E-Mail This Article to a Friend FOLLOW-UP II This won’t be the last time you’ll read about the Zeitgeist BY CAMILLE DODERO

When city governments talk to artistic communities, they usually end up sounding like Charlie Brown’s parents: unintelligible and pedantic. So when Cambridge’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) publicly met with Zeitgeist Gallery owners Gill Aharon and Alan Carrier last Thursday evening about issuing a special permit to stay in operation, it was unusual to see both parties speaking the same language.

The meeting’s relative ease may have come about because the Zeitgeist gang, famous for morphing municipal meetings into comical performance-art pieces, was astonishingly well-behaved. "When things like this come up," Zeitgeist Gallery director Alan Nidle had said earlier in the week, "it’s always been a debate whether you actually use the hearing to do something interesting, or take the shortest path between two points and get the damn permit." This time, the Zeitgeist curbed the theatrics and got the damn permit.

The special permit became necessary last January, when Cambridge’s Inspectional Services Department (ISD) sent the Zeitgeist, located in Inman Square, a cease-and-desist letter — essentially because the space’s unclassifiable hodgepodge of live music, dance, and performance didn’t adhere to the city’s rigid zoning ordinances. (See "Space Invaders," News and Features, February 13.) The ISD decided that the Zeitgeist had to apply for a special permit that would categorize it as a "theater or hall for public gatherings" — a term woolly enough to reflect the gallery’s schedule. So the Zeitgeist had to appear before the BZA to plead its case.

By 8:50 p.m., at least 100 people had crammed into the first-floor room of Cambridge’s Senior Center. BZA chair Thomas Sieniewicz asked how many people present were in favor of granting the Zeitgeist a special permit — every hand in the place flew up. Then Sieniewicz read excerpts from letters in the gallery’s support sent by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Cambridge Arts Council, and neighboring restaurant the S&S Deli.

Everything was going smoothly until performer/writer Ian McKinnon, once a candidate for Cambridge City Council under the self-founded Art and Performance Party, plopped down before the BZA. Dressed in a suit and tie, the wiry actor, sonorous public-speaking voice in full effect, ridiculed the rigidity of zoning nomenclature by imposing his own arbitrary definition of what an art gallery should be. "Artists may be allowed to speak to the people who have come to the opening, but only to thank those people," he read. "Any lengthy talk to those assembled about the art itself would turn the gallery into a hall." His satire evoked cackles from the crowd. Sensing the potential for chaos, Sieniewicz firmly suggested that only concerns and comments directly related to the Zeitgeist’s special permit be addressed. Translation: we already like you, so please don’t make us not like you.

Fortunately, the BZA still liked the Zeitgeist at 9:15 p.m., when the five members voted unanimously to grant the alternative art space a special permit to exist as a "theater or hall for public gatherings." The assembled spectators clapped and whooped, with the fervent joy of parents watching their kids bow after a high-school play. Then someone in the back joked, "Party at the Zeitgeist!"