It’s been just over five years since the last note was played at iconic New York City fixture CBGB’s. Long before the club closed, however, the East Village neighborhood that it opened in back in 1973 had been gentrifying. The club finally shut down over back rent due, and now the original site at Bleecker and the Bowery is home to a John Varvatos store, where you can buy $2000 leather jackets in the same spot that played host to countless Sunday hardcore matinees. What’s our point? Well, according to some sources, the club may be reopening elsewhere in New York.
Sure, it’s not the original, especially since founder Hilly Kristal passed away less than a year after the club closed. However, it won’t be impossible to almost literally reassemble the club. The bar is being held in a trailer in Connecticut, and the remainder of the club is in storage in a 3,000 square-foot storage space in Williamsburg. So once a place is found, the place could be replicated relatively easily. And Lower East Side blog Bowery Boogie posts an image for a four day Festival taking place in July. And while it’s debatable as to whether the new club will be anywhere near as legendary as the last one, at the very least, it will open as the best-branded rock club in the city.
