Blå and Ingens gate

By the pedestrian bridge across Akerselva, a brick factory building operates as a concert club. The hall, covering about three hundred sixty square meters, was once an empty warehouse: it had no ready-made stage, ventilation, or toilets, and pipes and plumbing fixtures lay along the walls. Now jazz, electronic music, hip-hop, rock, and pop sound under this roof, while a market unfolds by the entrance on Sundays.

In the autumn of nineteen ninety-six, Oslo Jazzhus—the city's main venue for the young jazz scene—closed. Musicians lost a place to perform, and twenty-three-year-old social worker and Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation employee Martin Revheim lost a club he himself had visited constantly. A week later, he asked his friend and former fellow student, social worker Kjell Einar Karlsen, whether they should open a venue of their own. Both wanted to give a stage to music for which ordinary jazz clubs seemed too cramped.

They walked through buildings along Akerselva and entered this factory building in May of nineteen ninety-seven. The space, covering about three hundred sixty square meters, had no stage, ventilation, or toilets; pipes and plumbing fixtures lay along the walls. But they could convert the empty warehouse with their own hands. Friends of Revheim and Karlsen dismantled partitions, dug, painted, and laid bricks. The founders borrowed money, and two of their applications for assistance were rejected. Revheim developed a stomach ulcer and spent one week of the construction work in the hospital.

On February twenty-eighth, nineteen ninety-eight, the Blå club opened. For the first act, Revheim put the still little-known ensemble Jaga Jazzist from Tønsberg on stage: he had heard their record, but not a live performance. About twelve hundred people passed through the former warehouse that evening, although the founders had not spent a krone on advertising. Five years later, about twelve hundred concerts had already taken place here, and Jaga Jazzist was performing across Europe and the United States. For Blå's twentieth anniversary, the musicians returned and performed again on the same day as at the opening. Concerts and club nights still take place inside this building—jazz stands alongside electronic music, hip-hop, rock, and pop, as Revheim had envisioned even before construction began.

The short driveway between Blå's door and the bridge bears the unofficial name Ingens gate—Nobody's Street. According to a local story, around two thousand five, people using the driveway tried to determine who should clear the snow here and maintain the road. Neither municipal services nor other owners wanted to take responsibility for this stretch. Homemade street signs then appeared, recording the answer: the street belongs to nobody. Who exactly hung them is not reliably known.

The name remained, appeared on maps, and was adopted by the Sunday market held near the club. Blå's postal address still lists Brenneriveien. The sign by the same entrance says Ingens gate.