‘Weaponization of 311’: Speculation swarms after Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus shutdown

Who filed more than a dozen complaints with New York City’s buildings department against the venerated Greenpoint bar and metal music venue Saint Vitus?

That’s the burning question swirling within the city’s metal music scene after the venue closed on Friday due to building violations, which include a certificate of occupancy that doesn’t match a bar that serves food and drink and can, on some nights, fill with several hundreds of people. Dave Castillo, a booker and co-owner of Saint Vitus, told Gothamist that staff are working to reopen, though it’s unclear when that will happen.

“Now that city business is back online, we’ve been working to see how we can best move forward,” he said.

The venue has the support of councilmembers like Lincoln Restler, Justin Brannan and Keith Powers. Neither Brannan nor Powers represent the neighborhood, but Brannan plays guitar in a punk band that has themselves performed at Saint Vitus.

“I heard about it right away,” Brannan said, “It came across the underground wire.”

Castillo said he wasn’t ready to speak about the complainant or their discussions with the agency. But social media was abuzz with speculation on Tuesday.

“Getting extreme ‘moved into the neighborhood and got mad’ vibes off of this,” X user @coopercooperco said of the mystery complainant.

Here’s what we do know:

Starting in 2017, complaints about the certificate of occupancy began to trickle into the city’s buildings department, records show. Then, over May and June of 2023, the city received more than a dozen nearly identical complaints, some submitted just a day apart. Most used almost identical language.

Each complaint alleges a lack of maximum occupancy signs, an inappropriate certificate of occupancy and a missing Public Assembly Certificate of Operation. Then, a threat: “I will continue to make this complaint on a daily basis until either the Department of Buildings performs an inspection or until Saint Vitus Bar can remedy their situation.”

In a May 2023 charge, the complainant tried to coax city inspectors to crash the venue during an evening event.

“I urge the person(s) who will be responsible for looking into this manner to inspect the building at a time when they have an event going on in the evening, and not when the establishment is closed in the morning/afternoon,” reads another complaint submitted during the same timeframe. The complaint also includes a link to a list of upcoming concerts at the venue.

Then, the complainant fell silent, except for one last submission in September, a near-verbatim copy of the others. It’s this complaint that triggered Friday’s inspection, DOB records show.

Gothamist corresponded with an email address associated with the complaints in the buildings department database. The account holder did not respond to a request for their name but in a short written statement said they had never asked that the venue be shut down, but rather that the safety violations be addressed.

Building department records show it issued a violation against Saint Vitus in July for not having a valid certificate of occupancy and imposed a $1,250 fine. The certificate on file was issued in 1953 and allows the space to be used as a store and the “storage of machinery.”

“Upon our arrival to the scene, we found approximately 250 people on the first floor of the building, assembled in an illegal eating and drink establishment,” department spokesperson Andrew Rudansky said.

City records also show the building has an open violation from 2010 — issued a year before the venue opened — for not having fire resistant materials on the ceiling of the ground floor space.

'Some sort of personal vendetta'

Rudansky said that the city did not issue a vacate order, only a violation. A video from the night of the shutdown shows Saint Vitus’ co-owner George Souleidis telling patrons to leave mid-show before the night’s main attraction, Mindforce, even hit the stage.

“We apologize but it’s out of our control right now,” Souleidis can be heard telling the crowd in the video. “The cops and the fire department are here. It was oversold and they’re refusing for us to stay open.”

A spokesperson for the NYPD told Gothamist that officers were on scene at Saint Vitus Friday night to assist building inspectors. The FDNY said they were not at the venue, a spokesperson said.

The incident comes less than two months after Mayor Eric Adams nixed the practice of late-night raids on bars and clubs in favor of an approach that allows venues to resolve problems without involving the police.

Brannan said he and his colleagues are working to help get the bar back in compliance and “cut through the bureaucracy” of the city’s buildings department. Brannan said that while the bar clearly had to get its paperwork in order, he believed a disgruntled community member was behind the slew of complaints filed on the property.

“There was an element of weaponization of the 311 system, which is a real problem,” he said. “The city obviously has to take 311 calls seriously, but there are people who have an ax to grind or some sort of personal vendetta, and they use the 311 system to harass a business or harass a neighbor.”

Saint Vitus Bar has been in operation since 2011, raising questions about why it was suddenly penalized after so many years. The venue has racked up a handful of violations over the years, mostly chronicling a consistent inability to submit boiler inspection reports.

Catalina Gonella contributed reporting.