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CBGB Bowery on the Bowery in Downtown Manhattan

Monday, 18 November 2019 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: North America / Nordamerika
Category/Kategorie: General, New York City Reading Time:  7 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan‘s East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters CBGB were for Country, BlueGrass, and Blues, Kristal’s original vision, yet CBGB soon became a famed venue of punk rock and new wave bands like the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith Group, Blondie, and Talking Heads. From the early 1980s onward, CBGB was known for hardcore punk.

One storefront beside CBGB became the “CBGB Record Canteen”, a record shop and café. In the late 1980s, “CBGB Record Canteen” was converted into an art gallery and second performance space, “CB’s 313 Gallery”. CB’s Gallery was played by music artists of milder sounds, such as acoustic rock, folk, jazz, or experimental music, such as Dadadah, Kristeen Young and Toshi Reagon, while CBGB continued to showcase mainly hardcore punk, post-punk, metal, and alternative rock. 313 Gallery was also the host location for Alchemy, a weekly Goth night showcasing goth, industrial, dark rock, and darkwave bands. On the other side, CBGB was operating a small cafe and bar in the mid-1990s, which served classic New York pizza, among other items.

In 2005, atop its normally paid monthly rent of $19,000, CBGB was sued for some $90,000 in rent allegedly owed to its landlord, Bowery Residents’ Committee (BRC). Refusing to pay until a judge ruled the debt legitimate, Kristal claimed that he had never been notified of scaled rent increases, accruing over a number of years, asserted by BRC’s executive director Muzzy Rosenblatt. Ruling the debt false—that BRC had never properly billed the rent increases—the judge indicated that CBGB ought to be declared a landmark, but noted that Rosenblatt did not need to renew the lease, soon expiring. Rosenblatt vowed to appeal. Expecting Rosenblatt’s resistance to lease negotiation, Kristal agreed that the rent ought to rise, but not to the $55,000 monthly that Kristal believed the BRC to want. A nonprofit corporation housing homeless above CBGB mostly through donations and government funding, the BRC had only one commercial tenant and raised its monthly rent to $35,000. Kristal and the BRC reached an agreement whereby CBGB would leave by September 30, 2006. Planning to move CBGB to Las Vegas, Kristal explained, “We’re going to take the urinals. I’ll take whatever I can. The movers said, ‘You ought to take everything, and auction off what you don’t want on eBay.’ Why not? Somebody will.”

Many punk rock bands played at CBGB when they found it was going to close in hopes that their support could keep it from closing. Rocks Off, a promoter in New York, organized CBGB’s final weeks of shows to book “many of the artists who made CB’s famous”. Jobless Bob, Avail, the Bouncing Souls, and such newer acts opened during the last week, which included multi-night stands by Bad Brains and the Dictators and an acoustic set by Blondie. The final show, broadcast live on Sirius Satellite Radio on October 15, was played by Patti Smith, helped on some songs by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Television‘s Richard Lloyd, too, played in a few, including “Marquee Moon“. Nearly finished, Smith and band playing “Gloria” alternated the chorus with echos of “Blitzkrieg Bop“—by the Ramones—Hey! Ho! Let’s go!. During “Elegie”, her final encore, Smith named musicians and other music figures who had died since playing at CBGB. On October 15, 2006, upon Patti Smith’s last show at CBGB, the storied bar and club closed.

After closing, the old CBGB venue remained open as CBGB Fashions—retail store, wholesale department, and an online store—until October 31, 2006. CBGB Fashions moved to 19–23 St. Mark’s Place on November 1, and closed nearly two years later in summer 2008. In December 2015, various news outlets reported on a rebranded CBGB “reopening” at Newark International Airport – as CBGB L.A.B. (Lounge and Bar) by New York Chef chef Harold Moore; which had opened as of the end of December 2015.

By late 2007, fashion designer John Varvatos planned to open a store in CBGB’s former space, 315 Bowery, but to tastefully trail CBGB’s legacy rock and roll stickers on the walls, and much of the graffiti at the toilets was preserved, as were some playbills, found behind a wall, from shows at the club’s 10th anniversary in 1983. The store opened in April 2008. In 2008, a SoHo art gallery dedicated to music photography, the Morrison Hotel, opened a second location in the onetime CBGB Gallery at 313 Bowery, but the Morrison Hotel gallery closed in 2011. The building is currently occupied by Patagonia, a clothing store. Called the “Extra Place”, the alley behind the building became a pedestrian mall. The Dead Boys‘ Cheetah Chrome rued, “All of Manhattan has lost its soul to money lords”, yet reflected, “If that alley could talk, it’s seen it all”. CBGB’s nomination as a landmark drew an explanation:

CBGB was founded in 1973 at 315 Bowery, in a former nineteenth-century saloon on the first floor of the Palace Lodging House. The legendary music venue fostered new genres of American music, including punk and art rock, that defined the culture of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s, and that still resonate today. In this role as cultural incubator, CBGB served the same function as the theatres and concert halls of the Bowery’s storied past. The former club, now occupied by a retail business, remains a pilgrimage site for legions of music fans.

Today visitors can see etched into the cement at the entrance to the clothing store, the name of the music venue and the date it was founded “CBGB ’73”. People often stop and take pictures of the inscription as well as the facade of the store.

Read more on CBGB, John Varvatos, Curbed, 4 October 2017: The ever-changing Bowery and Wikipedia CBGB (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

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