalism, which I intended to establish as a legitimate counter-culture venue? KGB seemed my obvious choice.”
“The Department of State said I can’t call a bar KGB unless I justify it,” he tells me. “And by coincidence, I had a corporation called the Kraine Gallery.” In 1993, the Kraine Gallery Bar – or KGB – was born.
When I arrive at 6:45 pm, the lights outside KGB are still off. A cheery woman stands by the banister, and we begin chatting. She’s poet Sarah Sarai, who’s been reading her work there on and off for over a decade. Sarai describes her poetry as “smart, clever, whimsical, deep,” and inspired by her love of philosophy.
“She attracts a lively audience,” Sarah says, referring to the bar. “This place is crawling with readings, poets. There’s all kinds of series and poetry projects.”
The doors to KGB open, and I walk upstairs to the bar with Sarah and her fellow writers. It’s a cozily-lit room with red walls and some fascinating art. Alongside Soviet-era photos and memorabilia hang three distinct paintings: parodies of famous artworks, featuring dogs in place of humans. They’re by Denis, who tells me he started painting two or three years ago.
“When Russia invaded Ukraine, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” he says. “I started to paint Ukrainian flags on window screens, because that’s all I had available at the time. And I did a lot of protest painting, a lot of expressionistic paintings.”
“I recently stopped doing so much expressionistic stuff,” Denis says. Previously, his art consisted of expressionist spray paintings on window screens. “I called them ghost soldiers because they were translucent. You could see through them, but you could also see the soldier, representing dead soldiers.”
Chihuahua mix
“The one in the middle is Jack,” Denis says. “He’s like a chihuahua mix. And I just thought he was perfect for ‘Jack With the Pearl Earring.’”
The painting – 2.5 x 4 feet large – “was a new level of expression for me,” Denis explains, “because it’s much more precise and measured than the kind of work I had been doing.”
The painting on the left features Jack’s stepbrother Iggy as D’Artagnan of The Three Musketeers. The rightmost painting is a play on Louis XIV’s portrait. The dog: Denis’ late Dachshund mix, Howie Doing. “I call that one ‘In the Shadow of the Sun,’” Denis explains, referring to Louis XIV’s nickname: The Sun King. “You can see, in the shadow of the Sun King, is another painting of Howie Doing – the Wonder Dog. And to me, that was just interesting.”
“What I found interesting about doing these things was the folds in the cloth,” Denis says. “I mean, that was something that I’d never done before. Doing that, and having it work as a two-dimensional illusion of a three-dimensional object, was fun, inspiring to me.”
“I used to have a lot more,” Denis says, gesturing to the memorabilia around the room. “I’ve taken out some of the Soviet stuff – and all the Russian stuff – because of my resentment. We used to have a big Soviet flag, but I now have a Ukrainian flag, and a Ukrainian flag hanging out the window.”
As the more mature adults read their poetry and short stories downstairs, comedian Emily Wilson plays piano and sings an intro to her weekly standup show Tuesdays at the Red Room.
“I hope this song has given you enough time to catch your breath from the stairs!” she sings, before telling a few jokes and introducing her fellow comedians to the stage.
Emily has been hosting Tuesdays with her best friend Sam – AKA DJ Good Attitude – since summer 2021. Before COVID, Emily and Sam ran a monthly show together. After lockdowns lifted, she revisited live comedy and decided to up her schedule to a weekly show. Her and Sam researched cabaret rooms in the East Village to host the show, and when KGB’s Red Room came up, the two – who frequented the KGB during their time as NYU students – took the opportunity to host here.
“We got this spot,” Emily says, “and the show became its own thing. It’s like, our favorite place ever.”
Tuesdays “is literally still my favorite thing I do,” Emily tells me enthusiastically. And it shows: aside from the singing Emily cracks jokes in between four other comedians’ sets, picks on the audience, and advertises the karaoke night that follows each week’s show with contagious excitement.
When Tuesdays started in 2021, Emily was writing an hour-long show: her now-released comedy special FIXED. Tuesdays became a space for her to practice writing the special.
“Once I was done with that, it just became a playground for new material,” Emily says. “So now it’s really just about testing out new material and just having fun. And then I get to watch all these comedians!”
Emily finds comedians through word of mouth, submissions, and friends or comedians she’s heard of. This week’s show featured all female comedians – a welcome change, but slightly unusual for Tuesdays, which generally features a mix of genders. Emily decided not to mention the all-female cast to the audience, explaining, “there’s so many times with comedy shows where it’s all men and they don’t say anything. So, this can be normal too.”
“It’s a really casual, yet fun, environment,” Emily says. “I think me and Sam have something special. A lot of people who come to the show often, I think, come back for that. They’ll hear me tell the same jokes, but me and Sam’s stuff is different every time. So, I think that’s our little hook.”
“It just sort of calls to all the artists and other creative people in the neighborhood,” says writer, musician, and painter Blake Sandberg, who’s used KGB as a space to experiment with different art forms. After moving to the East Village in the 90s, Blake started visiting KGB to see occasional readings or performances. More recently, he’s started performing his own work there, and even hosted his own show in the Red Room in 2018: a night of reading poetry and playing music with friends.
“I’d written many poems and stories for years and made little books sometimes,” Blake said. “But I had never read a poem out loud, in front of people…it surprised me, because people were really reacting to what I read.”
During COVID lockdowns, Blake started self-printing books of his work. When business opened back up, he began looking for places to take them.
“One of the first places I went was to KGB, to see Lori and Denis and everyone there and just say hi,” Blake says. Lori encouraged him to read more of his work at the bar. Since then, he’s done multiple readings and published his work in the KGB Lit Journal.
“When I started playing songs…I started pulling from my writings and then sort of figured out how to make a song. And then I realized that it all relates to writing in a way,” Blake said. “The music and the painting. They’re intertwined in a certain way.”
“You know, I think that God wants you to be yourself, and you choose to figure it out,” Denis says, looking at the paintings of his three dogs in KGB’s second-floor bar. “And I think the creative spirit is how many of us find out who we are.”
Tuesdays at the Red Room is hosted at KGB every Tuesday at 7pm. The Easy Paradise Open Mic is hosted Mondays at 8 pm, and open to comedians, musicians, writers, and other performers. KGB hosts many other art events; for more information, visit kgbbar.com.
Nice job Laryn! You paint a picture with your words!