Chamber 43 Owners Hit Pause After Rollercoaster Year in New Brunswick

Words by Bennett Kelly

In a town colloquially known as the “Hub City,” no venue lived up to that moniker this year like Chamber 43, the hybrid coffee/records/vintage/performance space that opened in downtown New Brunswick in February 2021.

Chamber 43 promised to “legitimize the underground culture in New Brunswick” and bring the city’s famous underground music scene into a viable, aboveground space - all 7,000 feet of it - run by and for the community members it served. A home base for the community.

And it delivered; the venue hosted over 150 performances this year ranging from indie rock to punk and hardcore to hip hop, and included poetry nights and Shakespeare plays.

Visiting bands from as far as Texas, Nevada, and California and local acts like The Vaughns, Professor Caveman, Tula Vera, Dusters, Byrh, and many more performed inside the George Street space. Chamber 43 also hosted debut performances for a handful of local bands.

It became a special home for punk and hardcore music, the genre that drew its biggest audiences through bands like Reagan Youth, Cruel Hand, Death Before Dishonor, and Brute.

In daylight, patrons could sip on specialty coffees and teas like the King Mocha, a Peanut Butter & Banana Mocha “love letter to Elvis.” They could set up at work stations scattered throughout the huge space located on one of the city’s historic arteries, George Street, just a couple blocks from Rutgers University’s main campus.

But like a comet streaking across the night sky, the Chamber 43 story in New Brunswick has ended suddenly and in burnout.

Citing difficulties in making rent and the need to refresh and evaluate the business model, co-owners David Martins, Jimmy Fasulo and Drew Velba closed the New Brunswick storefront with a set of final shows on November 26 and 27, packed everything into storage, and said they are taking a much-needed pause from Chamber 43 as a brick-and-mortar operation.

“We’re taking a breath and collecting ourselves, half out of necessity and half out of, we don’t have the option to pursue anything right now really,” Fasulo said via phone last week. Fasulo was in charge of Chamber’s coffee bar and late-night productions, typically putting in 100-hour workweeks and serving as a public face for customers.

David Martins and Jimmy Fasulo, owners of Chamber 43

In conversations with their followers and on the phone last week, owners Martins and Fasulo have been frank in their assessments of what went right, what went wrong and what comes next.

“We’re an open book,” Fasulo said. “We’ve been telling everyone straight up what it is. We’ll be back, but we gotta throw shows to make money and etcetera. There’s no capital and there's no like… I don’t have the energy to do anything. I'm sure Drew doesn't.

“Dave is the practical and pragmatic one, so excited as he is to get it together, he’s also like we need to be smart about this and not rush it because we don't want to lose it,” Fasulo said.

Martins has lost Chamber before - the February 2021 grand opening was actually a second life for Chamber 43, the company he founded a few years earlier, in his hometown of Highland Park, across the Raritan River from New Brunswick.

It was just shy of two years ago that Chamber 43 had begun enjoying its first monthly profits, Martins said, right before the pandemic struck. Constrained by the quarantines, the Highland Park location folded after a reopening attempt later in 2020.

Martins then expected to take a pause, but a few select opportunities arose quickly - the introduction of new partners like his friend Fasulo, and finding what looked like the ideal space to implement their shared vision for a hybrid vinyl/coffee/art venue in downtown New Brunswick.

Now after giving it their best shot in New Brunswick, the moment to pause has finally arrived.

“We’ve been at it non-stop for a long time, and for the last two years almost doing it from behind, with the pandemic and all the unexpected issues that we’ve had this year,” Martins said, in a separate phone interview last week. “So I think it's just good for all of us to reassess, take a step back, and not rush into the next thing.”

Chamber 43 offered something new and exciting in the DIY-engaged New Brunswick scene. It was already well known from its first location. To visit the new store was like stepping into a physical manifestation of the local DIY culture, a professionalized punk rock flea market with walls and permanence.

Those walls showcased local art consignments up to the high ceilings. Band stickers covered every inch of the coffee counter. Record store music played over the sound system. Zines and arts-inclined business cards were scattered about. Employees and patrons alike searched for those tangible connections and often found them.

“I met so many talented people that are just extremely interesting, that I wouldn't have met otherwise,” Fasulo said. That part has been “a beautiful experience,” he added.

It was hinted at on a show poster or two, but Chamber 43 officially announced their closure the Monday of Thanksgiving. Final shows that weekend were packed to the gills, and Chamber did the same with their U-Hauls in the following days, offering beer and pizza to helpers.

“The support we’ve gotten from the community was incredible,” Martins said, referring to when they announced they were leaving New Brunswick. “I was floored. All the people talking about how much we’ve affected their lives is kind of mind-blowing.”

They had a hard time keeping up with their social media inbox before, with people checking in about records or showtimes. It’s since been overflowing with inquiries about a return date.

“Ultimately what I thought Jimmy would bring to the table as far as the booking of shows and bringing that crowd in, that was an absolute success,” Martins said. “We’ve created a community bigger than we had before, bigger than I anticipated we would, in such a short amount of time.”

Fasulo agreed that they achieved what they hoped for in the show-running realm, which he’s been involved in for nearly a decade now in New Brunswick. “Watching over the months, it was like the same crowds at every show no matter who the band was, which is exactly what it’s like in the basement scene. The same faces coming out to support and see something new, regardless of what type of music it is, that was really awesome,” he said.

“I started seeing the pictures going around the internet, posted from people in different states, different countries, talking about what was going on. So I think we definitely accomplished that part of the mission, and I’d say more so than I expected to.”

Nobody Mourner. Photo by Stephanie G. Batista

Showrunning wasn’t supposed to be the main thing. The owners thought it would be something to do for fun on the side of record sales and the coffee bar. But by the end it turned into the only aspect that was really making them any money, Fasulo said.

Martins said the first two months of Chamber were promising, just as the accessibility of vaccines began picking up. They hit their revenue targets those first two months, Martins said.

But sales began to dwindle after that, concurrent with foot traffic slowing down. Rutgers students went home for the summer. Unexpected maintenance costs tied to the space began to pile up, even causing a few unplanned closures in the middle of a workday.

Outside its doors, George Street remained a disjointed pedestrian plaza, which meant no car access to the Chamber storefront and no bus stop making drop-offs in front of it. Parking was limited to getting lucky on the side streets or a garage a couple of blocks away.

Martins began to feel the apprehension of an uphill battle as early as May or June. Fasulo said enough was swirling over them by the end of the summer that the possibility of closure started looming, but that they’d wait until the students came back and see whether George Street would reopen. Instead, the George Street closure was extended.

“And then one day out of nowhere in October we get verified mail that [our landlord] wants us to leave and he’ll eat the security deposit and just let us out of the lease,” Fasulo said. “Which at the time kind of took the wind out of me.” Their landlord had been working with them for a bit and understood the situation prior to the offer.

“But I stopped and thought about it and was like, this is honestly best-case scenario, because we get to walk away without being on the hook for rent, we won't have any debt. We’ll be left with nothing, but nothing is better than negative.”

It was a way out, and a relatively clean break. There wasn’t a clear path forward otherwise. No present but to take stock of the year and figure out what they could do going forward.

Fasulo said the coffee bar did well, all things considered, with their signature drinks being the best sellers. But the foot traffic likely doomed that venture.

And the vinyl record side, the breadwinner of the business dating back to the Highland Park location, where Martins was more involved in daily curation, was not set up for success in this space. The exchange of records was not proficient with the building being tough to access by car, and the ability to re-stock wholesale was further hindered by their dwindling capital.

“The record side kind of fell apart as time went on, in lieu of our best efforts,” Fasulo said.

The size of this iteration of Chamber 43 was good and bad - good for hosting shows, which they’d done on a smaller scale in Highland Park, but bad for fostering the mom-and-pop record store vibe that attracted them to the industry in the first place.

“[The small neighborhood feel] is something that I actually felt was missing from the New Brunswick location,” Martins said.

About a month ago Martins spent some time away in Portland, Maine, where he found the remarkable sight of seven or eight record stores all bunched into one strip of road on Congress Street, each with its own flavor.

“They were all small spaces where it seemed like the owner was in there at all of them. And that was kind of what Chamber used to be,” he said. “It used to be just me or one or two of my other staff members there behind the counter, and everyone knew us and we talked to everybody.

“And I liked having a big space like what we had, but I think I like a little more having that small, very tight-knit community feel.”

Restraining Order. Photo by @mental_cramp

With coffee and vinyl faltering by the end of summer, Chamber turned the show volume up to 11. “[It’s] why we kind of went as hard as we did the last couple of months,” Fasulo said. “We were like, alright it's time to put up or shut up because if we're gonna have to get out of here, we’ve gotta make the mark now.”

The shows took off with help from Jay Baluski and brothers Jason and Matt Zaleski, who have all promoted in the hardcore scene for a while. “They brought me a lot of stuff that I definitely could not have made happen,” Fasulo said.

“These guys, all they do is try to put on for underground bands. Our powers combined, their bills and my space, was just a beautiful combination. And we owe just as much to them… All of the bands that I brought in were cool, but those guys, they got us the meaty shit.”

Part of the magic was nothing ever got broken and no one got injured, even when there were “way too many people packed in there going crazy,” even after crowd surfing and rafter-jumping became a thing at the end of the run.

“It got bigger and more chaotic in every aspect than I had anticipated,” Fasulo said. “But there was always a love and respect between everyone there and between the space and everyone there. So there was never really problems. And throwing hardcore shows, that’s kind of an anomaly.”

He felt it was becoming a legitimate venue, drawing big acts and big crowds. “It became like the spot for punk shows, it was crazy. It was at least like, I dont know if I should say the numbers just cause the occupancy was so fucked but it was, the norm became Friday and Saturday being jam-packed every night, and it was just beautiful to see. Especially after all the covid isolation.”

But ultimately the season of shows was not built to last, but to pack as much excitement in with the time remaining. That segment was a success, and it’s all part of the evaluation of what Chamber 43 will be at the next stop, wherever that is.

Martins isn’t in a rush to re-open. He wants to keep it in Middlesex County - it’s a New Jersey store, he said - but knows it won’t be in New Brunswick.

He’s not even thinking about New Brunswick, he said. His eyes instead are open to various towns across the state that are changing rapidly. He refers to Jersey City’s glow-up in the past decade, a place where Martins recently lived. He wants to find a location where Chamber is wanted and where the local infrastructure is aligned to support such a venture.

And where the rent is cheaper. The pandemic wasn’t kind to Chamber 43, including with PPP loans back in 2020, and it remains a weird market right now with weird things going on with the economy. The Chamber team charged headlong into the pandemic last year. This time, they’re stepping out.

In the interim, both Martins and Fasulo are getting back to their roots. Even during Chamber 43’s run in the past five years or so, Martins has made his living off his other business, DLM Recording Studio, where he mixes and masters music and also teaches music production and engineering classes. He’s focusing on that for now.

At heart Fasulo is a musician in the New Brunswick scene. His hardcore band Nobody Mourned played their debut show at Chamber’s final night, a fitting start and end to both chapters. He’s excited to return to another of his music writing projects, the band Ernston, joking that feels like he has enough life experiences and time now to express some stuff.

The day after we spoke Fasulo also embarked on a five-night tour of the midwest with the hardcore band Public Serpents, acting as “driver/extra friend/merch table supervisor.” A good way to blow off steam, meditate and recharge, and the timing was right.

Timing is one of the questions facing Chamber 43’s owners as they deliberate the next move. They plan to build up capital, define amongst themselves what they’re seeking for the company and how to achieve it, and explore where it physically ought to land.

None of these questions provide swift or easy solutions, to the chagrin of a fanbase that was getting comfortable stomping their Doc Martens on the Chamber 43 floor. It could be a year, could be less, could be more.

There will be some Chamber 43 appearances at pop-up events, some shows by way of their own promotion, and some record and merch sales through online marketplaces, to keep a little fire burning.

But it’s a true pause, a reassessment, a rebuild.

“I don’t know, I probably… If I had known that this year would go the way it had, I would have had second thoughts as to whether or not we should move to such a large space or to New Brunswick,” Martins said.

“But we took the risk,” he added. “And in some aspects, it paid off, in others it didn’t. Generally, we’re kind of right back to where we were a year ago when the first closure happened.”

“It feels like this chapter ran its course and it's time to close it up and see what happens in the next one,” Fasulo said. “As cool as the thing that we were doing was, I knew it wasn’t sustainable for the business or for me.”

For better or for worse for the company and for themselves, Chamber 43 made a big impact on the local music scene. It will be missed.