Baltimore native Meagan Buster, also known as Ducky Dynamo, wants to buy the space that housed Trip’s Place and Gatsby’s.
Ducky is a Baltimore club music DJ and producer, but she also refers to herself as a “culturist.”
“I do a lot of things,” she said. “I DJ, I curate, I produce, I teach, but all of that falls under the umbrella of me preserving what I see is important to our Black Baltimore culture in terms of art.”
Trip’s Place/Gatsby’s was once Club Choices, founded by Odell Brock in the 1970s. The after-hours venue was home to underground dance parties for decades.
Odell Brock was a Black businessman, a legendary and significant player in the scene and in the history of music culture in this city. Brock founded the legendary disco nightclub Odell’s in 1976, a few blocks over. Brock passed away in 1985. The space was gentrified, and a few decades later, in 2016, it was put up for auction and purchased by a nonprofit developer, Jubilee Baltimore.
This portion of real estate has helped generate much of Baltimore’s house music and club culture. Wayne Davis used to play at Odell’s and would later go on to establish the famed Paradox nightclub; like Odells, it became a place where people came to dance and to be in a community united by a love of music and sound systems until its doors were closed.
The Trip’s/Gatsby’s complex, which was listed for auction in mid-May, includes three commercial buildings, a liquor license with adult entertainment, and prime real estate with a history of Baltimore dance culture.
“Gatsby’s was a go-to place on the East Coast for many years, in the vein of Odell’s. It’s where people went to dance and hear great music,” promoter and event curator Jonathan Knox told Baltimore Beat.
“Gatsby’s was a go-to place on the East Coast for many years, in the vein of Odell’s. It’s where people went to dance and hear great music,” promoter and event curator Jonathan Knox told Baltimore Beat.
Ducky has created a GoFundMe campaign to purchase the complex, comprising 1813, 1815, and 1817 North Charles Street, to preserve its history and protect it from an entity that might gentrify it.
She said even if the goal of raising $500,000 is not met, this campaign will illustrate that the voices of Black artists in this area should not be ignored or cut out of the conversations surrounding who is allowed to take up space in Baltimore.
Ducky said venues like this one are essential in a city where cultural spaces are shrinking.
“One of the big issues in our community — and when I say community, I’m speaking about the Black arts/entertainment scene — primarily the Station North area, there’s a deficit of places to go. We are all complaining that there’s nowhere to go anymore.”
She said a friend sent her the link about Trip’s/Gatsby’s being for sale, and she was shocked.
“I read what was included in the sale and realized, ‘Oh, this was the whole thing!’”
We all have this dream of “if only there was one more place, if only we could buy a place, if only we had a venue that we can run, that we can curate and not worry about being edged out of the few places there are,” she said.
She said she thought to herself, “damn if I had half a mil, I’d be in there. You know, I don’t, but maybe we do.”
So, she made a Facebook post saying she would start a GoFundMe if enough people were interested. By the time she woke up the next day, enough people had asked where the fundraiser was and expressed support, that she felt she should do it. She realized that this could actually end up happening.
“It’s kind of like a demonstrative campaign,” Ducky said. She has been overwhelmed by the amount of support so far.
Ducky is no stranger to organizing to ensure Black Baltimore artists get recognition for their significant achievements, and she most recently accomplished this by working with other musicians to start Baltimore Club Music Day (June 17), first observed by the city at AFRAM Festival in 2023.
For years, Ducky has been calling on local officials to establish an office of culture and entertainment that focuses on nightlife. It would be similar to what has already happened in D.C. and NYC.
“I always was an advocate for supporting our arts/entertainment, especially our Black, native arts/entertainment scene here, because of simply how much revenue we generate … that the city depends on.”
She initially wanted to create a petition to establish Baltimore club as the official music of Baltimore, similar to how D.C. established go-go as its official music. She felt this would help preserve and anchor Baltimore club music as a known artistic export from the city.
This was around when Drake dropped “Calling for You” which (without permission) sampled rapper and Baltimore native Rye Rye, using her vocals without credit.
“There were a lot of eyes on Baltimore, especially Baltimore club music, at that time,” Ducky said.
“I was like, ‘This is what I’m talking about.’ This was something that obviously comes from this city, that the world knows comes from this city, that we don’t get enough shine for. Yet another thing from Baltimore that the entire world is benefiting from culturally.”
At that time, she had a podcast where she interviewed members of the club music community. She would tell everyone her plan to get government recognition of Baltimore club, and all of the guests, from producers to dancers to DJs, agreed it was necessary.
“Half a mil in two weeks is insane,” Ducky said of her fundraiser. “But if enough money is generated, and just the support of the campaign in itself, I think, speaks to our community.”
“Half a mil in two weeks is insane,” Ducky said of her fundraiser. “But if enough money is generated, and just the support of the campaign in itself, I think, speaks to our community.”
The campaign’s support shows the power of collective organizing and emphasizes her point that Baltimore’s creative community recognizes the importance of preserving space.
“[It] speaks to the fact that we are here, and we do want this. And when I say ‘our community,’ I’m speaking to a number of us. Not just as Black people, us as femme-identifying folks, LGBTQ community, simply just the entrepreneurial community … any of us who would utilize the space, as you imagine this club used to be.” Owning the buildings would enable her to preserve the spirit and legacy of Trip’s/Gatsby’s but also have an eye toward the future and building a legacy.
Ducky hosts a monthly DJ workshop at Motor House, just a few blocks north of Trip’s/Gatsby’s, and she plans to put the next workshop’s proceeds toward the purchase fund. The DJ workshop taking place on June 1st, is similar to open decks, in which everyone is welcome to come play and learn.
“I’m trying to merge all these ideas, because I’m trying to prove and show that there are enough of us who can benefit from a space and the resources. I’m trying to keep it all as big and communal as possible to show the power-in-numbers thing.”
If the buildings are sold to another entity, Ducky sees this campaign as an opportunity to potentially collaborate with the new owner and prove that she and other creatives are not willing to disappear or have their work erased.
For Ducky, the preservation of space is her most important focus during this entire endeavor.
“That’s really what my main thing is in this area, in the Station North community, the Baltimore community, period. For all of us across the board — DJs, poets, comedians, singers, rappers, dancers … all of us need space.”
“That’s really what my main thing is in this area, in the Station North community, the Baltimore community, period. For all of us across the board — DJs, poets, comedians, singers, rappers, dancers … all of us need space.”
Meagan Buster, aka Ducky Dynamo
To have a space to congregate, to perform, practice, or be — in a time when gentrification is so rapidly making this more expensive — is critical.
Ducky regularly hosts events at Motor House, located in the North Avenue building that previously housed the arts space Load of Fun. In 2014 Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation purchased the building. BARCO is a nonprofit real estate development corporation founded by the Deustch Foundation in 2012.
“The ones that are still here, shout out to them for sticking around. But there’s not too many of them,” Ducky said. “Station North particularly has been going through a really interesting situation with the venues available. If you look back to the comparison of five and ten years ago, it happened quick.”
The buildings on Charles Street have a cabaret license, an after-hours license, and a separate adult entertainment license, Ducky said. “That’s the rare thing about it: those licenses, especially in that combination.” She says Baltimore does not issue this combination of licenses often; when it does, it takes years and is very expensive.
Ducky is motivated by the people who have actually been doing the work, living, working, and creating in this region, preserving the space, and the legacies that extend from it.
“If you look at legacies and how they are passed down, one of the things about Baltimore Club Music Day that was important to me,” she said, “through generations, a lot of history has been lost and made murky. And I don’t want to see that happen for us… I have an issue with the fact that we might get written out of history.”
Like Odell’s, the Trip’s/Gatsby’s complex is indelibly important to Baltimore’s music history.
“This club is one of the places where club music started,” Ducky said. “It would be heartbreaking to me to see it just continue through history as just the thing turned into something else.”
If the building falls into the hands of someone who’s unaware of or doesn’t care about its history, that legacy could be erased.
“Take O’Dells for example, right around the corner on North Avenue. Legendary establishment in the name of nightlife in Baltimore, it got bought up, and it’s a co-op for kids now. Literally nothing to do with the culture it came from; great purpose, great initiative, again, no shade to them,” Ducky said.
Ducky told the Beat that because of the size of the space, there are numerous possibilities for what it could be. “It could turn into a museum; you could still maintain the club situation,” she said.
She’s also interested in making it into a usable communal space, “like a studio where you can have people record, create their content, workshops, things like that, and that can be how it operates during the day.”
Jonathan B. Knox, a promoter, told Baltimore Beat that the sale could mean that this historical and culturally significant space could turn into something that is not representative of its history. He shares Ducky’s concern: if the building falls into the hands of an outside entity, the work and legacy of Black promoters could be erased.
For decades Knox, along with the late Lisa Moody and Ultra Naté have maintained the house music party Deep Sugar, which used to be at the Paradox, in South Baltimore. Once the Paradox closed, Deep Sugar became an itinerant party.
“Once the Paradox closed and there was no other venue that had an after-hours license, Gatsby/Trip’s Place sort of picked up the baton of being a space where people could party into the wee hours of the morning.”
Knox pointed out that the Trip’s and Gatsby’s complex will go to auction at a time of rapid city development.
“This is a building in the Station North Arts District, with a huge footprint,” Knox said.
And, as the nearby Penn Station is being redeveloped, “it’s going to look like very prized real estate for investors and developers in Baltimore City, and outside of Baltimore City.”
This auction seems to be another canary in the coal mine of rapid gentrification and development that is befalling Baltimore. If this building becomes something foreign to the people who live and work in the area, that means that Black people will lose space and face further displacement.
The sale of the building echoes another common complaint: creatives do not feel supported by their city.
“The fact that this icon of Baltimore nightlife is potentially not going to be in that space, in that iteration, is cause for concern. That we live in a city that doesn’t appreciate their iconic spaces that primarily serve people of color.”
Addressing other Station North redevelopment, Knox continued, “Is that what Gatsby’s will become, another place that people used to go, with a mural or homage to the past? … Or does it become something different — is it going to be a high-rise?
For Ducky, the dream of owning this space and bringing attention to this attempt to maintain her culture is critical and necessary. “How much more sacrifice do we have to do?” she said. “And how long before we do get something that we can call our own for the sake of our culture?”
She continued, ”This could be a community rest point, where it’s a resource for everybody throughout the whole day. And then at night we turn up because that’s what we do.”
Ducky said this is not just about her.
“I’m operating as the vessel of the community. I’m putting myself out there just to be the one to create the initiative, start the process … I’ve learned there’s a lot of voices, and a lot of opinions, a lot of feelings, but kind of the same overarching goal and mission, the artists and creatives involved in our community.”
The auction takes place on Wednesday, June 12, at 11 a.m. But on June 15, a couple of days before Baltimore Club Music Day, Ducky will host a Baltimore Club Music cookout in the Black Arts District, in West Baltimore. She invites the public to come to the auction in solidarity and to attend other events that week for Baltimore Club Music Day.
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