rip cbgb

CBGB Brings Down the Curtain With Nostalgia and One Last Night of Rock

Last year, as Ben and I meandered through the Bowery toward the Neuyorican Poet's Cafe, we turned a corner and saw CBGB. I stopped, straining to take in this landmark, as if being there meant that I'd absorb some of its energy.

I was unsurprised to see that it was dark and dingy. Frankly, I would've been disappointed if it hadn't seemed seedy. As I asked about it, Ben explained that it would be closing in 2006.

Disappointed, I looked for the playbill and found that there wasn't anything that I wanted to see in the days I had left in New York. I then closed my coat against the cold and hurried along, pleased at the chance encounter with the seminal club.

Do I wish I'd seen a show there? No. In some ways, it's better that I never experienced the inside, because it remains as it always has been for me: a mythical place in my imagination. Now that it's closed, it will forever live up to a rock-and-roll fantasy crafted by a Rolling Stone article when I was thirteen.