From the Times today:
Despite what Neil Young says (“Hey, hey, my, my”), rock ’n’ roll not only dies — sometimes it is crated into boxes and shipped off to a mini-storage unit in the industrial wastes of Brooklyn.
That, alas, is the precise and inglorious fate of CBGB, the legendary nightclub that for 33 years brought hardcore bands like Shrapnel and the Meat Puppets — not to mention chaos and cocaine — to the uplifted gormandizers of New York. Like all good things, the famous club (which closed its doors for good in October 2006) came to an end with a savage finality: the bar stashed in a trailer in Connecticut, the awning pawned off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and much of the rest of it left to molder here, in a dingy 3,000-square-foot Moishe’s moving company storage space in Williamsburg, a stage dive from the Navy Yard.
“It’s sad,” said Louise Parnassa-Staley, who was the nightclub’s manager for 22 years, “but it’s not really dismal. It’s quiet here, you know. And there’s no rats.”
There is grim commentary to be found in the fact that Ms. Parnassa-Staley — who once booked acts like Hatebreed and Cattle Decapitation — now makes business calls for CBGB Fashions, a clothing operation run from the storage unit that sells T-shirts, belt buckles, onesies for kids, even a CBGB dog vest for your poodle. That ghastliness is matched only by the news that the club’s former barman, Ger Burgman, son-in-law of the deceased owner, Hilly Kristal himself, is now the customer service representative for online accounts.
Not to mention the CBGB shop on St. Mark's closed last summer and was replaced by a Red Mango.
So, am i so jaded (or naive) to have believed the rumor that the contents of CBGB's was destined for Las Vegas for a reopening there? At least that was what I thought I heard soon after the closing.
ReplyDeleteThat was the word...Vegas! Guess that was to help soften the blow or something or CBGB's closing here...
ReplyDelete