ABC No Rio
ABC No Rio is a collectively run arts and activism center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, founded in 1980 and built from the start on principles of resource sharing, anti-authoritarianism, and DIY culture. Its constituent collectives have included a zine library, a screenprinting studio, a darkroom, a public computer lab, Food Not Bombs, and a punk and hardcore collective that has run all-ages shows with a strict no-racism, no-sexism, no-homophobia booking policy for decades. Membership is open, governance is collective, and the work has always been grounded in the neighborhood — responding directly to displacement, gentrification, and the political conditions facing working-class and Puerto Rican communities in Loisaida.
The space traces its origin to the 1979 Real Estate Show, when artists from the group Collaborative Projects occupied a city-owned building on Delancey Street to critique land-use policies that kept buildings vacant while surrounding communities were hollowed out. The city shuttered the show but offered the organizers a building at 156 Rivington Street in exchange—a negotiated foothold that became ABC No Rio. After decades of operating in that building, the collective vacated in 2016 ahead of demolition and has continued programming “in exile” at partner venues across the city while construction proceeded on a new, energy-efficient building at the same address. Groundbreaking happened in July 2024, and ABC No Rio expects to reopen at 156 Rivington in the fall of 2026.
The new four-story building will restore the zine library, darkroom, screenprinting facility, and gathering spaces in a permanent home the collective now owns outright. Through 45 years of eviction threats, a decade without a building, and the deaths of long-time collaborators, the collectives that make up ABC No Rio have kept producing exhibitions, hosting concerts, distributing zines, and showing up.
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