8 Ball Radio8 Ball Radio

8-Ball started in 2012 as a group of friends trying to keep Grand Billiards, a pool hall in gentrifying East Williamsburg, from closing; they put screenings and a zine fair on its tables, and when the landlord shut the place that August they kept going under the name anyway. The radio followed in 2014 from Muddguts, a Williamsburg exhibition space, as Radio Muddguts 41, taking the 8-Ball name a year later. What Lele Saveri, Giuseppe Furcolo and Josh Hubbard began as a three-person crew is now a collective of dozens.

Antron runs wormhole techno and leftfield electronica on Basal Rate, 888 Hz opens the morning on ambient, Buongiorno DUB and Patsy's Punk Bitch Radio Hour land in the same week, and a vault of past shows fills whatever the volunteers don't. Mixcloud's listeners voted it the best online station in North America in 2018, and the zine library in the same room still opens on Sundays.