The 4th Horseman—Long Beach’s horrorcore-meets-metal, beer-gone-macabre, fuck-around-and-find-out-style of pies pizzeria—will be expanding: the Dark Art Emporium, the art gallery attached to the Horseman, will be moving over into the East Village Arts District next to House of Hayden while the Horseman will push into the gallery space for its expansion.
“In all honesty, we’re pretty stoked,” said co-owner and Long Beach artist Jeremy Cross. “It’s going to an entirely new 4th Horseman for Long Beach as well as new era for the Dark Art Emporium.”
What will the new 4th Horseman be like for Long Beach?
“We decided about six months ago that we wanted to expand The 4th Horseman,” said Cross. “And the only way to do that is to expand into the gallery space and find a new home for the Dark Art Emporium. It’s really that simple: We’re at capacity on weekends and you reach a point where you reach a plateau of what you can accomplish. We wanna change that.”
For those that are familiar with the current configuration of The 4th Horseman and its speakeasy art gallery, Dark Art Emporium, the layout is pretty straight forward: Game room in the front, enter into the dining room with the bar and kitchen toward the back; take a right down the hallway to the bathrooms and access to the Dark Art Emporium.
Here’s the rough idea of what the new Horseman will look like instead: The wall behind the current bar? That will be removed from floor to ceiling, opening the front of the space to the gallery space behind it. There will be a wrap-around bar built in its stead, acting as an island in the middle of the room, where future patrons can head straight around it toward the back or access it through the hallway that currently exists.
“We’re gonna have a whole new bar, a pool table, more video games, more seating,” Cross said. “It’s pretty fucking cool.”
What does this mean for patrons in terms of construction?
“We’re not closing—that’s very important,” Cross said. “Maybe a lunch here and there but that’s all. We’ll operate as we always have.”
March 11 will mark the demo for the gallery while major construction is likely to be done by April.
“I want to give myself the month of May to decorate, fine-tune, set things about,” Cross said,
For the Dark Art Emporium, a return to roots
These fine words from Dark Art Emporium co-owner Jeremy Schott have always the perfect description of the gallery that has long existed has a speakeasy for art given its location behind The 4th Horseman (which he also co-owns): “It’s just one big fucking unit of weird.”
And now that era is ending—and, in a sense, is returning back to its days when it first opened at the southeast corner of 3rd Street and Elm Avenue in DTLB as it finds itself in the former Seams space at 427 E. 1st St.
“When I first opened the Emporium over seven years ago, I wanted to be on 1st Street but with how high the rents were and being a new business, it was a very big risk,” Schott said. “I wasn’t sure if the community would be into the type of art we were offering—but I was very and happily wrong.
The Dark Art Emporium has become synonymous with the Long Beach art scene: From hosting self-described “fucked up” movie nights at the 4th Horseman to a Krampus’n’elves holiday exhibit to being a gallery which, well, actually sells the art of the artists it shows, the Emporium rocks.
And the community has loved it in return.
“When we opened, we were welcomed with opened arms and have continued to grow to an international recognized art gallery—and I couldn’t be more proud of the growth we’ve had in such a short time,” Schott said, noting that buyers and artists from around the world have come to participate with and purchase from the Emporium. “I’ve had the privilege to share some of my favorite artists with Long Beach—I mean, genuinely world-famous artists.”
Even more, the space is now a more proper gallery in the sense that patrons can walk up to directly rather than it “being tucked away” in the words of gallery director Lauren Martin.
“It’s a genuinely exciting thing to be part of the East Village Arts District—and for the gallery to be more accessible for everyone? That’s a win,” Martin said. “We’ll be open more days of the week and not as tucked away from the public. Looking forward to sharing more of our weirdness with everyone and being more of a presence in the community.”
Even better? The Emporium has historically partied after every exhibit at the House of Hayden—which they will soon be right next door to. Can we get a “Fuck yeah!” from the crowd? Fuck. Yes.
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