As the sun went down on a late July Tuesday, Shanty Shack Brewing came to life. As the smell of beer, weed and paint fumes mingled through the air, artists of every stripe crowded picnic tables, trading inspiration and joints over the booming music.
Periodically, members of the audience would jump up to join for a freestyle rap, passing the mic across an increasingly crowded stage, while the audience cheered them on.
Artists worked on graffiti walls bordering the patio, covering old art with new pieces, accompanied by the music of instrumental hip-hop group The P$ycho-Nauts Collective, featuring trumpet and flugelhorn player Duhran Wilson.
“It’s really amazing that they’re holding space there,” says the band’s cellist and vocalist, Phil Cagan, 28, also known as ILL Phil. “It’s a very, I’d say, like, sacred place of, you know, people coming together.”
Artists need places like this, where they can just “jam and experience flow state together as a community,” said freestyle rapper Michelle Leus, 31, better known on stage as Thug Shells, about her experience at Art Night.
“I remember what it was like for someone to give me a microphone for the first time, and how amazing it felt, knowing that that was going to be my career forever,” added Leus, explaining that safe spaces like this give other artists that same opportunity.
Art Night is also a great way to connect with other artists and locals in Santa Cruz, and an opportunity to bounce ideas off of other artists and get to know different mediums, says artist Joyleen Torwan, 32, who also uses the artist name Jay_Tea.
“The whole point is to encourage people to have a space to come paint,” says one of the live artists of the night, Erika Rosendale, 39, who also goes by Miss Teal, who added that Art Night provides an environment for artists to have the opportunity to express themselves without the pressure to prove themselves.
“This is a really open, inclusive environment, where sometimes the graffiti world isn’t necessarily that way,” says Rosendale.
Visual artist and DJ Elijah Pfotenhauer, also known as Painted Ladder, brought the art night idea to brewery co-owners Nathan Van Zandt, 39, and Brandon Padilla, 40, a few years back and has helped to solidify Art Night as a community staple in Santa Cruz’s art and rap scene.
“He’s always had this idea,” says Van Zandt. “He wanted an art night where artists could get together and talk about what they’re working on, and just kind of hang out—and you know, do some art.”
Pfotenhauer, the artist behind the brewery’s logo (a grinning shack), has been friends with the local brewmasters throughout their Fern Street journey, trading ideas about art and beer. Throughout, Art Night had always been an idea in the 46-year-old artist’s mind.
Having been a part of art nights in the past, Pfotenhauer had noticed how surrounding himself with other people working, helped him focus.
“I wanted to just have somewhere to meet up with friends and draw and work on whatever,” says Pfotenhauer. “It just helps me to be around other people that are creating, you know, and so like gives me a little bit more inspiration or structure that I sometimes need.”
Shanty Shack was the perfect place, not only does the brewery have a backyard like atmosphere, Pfotenhauer explained, but Padilla and Van Zandt are accommodating to creative ideas.
Artistry has always been a central tenet of the business, explains Padilla, while they consider beer making to be their art, and the business owners have also made it an aim to be dedicated to fostering artistry of all types. They also have a featured gallery wall to spotlight a different artist for the month.
“The point of Shanty Shack is to bring up all these different creative people together,” says Padilla. And “beer is a nice open canvas for that kind of stuff, for people to meet and talk to each other, and have the different artists come and do their thing.”
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Art Night took off, and since occurs nearly every Tuesday evening starting at 6pm.
I can always count on Art Night being something new, says Van Zandt. “It keeps evolving—keeps getting better.”
The evening usually begins a little quiet, starting at 6pm, and artists slowly trickle into the Harvey west patio to work on their craft. Occasionally musicians or DJs will come and share their art as well, taking the opportunity to display their talents.
It’s also the day of the brewery’s only discount, Tie Dye Tuesday, where in-house beers and seltzers are $2 off for customers wearing tie dye.
Every other Tuesday night, from 8-10pm Art night transforms into an underground rap cypher, where local artists take turns freestyling, says Pfotenhauer, and the next cypher is planned for Aug 25.
It has “a little bit of this Burning Man spirit of like bring your, bring your own project to work on and see what happens,” adds Padilla.
As the brewery approaches its 10-year anniversary this winter, Art Night has also come to serve another purpose, getting people in the door—another example of how businesses are getting creative to foster community, while fighting rising costs and declining sales.
“Most places in our industry have to struggle with Tuesdays just being a slow day, middle of the week, and, yeah, Elijah’s art night has been able to draw a crowd for us,” says Padilla. “If Elijah hadn’t been doing Art night, we likely wouldn’t be open on Tuesdays at all.”
Due to rising expenses, the team at Shanty Shack has also shrunk over time. Currently Van Zandt and Padilla split the majority of the business roles—that previously were divided between a full staff—and Van Zandt’s wife assists with booking artists.
“Craft breweries in general are on the decline,” says Van Zandt, “whereas when we first started it, they were growing by double digits.”
Art night has thus become part of the larger goal to also bring people into the brewery on a consistent basis, adds Van Zandt.
“They wanna have awesome beer, awesome food and awesome music,” says Van Zandt. “Art Night is one of the ways that we’ve been trying to have a community come together, because we need more people drinking beer.”
