Another all ages venue in Nebraska will be closing it's doors later this year. Lincoln, Nebraska's Box Awesome (formally The Chatterbox), will be closing their doors and leaving it's location at 815 O St. in October of this year. For the short time that I have attended shows there, I've always had a good time and saw some really awesome hardcore bands play. The venue does a lot of shows and has become a pillar for the Lincoln, NE music scene. Box Awesome's owners are tentatively working on ways to cover the costs of upcoming court and lawyer fees with benefit shows sometime in the near future. It is always sad to see all-ages venues close. Here is the owner's official statement posted on starcityscene.com :
"An open letter to the local music community: I'm writing to you today with conflicting feelings in my heart. Mostly, I'm sad and confused. For reasons we're not exactly clear of yet, the landlord for the building that acts as the home to Box Awesome is no longer interested in having us as a tenant. We've been asked to leave the building and the landlords along with their lawyers are trying to find ways of forcing us out. In recognizing that we're still dealing with this as a legal matter I don't want to speculate about a possible motive for the landlord's decision, but I know that we have a court date within a few weeks and a judge will decide either then or at a later court date when and if we have to leave the building before the end of our lease. That said, there are still plenty of unknowns. There are a few things that we do know. 1. Box Awesome will not reside at 815 O St. for a limitless amount of time. If we are able to make it through our lease we'll be considering alternative venues for Box Awesomer. 2. In order to deal with the matter, we will have to incur some legal fees to address the issue just to find out what our options are in the immediate future. I know this might be a wtf type of moment for many of you. It was for us as well. We were under the understanding that our landlord/tenant relationship was on stable ground. Our assumption is that there are other reasons behind the request but it's not something we can speculate on at this point as I mentioned above. We believe that Box Awesome has been one of many integral components of a thriving recent music community and we are interested in continuing to be a part of that growth. Where that might take place in a venue the size of what Box Awesome is now, we're not certain. But it's something we expect to get back to as soon as it makes sense. In the meantime, we're going to have to deal with a few lawyers and judges and what not, so here's my plea to everyone that cares about what Box Awesome represents. We will need to figure out how to either pay some lawyers or allow ourselves to be harassed without recourse if we can't pay those legal fees. If you are in a band and are interested in being a part of a series of benefit concerts to help with some of these legal fee issues, please feel free to contact us. If you have any other fundraiser ideas in particular please feel free to make suggestions. I have some ideas of my own I'll be offering up. Our preferred email address is boxawesome at gmail dot com. Thanks for your time and feel free to post comments of support or any questions you might have regarding this matter. Thanks for your time. -Jermiah (Owner of Box Awesome)"
