The Allston Mall

The Allston Mall was the provisional name for a space located on the second floor at 107 Brighton Avenue, Allston, Massachusetts, USA. Owned by Marsha Berman (Linden Realty Associates) from approximately 1960 to 2005, it was home to countless examples of low rent alternative entrepreneurialism and cultural experimentation. It also provided off-and-on illegal housing to a number of marginal types. The building itself is a two-storey, mixed-use, commercial brick building constructed somewhere around 1900. It is still in use today but is no longer owned by Berman.

Some of the better-known enterprises in this second-floor area were the Primal Plunge Bookstore (1987–1995), 88 Room art gallery (1988–1998), Naked City Coffee House, the office of Quimby Magazine (1985–1990), Garage Video (1995-2000) and the broadcast space of Radio Free Allston (1997).

The Primal Plunge Bookstore was founded and operated by Michael McInnis in 1987, who later sold it to Steven Svymbersky, founder of Quimby Bookstore in Chicago. The store was primarily an outlet for the then burgeoning genre of “Zines”, self-published and usually photocopied magazines that created an outlet for a variety of D.I.Y. inclinations. Additionally, the Primal Plunge organized events in the huge central hall around which individual stores and offices were arranged. Notable events included an exhibition of paintings by convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, screenings of films by Nick Zedd, a performance by punk rocker GG Allin, and a weekly screening of arcane educational films.

88 Room was an alternative visual arts space that concentrated on thematic and conceptually oriented exhibitions. It was founded by Andrew Guthrie, Angela Mark, and Michael Shores in 1988 (hence the name: 88 Room). After one year Mark and Shores dropped out leaving Guthrie to run the space for another nine years. The space was decidedly non-profit, addressing some of the social and cultural issues of the times, most notably the withdrawal of NEA grants from controversial artists in the late 1980s. Gaining a positive reputation among local emerging artists, the gallery was under-reported in the local media. Some notable show were “Pillow Talk”, an exhibition that addressed human sexuality, curated by the collaborative team “Dear Me Suz”: Guthrie, Cheri Eisenberg, and Ron Platt (then an assistant curator at MIT List Visual Arts Center) and “Unknown NY”, a group show curated by Winston C. Robinson that featured a hardly-known-at-the-time Karen Kilimnik. The 88 Room was incorporated as a tax exempt non-profit under the name Local Idea Council, Inc., which occasionally mounted exhibitions at the same location after 88 Room had folded.

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