This past week saw the end of an era as notorious New York City rock club CBGB closed its doors for good on Sunday night, October 15th. Sunday night’s final show marked the end of a contentious couple of years as club owner Hilly Kristal fought to keep from being evicted by his landlord, the Bowery Resident's Committee. In the end, the cash-rich non-profit organization beat down the independent club owner and, as a result, the Big Apple loses one of its best-known cultural icons. Kristal has talked about finding a new home for the club, perhaps in Las Vegas, but let’s face the facts...it’s all over for CBGB, save for the online T-shirt sales.
Kristal opened CBGB OMFUG – an acronym for "country, bluegrass and blues and other music for uplifting gormandizers" – in December 1973 in the bar area of the Palace Hotel, a notorious SRO flophouse on the Bowery. The Palace bar was a Hell's Angels hangout until Kristal transformed it into a rock & roll icon. For almost 33 years a veritable "who's who" of rock music has graced the CBGB stage, the short list including AC/DC, Blondie, Elvis Costello, the Dead Boys, the Dictators, Guns 'N' Roses, Pavement, the Police, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, the Talking Heads, Television and Yo La Tengo.
The eviction problem started for Kristal in early-2005 when the club's landlord, the non-profit Bowery Resident Committee (BRC), claimed that CBGB was $76,000 behind in its rent and that they would not renew the club's lease when it was to expire in August. Kristal said that he would pay the $76k but that BRC's proposed new lease, which would double his monthly payment to around $40,000, would put the club out of business.
This was not the first time that Kristal and the BRC butted heads. BRC, which runs a homeless shelter for substance abusers and AIDs victims above the club, sued Kristal in 2000 over $300,000 in back rent which allegedly fell through the cracks in a misunderstanding between the two parties. Kristal paid back almost all of the $223,000 the court found that he owed, but the new total seems to be the result of lease increases that Kristal says he was never notified about. "The real thing is they don't want me back," Kristal told Reuters News in April 2005. "I am not going to subsidize CBGB at the expense of homeless people," Muzzy Rosenblatt, BRC executive director, told The New York Times in response.
Lest the argument between CBGB and the BRC be framed as the poor little homeless shelter versus the scuzzy rock & roll club, take a close look at BRC's finances. As reported by Roger Friedman in his April 4th, 2005 Fox411 column, the BRC is actually a thriving foundation that took in $23 million in donations in 2004 from folks like Citigroup, American Express and JP Morgan as well as government grants. BRC's Rosenblatt was paid $145,000 in salary plus expenses last year while the 75-year old Kristal lives in the same rent-controlled apartment around the corner from the club that he has for decades. Kristal has said that he never made a lot of money from the club and that he only really started making a profit when he started up CBGB Fashions and began selling T-shirts and club paraphernalia on the Internet.
The Bowery Residents Committee officially notified club owner Hilly Kristal on August 31st, 2005 that they would not be renewing the famed club's lease. "We hope that CBGB will vacate the premises both voluntarily and expeditiously," stated the BRC’s Rosenblatt in a press release. "[The BRC] believes it is in the best interest of our clients – the homeless and neediest New Yorkers – to sever this relationship." Kristal fought the eviction for months, and a series of benefit concerts featuring CBGB supporters like the Misfits, Against Me! and Sham 69 raised money to offset legal expenses. A "Save CBGB" web site was launched to raise public awareness (and money) but in the end, like fellow New York clubs the Bottom Line and the Continental, CBGB fell victim to rising real estate values and the gentrification of the once-tarnished corner of the city.
I only had the pleasure of visiting CBGB once through its many years, during a decidedly early-80s "down" period where the impact of the club’s early success had not yet been exaggerated into the stuff of legend. I remember it as a greasy dive, not even as "user friendly" as the breeko-block building that housed Nashville’s infamous Cantrell’s. My friend Thom, his girlfriend Pam and myself drank Rolling Rock beer and watched three bands, tho’ only two – the Dancing Hoods and the Wrecking Crew with Laura Dean of the movie Fame – remain in memory. Yes, the bathroom was every bit as dirty and dangerous as rumored, but on the whole, the experience was entirely unremarkable.
Which seems to be the story of CBGB itself. More people wear the ever-present black & white CB’s T-shirt than ever actually visited the club. Save for two brief windows of greatness – the "punk" days of 1974-78 and the early-90s hardcore matinees – the club coasted for decades on its reputation, moxie, and the owner’s stubborn refusal to give up the ghost. Often called the "birthplace of punk," CBGB really just seemed to be in the right place at the right time to host talents like the Ramones and Television, and survived long enough to talk about it.
Perhaps you had to be one of the club’s diehard fans to really understand. Jim Farber’s piece on the club’s closing in the New York Daily News says it about as well as anybody could, so I’ll let him finish this epitaph:
"The bands of CB's lore cemented a legacy that smart fans and talented kids will refer back to forever. That well of inspiration will endure regardless of whether the physical space of CBGB does or not. So why should we beat our chests over its loss?
Because history benefits incalculably from rallying points, from anchors you can touch that hold its tales. CB's decaying ceilings, graffiti-strewn walls and hellhole of a bathroom, all bear the sonic impression of undying greats. More, when this place goes so does the last vestige of a Bowery accessible to new generations of youth on the creative make."
Check out this writer's account of the final CBGB show on Blogcritics.org. The club still needs some money, so why not buy a T-shirt and help Hilly out?
