This is the only prepared speech I have ever given, and I wrote the bulk of it a couple hours before we kicked off the final night at the old Ballroom in the Pigtown church September 23, 2023, the day before our 12th anniversary. A hurricane had disrupted the simultaneous programming we had going at the new spot, so our chef and his partner heroically hauled vast amounts of food across the city and set up a buffet just in time. The point is that, while writing this, I periodically rose to run an extension cord or clean up water that had sloshed from a warming pan. This was an appropriate way to close the old girl down–living out, for one more night, the ridiculous, human stretch between idealism and reality. I ended this night so angry and frustrated by the vapidity of some of my regulars that I retired to the office to avoid yelling at them or just closing early, so that should factor into any assessment of what I said. People, myself included, are capable of grace and pettiness in alternate moments. All of that acknowledged, I stand by this speech. Those who know what’s what will be able to tell that I was reading a lot of Marilynne Robinson at the time.

The Speech

Sarah and I have been publicly cagey about why we have chosen to close this place, and I’d like to begin with a short explanation.

About four years ago a rich douchebag came into our lives and tried to use our love for this community and this building to extort us. He promised to forgive a debt we didn’t owe if we signed a ten-year lease. We would have signed a lease for free if he’d just asked us, but people like him can’t imagine working in the absence of leverage and coercion.

If Sarah and I believe in anything, we believe that you should never appease assholes. So instead of quaking in our boots, my bestie and I told him to take his lease renewal and shove it. We’ve been gleefully defying him and his wretched works for four years.

So that’s why we’re moving.

But I don’t want to talk about assholes any more than necessary. I mention him as a segue into a simple fact about you people that someone like him is incapable of understanding.

Mobtown is a community, not a building. I love this rickety old church, but it would be pointless if it wasn’t filled with all of you. This is obvious. Buildings are made sacred by people, and not the other way around.

Here’s what I mean when I say sacred. I want you all to look down at the floor.

12 years ago, a raggedy-ass crew of volunteers started here by the stage and laid this thing out plank by plank until we hit the wall back there by the DJ booth. It was hard work done on a deadline, but I don’t think any of the people who were there will ever forget it. Implausibly, that raft of goons ended up making one of the best dance floors in America.

The building of this floor was a gesture of hope, decency, and generosity–just the sort of thing that happens in countless communities everyday. It’s what people do when they live their lives together.

But that simplicity hides a miraculous result. It is an indisputable fact that right now everyone standing in this room is literally held aloft by that month of work and by the people who did it. The floor has withstood everything we’ve thrown at it for all these years, and it has quietly upheld every experience you’ve had in this room. Many of the people who built it are not here and have no idea we’re talking about them. But what they did persisted far beyond their direct involvement.

Sometimes the things we do for love can last.

The point is that what you do in the world matters. You matter, though you’ll rarely see the full extent of your actions play out. Just as the kindness of those volunteers 12 years ago echoed through the lives of people standing here whom they never met, the kindnesses you have done for each other in this room have afterlives. You have been held up by others. Hold others up in turn. That is all that is required.

It is no secret that I think we are entering a barbarous age, a time in which efficiency replaces humanity, citizens become taxpayers, education becomes job training; a time when even good people find it hard not to soak up the cynicism of the age. When something is said often enough, it can take on the quality of received wisdom. And then it traps us.

This place was meant to defy that from the start. The glorious mob in this room and all of the forms it has taken over the years has steadfastly showed up to look their fellows in the face, to take part in an ancient and human tradition of fellowship, music, and dance. That is powerful precisely because it is ephemeral; it cannot be branded or packaged or turned into “content.” This place is impossible to explain. When it is closed tomorrow, I hope people will say, “Well, you kind of had to be there.”

Whenever this place flourished, it flourished because all of you made the ballroom a sanctuary. A place where you could be human, if only for an evening.

That is a sacred act, a holy act.

The ballroom is something you created together week after week, something you sustained and which will continue to exist long after this poor building has been eaten by rats. Mobtown is made of people.

Whatever Sarah and I do going forward will have this at its heart, and we hope you will join us. But tonight, when you walk out those doors, I would like you to remember what we all built here, and whatever else you go on to do or make, make it human.

You have been held up. Hold up others. Remember that you matter. Remember that the person standing next to you matters. Defy everyone who says otherwise.

As for me, I have spent my entire adult life literally holding other people in my arms. I have the best friend and business partner anyone could ask for. I cannot tell you all how much I’ve enjoyed your strange company. I am a lucky man.

That’s it. That’s my sermon. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for these 12 years.