A Pittsburgh punk institution is facing an uncertain future. The long-running concert venue 222 Ormsby is currently being sued by someone who was injured during a hardcore punk show there in February.
The bare-bones event space, located on Ormsby Avenue in Mt. Oliver, is one of the city’s only remaining DIY music venues that’s all-ages, volunteer-run, not-for-profit, and specializes in punk, metal, and other alternative sub-genres. Venues like 222 Ormsby are vital infrastructure for underground music networks worldwide, but in Pittsburgh and America writ large, real estate consolidation is rendering them an endangered species. Unlike most larger concert venues in the city, who pay high premiums for insurance that covers patron injuries on their premises, 222 Ormsby is not a profitable business that’s built to weather lawsuits of this kind. The litigation could pose an existential threat to the punk enclave, which would have a ripple effect on the local music scenes that it’s helped foster over the last 20 years.
222 Ormsby’s legacy began in the mid-2000s, when the building’s previous tenants hosted many raucous DIY gigs there, mostly for pop-punk and folk-punk bands like The Menzingers and Bomb the Music Industry!. The venue’s initial run lasted up until the mid-2010s, when code violations issued by the Mount Oliver borough forced 222 Ormsby to close its doors. However, in 2018, the building was purchased by Dave Issod, a punk-loving Pittsburgh transplant who wanted to ensure Ormsby could continue providing for the local DIY landscape…