With all the hype around new music venues opening in out-of-the-way pockets of the city, we sometimes forget that the indigenous peoples of those uncharted lands might not appreciate the impending musical invasion. Studio B felt some of that heat, as the venue was frequently the target of local protest, and eventually shut down. Another club which has recently gone through similar tribulations, but with a decidedly more optimistic prognosis, is New York's Knitting Factory.

Long story short, neighbors hated the noise and crowds of people that emanated nightly from the space, which, combined with rising rents and an increasingly completive musical market, forced owner Jared Hoffman to close the Knitting Factory’s Leonard Street venue, and move to a new, though much smaller (only one stage, as opposed to three) Williamsburg location, which will open in March.

Local New York paper the Tribeca Trib caught up with Hoffman, who offered some interesting insights on the move:

“It’s not fun to be somewhere where you’re seen as the bad guy,” Hoffman said during a recent interview in a converted Brooklyn apartment that’s the club’s new office. “There’s just no way, in that environment, not to annoy some people. It’s an un-winnable situation.”

“People are expecting Tribeca to be as quiet as a suburban street in Greenwich, Connecticut,” he added.

“In a lot of ways, Manhattan abandoned us,” Hoffman said. “In a belated fashion, we’re following our community. We’re not meant to be a 1,000-person room trying to follow the same 90 tours that come through the city every year. We’re meant to be finding the artists and giving them a platform.”

It’s rare to read about a club wanting to narrow their clientele, as opposed to expand upon it with a wider variety of performers, though here it could be smart business. The neighborhood already has a fine mid-sized venue, a “Bowery Ballroom of Brooklyn,” if you will, in The Music Hall of Williamsburg, but it was more fun as North Six and the neighborhood has suffered in its absence, a void that could easily be filled by this new Knitting Factory. So, for those tired of wading through the dense hipster hordes at Union Pool, the Knitting Factory will be there for you.