The original Velvet Underground Yelp listing is marked as CLOSED and this listing exists, so allow me to be the first to review the NEW Velvet Underground.
Backstory: The Velvet Underground closed in 2015 and was scheduled to become a wine bar via some corporate Liberty Village restaurant company. Then promotions company Embrace bought the building as they needed a venue appropriate for musical acts that aren't big enough to play the Danforth Music Hall or the Hoxton, for example.
And so came an Embrace thrown event that brought me back into the Velvet Underground for the first time in over half a decade. The place looks pretty much like they brought in a pressure washer and sprayed the grime off the place and then threw a new coat of black paint around anything that isn't brick. The sound and lighting system was likely improved, and provided a clean but not overwhelming experience during the show.
One potential issue is that the stage is not very raised from the main ground. This meant that sight lines are kind of lacking for anything that happens below chest level. So at this show for example, whenever the guy sat at a piano he was pretty much gone from the visual aspect of the show. An extra foot or 2 of raising the stage would have really worked to the places advantage, but then again I suppose there aren't that many acts with sit down pianists so this might not be an issue for most shows.
On to the bar:
$6 mix drinks, $9 for doubles if standard bar rail ($12 for premium liquor).
$7 tallboys of various domestic beers, and $8 tallboys of Stella or Corona. Given I've paid $8 for a bottle of Stella, I was actually pretty cool with the tallboys. It actually makes a lot of sense as there is no need to clean up broken glass throughout the night.
So all in, I'm a definitely a fan of the place and it's good to see this place still as a concert venue instead of some yuppy wine bar. So big ups to Embrace for saving the venue from gentrification.