Fishbowl Live is back in business — just not in the Clifton house that made it famous. The DIY concert series that once packed a Taylor Avenue backyard reopened last Thursday at The Mockbee in Over-the-Rhine, drawing a crowd of about 500 people for a show called Fish Out of Water.
The comeback event marked the end of a seven-month hiatus that began when Fishbowl Live abruptly shut down its Clifton house venue in March, as previously reported by Hoodline. According to The News Record, organizers had planned to relocate after that closure, and they landed on The Mockbee, a venue in Over-the-Rhine known for its electronic dance music scene. Founding organizer Boston Hammond, a fourth-year construction management major at the University of Cincinnati, toured the building before settling on it, later saying The Mockbee was the only place that could fit Fishbowl Live.
From a Clifton Backyard to a Former Brewery
Fishbowl Live began as a house show venue operating out of a residence on Taylor Avenue in Clifton, holding its first show there in November 2024. The setup featured bands playing in an upper-level garage while a lower yard hosted vendors, bonfires and displays, and the operation eventually attracted audiences of up to 1,000 people, per the same News Record account. That kind of scale inside a residential house sits squarely in the kind of friction DIY venues often face in student neighborhoods, where noise-related sound ordinances like Cincinnati's Section 910-7 governing disruptive sound equipment create standing enforcement hurdles, according to the NPC Law Library.
The Mockbee, by contrast, sits inside a building that began as a brewery, which once drew water from the Miami & Erie Canal — now Central Parkway — to refrigerate its beer before closing during Prohibition, according to a historical post shared in the Old Cincinnati Facebook group. The building later became home to C.M. Mockbee Steel before it was converted into a live music and arts space. Architecturally, the venue's underground stage consists of two parallel, whitewashed brick tunnels that function as distinct acoustic vaults and light-show canvases, as described by Soapbox Cincinnati.
A Packed Tunnel and a Legacy Lineup
Hammond said Fishbowl organizers wanted a different venue without settling for one they did not love, and the reopening show suggested the search paid off. The tunnel stage hosted a line out the door for several hours and a consistently packed dance floor and lounge, the report notes, with the Mockbee's multiple floors, full bar, lounge area and tunnel stage giving Fishbowl a larger-scale rock show experience complete with a lighting rig, smoke and a green room — a step up from what a residential garage could offer.
Hammond selected the Fish Out of Water lineup intentionally to reflect Fishbowl's legacy, and the bill leaned on familiar names. Limelight, the band that first introduced Hammond to Clifton's live music scene and had played Fishbowl's Halloween 2025 show as well as its battle of the bands event, performed at the reopening. Zolmon's Wolfgang, which bassist and manager Jay Thornbury's band has played more Fishbowl shows than any other artist according to Hammond, also took the tunnel stage; Hammond said the band keeps returning because it loves Fishbowl's crowds. Cleveland band False Teeth rounded out the live acts, with the set captured in photographs. DJ sets from Auxstar, Twkrbtch and Pureapathi filled out the night, while the Mockbee's lounge and second floor hosted vendors — all part of a show teased on Instagram in early August.
Ticket Sales Keep Funding Ovarian Cancer Research
The reopening preserved one thread that has run through Fishbowl Live since well before the shutdown: charity fundraising. Fishbowl's charity fundraising continued at the reopening. Fish Out of Water's proceeds were donated to the Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Ohio for the second time, and the show alone raised almost $1,000 for the organization — building on more than $6,000 in total ticket sales Fishbowl shows have generated for local charities over time, per The News Record. Hammond said the ovarian cancer cause is meaningful to Fishbowl organizers.
The Ovarian Cancer Alliance of Ohio is the organization Fishbowl has supported through its fundraising. That sustained partnership has become part of what separates Fishbowl from a typical underground party, turning student-run house shows into an organized fundraising effort.
What Comes Next Remains Unsettled
Even with a successful reopening behind them, Fishbowl's organizers are not promising a fixed path forward. Hammond said the group's full future remains uncertain, but added that Fishbowl will continue to be heard from. The pivot away from Clifton comes as the neighborhood's small entertainment venues have faced a run of closures, legal issues and operational pressure, a pattern Hoodline detailed in its report on the Gaslight strip's recent turmoil.
Fishbowl's scrappy, donation-funded comeback reflects the DIY circuit it grew out of, one part of the city's live-music scene.
