Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Is this where Guns played in 88?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061009/ap_en_ot/cbgb_s_shutdown_5

ummm... this has been in the news for like the past 2 years. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_acts_that_have_played_CBGB

It is.

It's also the place on Duff's Tshirt in a couple of the older GnR vids (SCOM and PC, I think...although it could be Patience rather than one of those...)

The whole situation is a big clusterfuck, and it's sad that the landlords for the space are such complete asses.

Hilly, last I knew, was looking for another site to reopen the club at.? I haven't really heard anything since then, though I've seen reports that he may have found a place.

Edit: Unfotunately for NYC, it sounds like Hilly is taking the club to Vegas....what a huge loss for the city, whether they know it or not.

I agree with the last post. I am from the UK, visited NY a couple of times and always made the visit to CBGB's. Saw a couple of bands there, the decor is amazing. Absolutely priceless, there is no way a designer could try to recreate CBGB's in another venue, neither should they try. Maybe it would be better just to close. Moving it to Vegas will give it a hard rock cafe type of vibe... Nothing in comparison to CBGB's New York.

I did find the place very expensive though, cover charge and beers were very expensive. Kind of a museum feel, looking at the tiny stage and thinking of all the great bangs that have played there from the Ramones to GN'R and so many in between.

I am sure for a lot of bands, playing CBGB's was a real treat.

From what I've heard (and it's not much...just finding it out now), Hilly is going to strip the club basically down to it's drywall and take EVERYTHING with him to Vegas where it will all go back up.

But I agree...it just won't be the same.

From what I hear there are going to be SLOT MACHINES in the new place.  I can't see how this will be the same, but what can you do... :no:

Hey pilferk - I agree with you - it's a big clusterfuck.  I would say that the landlord is a dick, but the owners have basically blown off the rent for a long time, with no repercussions.  So blame can be attributed to both sides.

To clarify, Guns did NOT play at/in CBGB's, the actual venue. It was next door at CB's Gallery. There's a difference. Kind of like First Avenue vs. 7th Ave. Entry in Minneapolis.

Even though there's posed photos of the original 5 in the actual venue, they did not play that acoustic set there.

On a personal note, as a lifelong Noo Yawker, and a slightly matured rocker, going to that shithole for the past 20 years, you can't help but get a bit misty over this. It's the end of an era.  :beer:

i saw some guy at my school wearing a CBGB t-shirt (like Duff's)....i knew i saw it from somewhere before

Not exactly true....it's what the landlords claim, but it's not what the courts found.

Hilly has paid his rent. ?The courts actually decided, back in '05, that the landlords were NOT due the 300k in back rent they claimed had never been paid. ?The more recent bone of contention that landed them in court had to do with the fact the landlords claimed he hadn't paid ALL his rent in about 10 years. ?Come to find out, that's because the landlords both a) didn't notify him of increases in the agreed upon manner or in any sort of legally binding manner, for that matter, and b) didn't fix things they were supposed to fix, when notified and given a reasonable amount of time to do so, so Hilly paid to fix them (things like heat, running water, etc...things that needed to work or the club would get shut down)...and deducted the amount from his rent (and sent along receipts to prove it). ?When the court was done reviewing everything, looking at all the documentation, etc...they found that Hilly was in arrears by a paltry amount...something less than 1 full months rent..and that he was right about just about everything in his claims and counterclaims. ?And the courts refused to evict him because of that, and also didn't hold him liable for MOST of the 91k the landlords claimed he owed.

The thing is, though, his lease was up regardless. ?And you can't, legally, compel someone to renew your lease if they don't want to. ?And the landlords didn't want to. ?So Hilly had to leave.

What it comes down to, in the end, is that Hilly signed a 12 year deal at about 20k a month back in 93. ?Today, the property could easily rent for double that, if not more, due to the revitilization of the area. ?The whole surrounding area was a dump...mostly flophouses...when CBGB's opened but is now a thriving commercial distrtict..something that's really only come about in the past 7 or 8 years. ?About 6 years ago, the landlords decided they thought they could get more money for the site, and started trying to evict Hilly. ?They failed, with the courts always finding in Hilly's favor. ? He's stayed right up until his lease has expired, and then some.

Some links on the issues:

http://www.punknews.org/article/13436

http://www.punknews.org/article/13733

PS: Just as an aside:  Sirius Satellite Radio, on the Disorder Channel, is going to broadcast the final CBGB show at 9 PM on Sunday.  If you've got Sirius, turn the dial off of Howard's channels and give it a listen

i think guns played there in 87...

but this is truly sad! i'm glad i got to be there before it is gone! :'(

Fuck listening to it on the radio, I'll actually be at the show.  Its going to be Patti Smith.

Its total BS they were allowed to shut it down/move it.  Its really a historical landmark in my book.  The city should have just taken it over or something.  Rock gets no respect :(

*Sigh*...I wish I was gonna be...but family commitments (that new 2 week old little baby daughter, especially) just isnt' going to allow it.

So I'll make due with the Sirius broadcast.

If Hilly had kept up the fight, they may have gotten it done...but it was going to be an uphill, expensive fight.

So, he agreed to drop his countersuits against the landlords, and stop trying to get it labeled a historical landmark, in exchange for the extra 14 months on his original lease.  That gave him time to find a new place (which, unfortunately, IMHO, is Vegas) and prep to leave on his terms, rather than his landlords.

The closing of CBGBs will be a sad day for NYC for sure... :no:

I live in the NY area and had the understanding that yes they are closing the NY club, but they are in fact moving somewhere else to another venue in the city as well as opening up a las vegas club.? I am almost postitive that i read this somewhere, but I can't find the source at this time.

There was talk about moving it to Vegas from tv news reports in early August though staff had heard speculations that it was going somewhere other than NYC.

I think the last live act playing at the CBGB gallery is Oct 14th...not sure of CBGB's itself..the 15th is a final goodbye according to the website.

it will be missed im sure.

Just a little article about it, from Yahoo! news today:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The upcoming closure of New York's famed punk-rock club CBGB is lamented by locals as the loss of a legendary venue; for others it symbolizes another Manhattan neighborhood becoming corporate and bland.
 
Standing underneath the club's red awning on Thursday evening, several young musicians smoked cigarettes and bemoaned the loss of the dank, grimy club that began in 1973 and will have its last show on Sunday, featuring        Patti Smith.

The venue -- its full name is CBGB & OMFUG, or Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers -- spawned the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie, whose lead singer        Deborah Harry will play there on Saturday.

"To not be able to stand on the shoulders of giants makes it harder to be seen," said musician Ben Meyerson, 20.

His friend, Peter Kalaitzidis, 21, said simply, "Where else are we going to hang out and get drunk?"

They said the Bowery is the latest Manhattan neighborhood to succumb to commercial interests after such chains as Starbucks overran the bordering East Village area several years ago.

"They're selling it out," said Kalaitzidis. "They're gearing it to more corporate people."

The Bowery was known for its tenements and winos, or "Bowery bums" -- a term immortalized in the        Tom Waits song "Better Off Without a Wife." These days Bowery Street is lined with multimillion dollar, glass and steel apartment buildings, leaving many locals longing for the days of when clubs such as CBGB were emblematic of a cutting-edge creative movement.

NO MORE SKID ROW

"The Bowery had the reputation of skid row and now it's all steel and glass," said poet and historian Michael "Big Mike" Logan before a recent gig at The Bowery Poetry Club opposite the punk-rock venue. "We figured this would be the last place in Manhattan to be gentrified and become bourgeois."

Logan recalled not so long ago the strip was once filled with drunks passing out, empty parking lots and "flophouses" offering cheap lodgings instead of the swank bars and celebrity lounges that now dot the urban landscape.

Many, including CBGB, were forced out by rising rents.

Club owner Hilly Kristal said he started CBGB 33 years ago because the rent was cheap. He wanted a place for country, bluegrass and blues music, but, opening in New York in the early 1970s, punk soon took over when acts such as Television and Patti Smith broke through there.

"Back then they didn't care about the drudgery of the street and this is what attracted a lot of these artists," said Kristal.

He said the neighborhood changes occurred "very gradually and then in the last two years very abruptly," noting many other small delis and stores have been forced out.

Others say CBGB's closure is a natural result of the changing artistic movement where some have left Manhattan's village areas to parts of Brooklyn.

"It goes from crack to middle class housing, that's the way it is in New York," said Bowery resident Laura Feldstein.

Logan noted not everyone is unhappy.

"I'm sure if you talk to Donald Trump, it's great," he said, joking that the area could change again. "All this steel and glass will be the squatters' tenement of the future."

But for Kristal and CBGB, it might soon all be irrelevant.

Kristal hopes to resurrect CBGB in Las Vegas, taking as many of the club's fixtures with him, including the urinals.

Nope.  Only a clothing store in NYC.  No club...at least not right now.

there goes my reason for visiting New York