Open mic night in Racine: It's not Greenwich Village

Waiting for the doors to open at 716 Fine Art's open mic night.

Gathered together in the warm hue cast by votive candles and dim track lighting, a crowd of people – mostly under 30 -- peppered themselves throughout 716 Fine Art gallery, waiting for open mic night to begin.

David Geisler, the gallery director, was rearranging paintings in the storefront window as a few late-comers straggled in and were welcomed by the thump of a friendly palm on the djembe. You could see the glass rattling in the frames of a few of the photographs on a nearby exposed brick wall.

With about half the seating filled, Geisler started the show at 9:30. The crowd was meager compared to turnouts the gallery had when it was in Kenosha, but it's only been here, at 401 Main St., for two months and Geisler hopes attendance will grow.

"We've retained about half of our Kenosha audience," he said. "Both our performers and our supporters. Honestly, I was surprised that so many people came with us when we moved.”

One thing the gallery's open mic night has is the enthusiasm of its participants, their acceptance of one another's creative efforts. While it's certainly not for kids, the weekly event is open to all ages and is billed to start promptly at 9 p.m.


Wine, donated by Uncorkt, is available. And the gallery isn't asking the $3 cover it requested from non-performers in Kenosha. So it might just be the best bargain for a Wednesday night.

"Everyone who's coming here is coming as they are, putting themselves out there. It's an openness you don't get in most environments," said Sasha Brown, attending for the first time.

Brown, a student at UW-Parkside from Madison, came with friends, including fellow UW-P student Jammie Davis. “The lighting and setting are awesome,” said Davis. “It's very homey. You'd feel at home hearing a political poem, or a romantic poem – or something just plain freaky."

Nothing too freaky, though. If the MPAA were doling out ratings, the event would probably garner a PG-13.

The evening's offerings included political rants on university policy, acoustic renditions of folk tunes and spirituals, quasi-erotic romantic odes, some free verse, a few rhymed quatrains and the occasional humorous sonnets. Dani Weber of Kenosha performed a few crowd-pleasing numbers, using her tap shoes to keep rhythm for a guitarist and singer as well as performing solo.

716 weekly regular Dayvin Hallmon sees the open mic presenting him with an opportunity for growth. "I would certainly say it's a place where there are friends of mine who are fellow artists, who will challenge me to learn and grow with them," he said.

"Obviously this is a new city, so you get some different folks," Hallmon
said.

"I really like the new vibe," Geisler said. "It feel's less like a performance because we're not sticking the readers and musicians in the corner. It seems much calmer, much warmer."

It's generally a casually paced evening with a ten-minute intermission. When the list of performers is exceptionally long, or when the show gets started late, it can go to midnight.

But if it's just a quick dose of creativity and personal expression you crave, you wouldn't be wrong in leaving at halftime. There's always next week, after all.

-- by Nicholas Michael Ravnikar