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Having been shown the end of a long and winding road,
New York punk club CBGB has been informed that
its long fight to stay in its current location is
coming to an end. The owners of the building, the
Bowery Residents Committee, have announced that the
lease will effectively be terminated in 2006 on Halloween.
Spooky.
But club owner Hilly Kristal isn't spooked, he's
talking about new horizons for the club. He's begun
to look for a new location for in Lower Manhattan,
and there's even talk of opening another location
in Las Vegas. Rather than have this be a set back,
Kristal is looking to make this an opportunity to
take the club into a new phase of existence. "We're
looking here and there, and we may have both places
or we may only have one place," Kristal told
CMJ. "We're partnering with some people that
we'll talk about in a week."
"The most important thing is we're keeping the
integrity of CBGB. It won't be exactly the same, but
it will have the same ingredients," he was quoted
as saying in Billboard. The plan is to carry the name
and reputation of supporting independent music to
a different level, with a new location and fresh attitude.
He appears to moving away from the low-budget atmosphere
the club had at the BRC and creating a new version
of CBGB.
The club was supposed to be out of its current location
as of August 31st of this year, prompting a last-ditch
effort and benefit show to bring attention to the
situation. It seems to have worked, as NY Mayor Michael
Bloomberg intervened to negotiate a new settlement
between CBGB and the BRC to let the club stay on at
its current location until next year. That kept the
fight out of court, where by all accounts, things
were going to
get ugly.
CBGB is planning to have a month long series of shows
in the run-up to the closing of its current location.
