Gymnopedie is located in a residential neighborhood. We decline booking some events that we sense will damage our relationships on our block.

We use several factors to assess your event, including event type (especially as it relates to the energy level of the event), capacity, day of week, end time, age of guests, and your prior experience hosting successful events at Gymnopedie.

This page has a lot of details, as our events cover a wide range of scenarios that we must plan ahead for.

We decline some events with extreme subject matter. This may include Satanic events, ayahuasca ceremonies, or sex parties. We sometimes say no to events centered around 420 / marijuana. Although recently legalized in New York, marijuana smoke still causes our interior to smell, and the events can get too rowdy for this location.

We always count capacity as a total of crew + talent + audience.

If your event involves people coming in and out throughout, you can have a much higher total number of people visit your event, as long as the people inside at any given point matches our maximum capacity.

When it comes to live events in the evenings, we often say no to events that are produced by folks who are younger than age 25. We've been burned too many times by that wild youth energy, which we love, but which is too much for our mellow property in a residential neighborhood. We realize that not every young event has that wildness, but we often err on the side of caution.

For mellow daytime events that include our Gymnasium space, we are open to a maximum capacity of 200. The example we’ll offer you here is a Saturday afternoon film screening. The more similar your event is to a Saturday afternoon film screening, the more likely we are to allow you a high capacity. There is a small amount of case-by-case assessment, in addition to all the criteria on this page.

Rules for events

All our renters are agreeing to the following rules:

No smoking indoors - Our renters work with our venue to strictly enforce a policy of no smoking indoors. Vaping is ok if it creates no odor. Smoking cigarettes and marijuana in our backyard is allowed. If the backyard is not a part of the rental, our renters work with the venue to get all smokers to walk around the block while they smoke. Smoking on the church’s front lawn or sidewalks is not allowed. If three separate incidents of smoking cigarettes or marijuana indoors occur at an event, the renter and venue agree to end the event early.

We minimize outdoor gatherings - In general, guests should not be hanging out on the sidewalks and front lawn of the church. Queues before ticketed events are fine. Attendees are coming or going, not hanging out around the outside of the property.

In particular, our neighbors complain when our attendees dress too provocatively and hang around outside. If your event involves your guests wearing lingerie, fetish gear, or something like a bikini or underwear, we may decline booking your event.

Strictly enforcing capacity - If the venue performs a head count and finds that the event is 10 people over the agreed upon capacity limit, the venue works to reduce the capacity back to the maximum within 10 minutes. If the venue remains over capacity for over 10 minutes with no active efforts from the renters, the renter and venue agree to end the event early, at the time of that assessment.

Careful with our projector - Our venue reserves the right to decline renting our projector to any event. We’ve noticed that at medium and high energy events, drinks can sometimes be left on or near our projector. In order to prevent a drink spilling into our projector, we sometimes will say no to events where folks are going to be traversing the space and drinking.

Other reasons to end event early - We have experienced graffiti and intentional damage to our historic property at multiple events. If there are clear acts of belligerence, violence, or disrespect from your attendees, we agree to swiftly solve this problem. The event must quickly get back to a level of peace where it seems unlikely that the problem will happen again. If the likelihood of a second act of belligerence remains high, we agree to end the event early. Our venue personnel will make the assessment.