The House That Borf Built is Closing
Home to guerrilla art exhibits as well as the city's most famous art guerrilla, the Bobby Fisher Memorial Building at 1644 North Capitol Street NW is coming to a close, after tenants and landlord failed to renegotiate a lease.
The dozen-member collective known as the Borf Brigade that runs the DIY community arts center, as well as their regent, John Tsombikos (aka Borf), have been unable to negotiate a lease renewal with Joe Scheve, the property's owner. Until now, the group has enjoyed a free stay in exchange for renovations and repairs. But when it came time to renew the one-year lease on the building, the group encountered some unexpected hurdles — such as a demand that they pay up.
"[The landlord]'s decided to charge rent while we're trying to get $20,000 worth of repairs done," says Marissa Botelho, a member of the Borf Brigade. Sheve did not return phone calls for this story.
The last event that the group has planned for the space, a feminist art show called "Girlish Ways", opens Saturday and runs through the weekend — possibly longer.
"We don't have a final exit date," says Botelho. "We'll rent a generator for the weekend and that will be that."
Photo by dbking
In the year that the former bakery and consignment shop has been under the stewardship of Tsombikos (whose father is a contractor), it has seen fairly extensive renovations. Tsombikos built supports in the basement and put down flooring, laid drywall over exposed concrete walls, and installed ramps and other structures throughout the space.
"It's been a difficult relationship with the landlord," says Botelho. "The agreement we had come to was we were going to renovate the space and our rent would be free while we were renovating the space. It was a beneficial relationship for both of us — it was previously abandoned, so it wasn't hurting him that we were hiring out plumbers and electricians."
"The owner is not kicking us out," Borf Brigader Chuck Burgundy wrote in an email. Rather, Scheve insisted on terms that the group considered odious, including signing a 5-year lease with a clause that would waive the group's right to a 30-day notice before eviction.
"We had a nonprofit lawyer draw up a lease, but [Scheve] rejected it because it was too long. His lawyer had a one-paragraph five-year lease that he wanted us to sign," says Botelho. "We saw that as unrealistic and wouldn't protect either side."
The soi-disant Borf Brigade — a rotating cast numbering between 6 and 12 — understand the building as something of a 2.0 to Borf's mission, a temporary autonomous zone to promote civil disobedience, urban pranksterism, and artists who encourage same. Entertainment, too: popular pop act Matt & Kim played a gig there.
In the years since Borf covered the capital with his signature, his communications have grown more complex. Not unlike tactics favored by al Qaeda, the Borf Brigade have released video communiques to explain their mission and address their enemies. (We are two years into "Operation: Twist and Shout," for example.) LED Throwies have displaced wheatpasted signs and spraypaint graffiti. The Borf Brigade even hacked a building (with some help).
By comparison, "Girlish Ways" is more domesticated. A group show featuring 12 women artists, most of whom live in the District, "Girlish Ways" is a fairly straightforward showing of installation, photography, and video art. One installation made from commercial and decorative materials by Lauren Price, a recent MFA graduate from American University, features subtle repetitions of the color scale, revealing a painterly ambition (pictured left). An impressive feat for a small-scale show, it wouldn't be out of place in the city's more formal exhibition halls and galleries.
Recent discussions within the Borf Brigade suggest an altogether different sort of maturity in the works for the Bobby Fisher Memorial group: nonprofit status.
The Borf Brigade has scouted new locations, including a set of four warehouse buildings at Rhode Island Ave. and 9th St NW, whose owners hope to sell all of them as a package deal for $1.1 million, according to Botelho. (Scheve, on the other hand, hopes to make $1.25 million on the present Bobby Fisher Memorial Building location.) With a new building would come some new features, for example, a screenprinting shop and an effort at legal legitimacy.
Says Botelho, "John [Tsombikos] has recently become more interested in owning real estate."