![Poll 2023: Avant Gardner & The Brooklyn Mirage](jpg/8.%20avant%20gardner%20%26%20the%20brooklyn%20miragedcf2.jpg?itok=RoQ7cXMH)
Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA
Capacity: 8000+
There’s something magnificently stupefying about the Bushwick clubbing complex Avant Gardner — make that several somethings, really. There’s the vast scope of the place, for one: the warehouse-like Great Hall and the relatively intimate (though still pretty damn big) Kings Hall, along with the massive outdoor-space/faux-desert-temple known as the Brooklyn Mirage, can easily squeeze in 8,000 revellers. There’s also the booming sound systems — Brooklyn Mirage’s KV2 setup is particularly impressive — along with a 200-by-30-foot video wall (the largest in North America), six food courts and all of the lighting you’d expect from a state-of-the-art club.
Those factors alone make the venue, which went through a massive renovation just a year ago, a unique entry in NYC’s current clubbing ecosystem, where small, intimate spaces are the order of the day. But none of that really matters without the music to back it up, and the Avant Gardner/Brooklyn Mirage team has that covered. Big names who have played in the space over the past year include Charlotte de Witte, Danny Tenaglia, Black Coffee and Above & Beyond — and the coming months promise the likes of Bicep, Pretty Lights, the Anjunadeep crew and Meduza (among many others) coming through for the spot’s longest, and arguably strongest, summer season yet.