The Pinhook

The Pinhook opened in 2008 at 117 West Main Street, founded by Kym Register with two friends, when downtown Durham was still largely empty. [INDY Week] Register had run such a space before, at Bull City Headquarters, a short-lived but pivotal launchpad for Durham's emerging scene. [INDY Week] In February 2013 Register became sole owner of the business, and bought the building outright later that year. [INDY Week] The room was initially called a gay bar. [INDY Week] By 2015 it opened at 5 p.m. daily and ran until last call, with karaoke, trivia, drag, and concerts spanning rock, folk, metal and hip-hop, and occasional use as a small independent cinema — roughly sixteen events a month, with the room made available to people who needed it on otherwise free nights. [INDY Week] Its bathrooms are gender-neutral, and signs in and around them encourage consent and discourage hateful language. [INDY Week] Register founded it on the principle that a performance space should be open to everyone regardless of race, gender identity or politics, and built it to read as a legitimate club while keeping a DIY character. [INDY Week] Register puts the community and political purpose ahead of the commercial one, and is direct about the tension between them. [INDY Week] The club has been a rendezvous point for Durham political movements and hosts politically inclined benefits, among them a Halloween dance for an organisation posting bail for people arrested while protesting the state. [INDY Week] Register hires friends to help shape the space. The musician Heather McEntire worked behind the bar from 2010 through 2014, and describes the venue as structurally friendly to working musicians because its owner is one. [INDY Week] In October 2015 McEntire's band Mount Moriah played their first show in a year there to mark a new single, choosing it over a larger room. [INDY Week] The two co-founders alongside Register were Elizabeth Albrecht and Nick Williams. It opened on election night, 2008. [Discover Durham] The three of them built the room out themselves over six months, and the first stage was improvised from lumber. [Discover Durham] It was founded in the wake of Bull City Headquarters closing, its people moving over as that space wound down. [Discover Durham] It was set out from the start as a space run by queer artists for queer artists and audiences, defined by punk ethics and a rejection of bigotry, and its presence downtown has since drawn other queer-led businesses into the area. [Discover Durham] In its early years it regularly hosted Hurray for the Riff Raff, Future Islands, Megafaun, Sylvan Esso and Big Freedia before those acts moved up to larger rooms, and many came back to play it afterwards. [Discover Durham] Register credits the venue's survival to Williams and Albrecht, a dedicated staff, angel investors and the wider community, and describes what the room offers people on tour. [Discover Durham] The room holds 250 people, has a photo booth, an ATM and a back patio, and sits below Pie Pushers pizza restaurant. [LocalWiki Durham] It hosts drag shows by local queens every month alongside karaoke, trivia, dance parties and sets by local and touring bands. Acts it has held include Sylvan Esso, The Mountain Goats and Hiss Golden Messenger. [LocalWiki Durham] In 2015 the club faced closure over unpaid sales tax and was saved by a fundraising campaign built around a Save The Pinhook benefit concert series. LocalWiki puts the sum raised above $40,000 through crowdfunding, ticket sales and offline donations, and attributes the debt to an original owner who had miscalculated the accounts; INDY Week describes it only as a tax oversight. Both accounts stand as written. [INDY Week] Party Illegal, a monthly club night, had run three years by February 2016; the club took it on at the suggestion of the DJ and writer Jess Dilday, who was given free rein for unconventional nights. [INDY Week] It was a gathering point around the protests over the death of Jesus "Chuy" Huerta in police custody. [INDY Week] By 2019 it was described as perhaps the best-known LGBTQ space in the Triangle, holding small-scale concerts, dance parties and packed drag performances. [INDY Week] Before the Pinhook the scene moved mostly in secret through house shows, pop-ups and short-lived rooms — Joe and Jo's, Mr. Shoe's, Sirens, Broad St. Cafe — named and renamed about as fast as bands formed and broke up. [Discover Durham] Register is quick to say the Pinhook was not the first queer music venue on Main Street. That was Boxer's Ringside Bar, closed in 2007 — a four-storey club famous for a labyrinthine layout, where a metal show could run on one floor while a dance party ran above, containing a library, a cocktail bar, dance floors and show spaces. [Discover Durham] Durham's queer music legacy was established well before the Pinhook, through bands including The Butchies, Des Ark, Robosapian, Bellafea — which featured H.C. McEntire — and Register's own Midtown Dickens, and through the labels Mr. Lady Records and 307 Knox. [Discover Durham] The view from the Pinhook's back patio in 2015 took in the American Tobacco Campus under the old Lucky Strike tower, the back wall of the Bulls' ballpark, DPAC's glass front, and the county detention facility and new courthouse — described in the coverage as a constant reminder of the city's struggles with race and inequality — with skyscrapers and boutique hotels going up in front. [INDY Week]

“One thing I thought about this space is that it can be a more legitimized club in the eyes of the world than a DIY venue, and still have that DIY aesthetic.” [INDY Week]

“The business aspect of The Pinhook has always been second to the community-building aspect and the political aspect. I've always seen music as something that is über-political and life-changing, a thing that people can access across identities.” [INDY Week]

“She offers shifts and positions where we can be flexible and go on tour. She's doing the same thing. You didn't have to nervously ask your boss, 'Can I have these two weeks off?'” [INDY Week]

“I knew it would be a warm space. We wanted it to be where we felt comfortable. It does feel like home.” [INDY Week]

“It was huge. We ran out of everything.” [Discover Durham]

“We came here and worked for six months. We had eight pieces of plywood on little two by fours in the back for a stage” [Discover Durham]

“As things started petering out at BCHQ, it was like, let's just move everything over here to The Pinhook” [Discover Durham]

“It's been the coolest thing to be able to offer space to people that I can trust and love. If a friend's band comes through, to have The Pinhook as a grounding point, has really changed the relationships I've been able to make on the road. I have a space to offer.” [Discover Durham]

“Kym has let me throw the strangest parties, no questions asked — a glam rock one, a series of nineties-themed events, even a goth/industrial night.” [INDY Week]

“the same stool I sat on one night after a protest of Jesus 'Chuy' Huerta's death in police custody” [INDY Week]