Two Bridges Luncheonette was a tiny short lived venue / snack joint that existed over a one year period in 2024. It was popped up by an old-time NYC club owner / character named Trigger on the LES in a spot they call Dimes Square. I’ve known Trigger since I was a teen roaming around downtown NYC frequenting clubs, galleries and parties as a music, art and culture immersed girl about town & developing artist / performer.
Trigger had previously owned the rock club Continental for two decades. When he opened Two Bridges, it wasn’t intended to be a venue (it’s the size of a postage stamp) but Trigger missed hosting bands so he built a tiny stage in the back, mounted some speakers, bought a tiny six track mixer and voila, we had a new underground venue.
I saw that Trigger had started to host little residencies at the joint, had a talk with him and decided to cook up a two month residency for my band Lulu Lewis. My partner, Pablo Martin, said to me, let’s not just do music, let’s invite our other artist friends and host multidisciplinary happenings. It is from here that Salon Lulu was eventually born.
Enter Julia Gorton. Julia and I had met a few years earlier and found an instant love for one another & became good friends. She was the first person I thought of for the series. I knew about the live sessions she had been doing in other cities and of course wanted her to do the same in the city where she started and with me. And this is what we did. Over two sessions with a residency finale projecting all the amazing images she created of our current NY scene.
Julia is so loved by the underground community. It is incredible to watch everyone show up to be seen by her. Julia and her work open those doors for people. She shows those of us who often operate on the fringe, outside of boxes and who love a darker type of self-expression and music that we have a glorious place in her book. She works with us, goads us on and shows with her eye & hand how cool we are. She treats every person he sits before her with complete attention and regard and then shares her incredible images back to us to everyone's delight.
Julia is queen, my queen, queen of the luncheonette.
DYLAN HUNDLEY, Lulu Lewis, Darling Black, Radar, Salon Lulu
My smallest studio was set up in a tiny club located in a hyper-local area called Dimes Square. I could hardly get back far enough to see who I was shooting. My hand-held light often accentuated the face in an unflattering manner... which B-Movie was I channeling on these evenings - was it Bride of Frankenstein or perhaps Pickup on South Street by Sam Fuller? I will never be able to escape the aesthetics of the after school movies I watched growing up, they are deeply embedded in my psyche and to me they are the exciting and glamorous stories told of the side-lined and misunderstood, my favorite kind of monsters and people.
JULIA GORTON
