Free / No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds - But donations and memberships are dearly appreciated.
Physical ~noncommercial~ space is rare in New York City. Ridgewood Commons is dedicated to being open to all, but as a newly re-launched project, we are in a moment of needing support to continue to exist.

Join us Wednesday, October 1st for a screening of Allan Moyle’s punk pirate radio classic, “Pump Up The Volume” (1990), followed by demos of modern DIY radio tools from RC's own Technical Collective (aka Basement).
The drama stars Christian Slater as Mark, a shy, suburban high school student secretly broadcasting a pirate radio show from his parents’ basement under the DJ names “Happy Harry Hard-On” and “Hard Harry”. Mark's sarcastic persona and teen angst-filled rants about American society and his school's dark secrets soon become popular among his fellow students. But after his candor inspires a couple listeners to make tragic decisions, concerned parents, Mark's father (and school commissioner), the police, and even the Federal Communications Commission scramble to track down and stop this mysterious youth provocateur.
Eerily anticipating the future of blogging, podcasting, and internet edgelord culture, “Pump Up the Volume” came out a year after Slater's breakout starring role in “Heathers”. The film's soundtrack includes Leonard Cohen, Ice-T, The Descendents, Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, Richard Hell, Pixies, and a never-released track by the Beastie Boys just a year before the release of Nirvana's “Nevermind” transformed radio and popular culture forever. Moyle would later direct “Empire Records”, another Gen X, soundtrack-driven coming-of-age staple.
After the screening, we will discuss how you can hop on the airwaves with legal tools like ham radio and newer messaging protocols like Meshtastic and Reticulum that can bypass internet and cellphone networks entirely. In the spirit of the film's call to “steal the air”, we may even discuss how to (on a purely “hypothetical” basis) build a DIY pirate radio station that can broadcast on FM and join NYC's own decades-old history of pirate radio, from Les Paul's legendary Booger Brothers Broadcasting System in Jackson Heights to the wide tapestry of community stations today.