RIGA - It's another Friday night in one of Riga's premier underground havens. In the semi darkness an alternative crowd moves to a piercing, monotonous beat.
"I like the people that come here. It's a good crowd… you can just be yourself," one club-goer tells The Baltic Times.
Once a thriving culture, Riga's alternative scene is now concentrated at a handful of venues.
Those heavily involved in Riga's underground scene told TBT independent cultural enterprise and development had long been starved of government funding, a situation exacerbated by the current economic crisis.
Kristaps Pukitis is obliging enough to speak in between juggling bar duties, sound checks and a turn as DJ.
The 26-year-old founder of Riga underground institution Dirty Deal Cafe said the city's cultural development was continuing to suffer due to a lack of government support.
The bar-cum-theatre-cum-concert venue relocated to Riga's notorious Maskavas district following the closure of the city's alternative haven, Andrejsala.
Pukitis said several planned projects and cultural initiatives had to be sidelined due to a lack of resources.
"Everything that has been done has been done with pure hard work," said Pukitis.
"The government is not supporting this kind of independent cultural scene at all."
"If you look at what is happening in Sweden and Denmark…long-term there is no plan for building of cultural activity [in Latvia]," he said.
Pukitis said some neighboring Scandinavian musicians and DJs had shown solidarity to Latvia by offering to play for free at the venue.
DAYS GONE BY
Riga's former underground homeland, Andrejsala, was shutdown in late 2007.
Located in an area north of Riga near the port, Andrejsala's gritty, industrial surrounds proved fertile breeding ground for the alternative culture that sprang up alongside its riverside banks.
A haven of cafes, indie art galleries, experimental theater, film festivals and legendary dance parties, the former loading dock for cargo ships quickly developed as an underground cultural hub similar in vein to Copenhagen's Christiania and Vilnius' Uzupis district.
After it was earmarked for residential and commercial development, public events were banned and its tenants forced to leave.
Since then cultural development in the city has taken a backseat and the underground scene has become increasingly fragmented.
"Basically the biggest cultural event going on there now [in Andrejsala] is people sitting by the river drinking beer," said Didzis Otrais.
The event-organizer and former filmmaker was involved in Andrejsala during its heyday, and speaks wistfully of a time when free thinking and spontaneous creativity were encouraged.
"It was just a really great place with atmosphere. It was somewhere that artists could go to share ideas and develop their style. It was also a very valuable experiment in how to operate and cooperate in trying to create some intelligent community that is more culturally developed and aware," he said.
Valerijs Nikitin also has fond memories of Andrejsala's heyday and has tried to replicate the mood in his Bruninieku Street bar, Bakery, which opened in January.
"We are trying to work with underground artists. Our idea is to make not only parties, but to make some art activities; to have a place where people can leave their work, their feelings and their ideas," said Nikitin.
But not all those involved in the underground scene are mourning the demise of Andrejsala.
"A lot of artists spent their energy and time to build something in Andrejsala and then one day it's all finished, said co-founder of another Riga underground institution Space:Garage, Kirill Khimitchev.
"For a lot of people Andrejsala was a very crap experience…in the end it was all about business and property," he said.
Khimitchev said he had moved on from the hedonistic days of Andrejsala and was now embracing a more mainstream approach.
He rejects the "underground" tag and says he is now looking to develop the club as a business venture and take advantage of its new prime location in the heart of Old Town.
However, the club's underground roots remain very much in evidence.
Located in an abandoned former Soviet storehouse, six levels above Old Town, the club attracts an eclectic crowd that often stays to dance until the sun comes up.
CULTURE IN STRIFE
Latvia's underground movement has its roots in the electronic dance parties, known as raves, which developed in the mid 1990s following the collapse of Soviet rule.
In 1995 's seven years after the rave scene exploded in Europe 's the first event was staged in Riga in a former Soviet storehouse.
The event, organized by local DJs and promoters, caused an enormous buzz, attracting almost 1,000 revelers.
"The people here in the music world are very educated and have very good taste. We didn't just want to copy the foreign model, we made our style; we tried to have our own face," said Vital Drozdov, a Riga-based professional DJ and promoter, who was involved in organizing Latvia's first rave parties.
Since the scene first exploded, Drozdov said interest had waned in the fringe music scene, which has suffered as a result of popularized mass produced music.
"At the moment, this music and this sort of underground movement is in deep shit. It seems like people have lost a bit of interest in this sort of lifestyle and in the clubs it has become more about this MTV style," he said.
Since the demise of Andrejsala Riga's underground scene has become increasingly divergent, and is now struggling to survive through the tough economic times.
According to Otrais, however, Latvia lagged behind cultural investment even before the economic meltdown in comparison to its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania.
"The Latvian government spends much less on cultural development than Estonia and Lithuania. There is a much bigger cultural scene and government spending on supporting musicians, theater and artists," said Otrais.
"Sometimes it's easier to find Latvian musicians playing in Lithuania or Estonia than it is in Latvia," he said.
British guide James Eldridge, whose company E.a.t. Riga runs alternative tours showcasing lesser discovered parts of the city, said Riga was suffering not from a lack of culture, but from an image problem.
He says the advent of sex tourism has earned Riga the spurious reputation as a city of debauchery rather than culture.
"Unless the government and the police pull their finger out of their ass the only people that will profit is this sort of black tourism 's the worst of the worst," said Eldridge, who has been encouraging tourists to stretch their legs and explore beyond the Old Town boundaries since 2008.
"Old Town has become a place of cheap beer, easy women and debauchery and this is not Riga. Riga, 100 years ago, was one of Europe's culture capitals, comparable to Paris and St Petersburg. It was a place of great creativity."
"How can we get this back? Well, by investing in cultural development again and remembering what Riga was and why it was so great," he said.
However, outside the tourist traps, he said there remained a thriving alternative culture waiting to be discovered.
Otrais remains optimistic that Riga's vibrant cultural scene will survive through the tough economic times, largely through the ongoing practice of collaboration and cooperation that existed in the underground community.
"I think there will always be this cultural scene… As underground people we can bargain things, we can work together on some projects even if it is only for fun and the people don't receive any reward or cash. We are used to surviving with only a little and I guess this maybe makes it a little easier when there is no money at all," he said.
