Mercury Lounge is located on 217 East Houston Street, Manhattan, on the corner of A Avenue and Houston. It is part of the ‘Bowery Presents’ circle of venues, along with the Bowery Ballroom, Music Hall in Williamsburg, and Terminal 5, and from noon to seven PM, Monday-Saturday, serves as the box office for all four places (as well as for other Bowery Presents events, such as those at Webster Hall). It lies within the circle of venues in the Bowery (roughly between Houston, A, Delancey Street, and Bowery), which includes Piano’s, The Cake Shop, The Living Room, Arlene’s Grocery, and others (as well as Bowery Ballroom).
Mercury Lounge has a long, tight squeeze of a bar at the front, with the stage and audience area in a separate room, past the bar. While the smallest of the four Bowery Presents venues, the stage area is still a bit larger than most other venues in the Bowery, and generally a step up in terms of ‘class’, placing it nicely between the two sets of locations. The cushioned booth-couches that line both walls are a little awkward, but do mean that people aren’t pushed right up against the walls. As in size, in price, Mercury Lounge lies between the bigger Bowery Presents venues as the smaller Bowery locals, in the eight-to-twelve dollar range.
Thanks to the size and Bowery Presents hook, the headliners at Mercury Lounge are invariably a form of indie-something, and usually have an album or two under their belts. Often, however, it can be hard to tell who the headliner is, as the scheduling tends much more to the ‘on the hour’ than ‘headliner-opener’, with each band given the same time and the acts not necessarily getting bigger as the night goes on. This means the band you’re there to see might come on first, last, or anywhere in between – Los Campesinos! played Mercury Lounge on back-to-back nights, once as the first band, the other as the last. This tendency is only exacerbated by the habit of labels to use a Mercury Lounge show as an almost CMJ/SXSW-like ‘showcase’, where an act plays to a much more industry crowd, and, especially on work nights, they don’t want to wait until eleven PM or midnight. You do get more bands than at many other venues, often four or five, though they might have little to do with one another. But, punching above its weight in acts – both in size and number – and below its weight in cost (including beer), Mercury Lounge gives strong value.
Capacity: 250
21+
Address:
217 East Houston Street (On the Corner of A Avenue and Houston)
By Subway:
F or V to 2nd Avenue – walk 2 blocks east on South side of Houston J or M to Delancey/Essex – walk 3 blocks north on West side of Essex
