They Turned CBGB Into a Clothing Store

David Peel — Street Corner Rant

Three-fifteen Bowery. You know what used to be there? CBGB. The birthplace of punk rock. The Ramones played their first show there. Blondie. Talking Heads. Television. Patti Smith. Every band that changed music in the 1970s walked through that door.

The floor was sticky. The bathroom was a war crime. Hilly's dog crapped wherever he wanted. And it was the most important room in American music.

Now it's a John Varvatos store. They sell leather jackets for two thousand dollars in the same room where Joey Ramone wore a fifty-cent t-shirt.

They kept the graffiti on the walls. You know why? Because graffiti is decorative now. It's not rebellion, it's ambiance. They turned our revolution into their wallpaper.

That's what they do. They wait for you to build something beautiful and dangerous, and then they move in, clean it up, and sell it back to you at a markup.

But here's what they can't sell: the sound. The sound that came out of that room is still bouncing around the world. You can't put a price tag on a frequency. You can't gentrify a chord.

CBGB is gone. Punk rock isn't.

See also: Rent Is the New Cops — they didn't ban the music, they priced out the musicians. They Turned My Block into a Hotel — Avenue A got the same treatment. I Gave GG Allin His First Record Deal — Orange Records, before they sold the neighborhood. They Made the Village Expensive — the letter to Lennon about the rent. The Back Room at Max’s — before CBGB there was the back room. The Landlord — the landlord found a better offer. The Open Mic — before CBGB there was a sign-up sheet and five minutes. The Roadie — the kid who taped the mic stand back together between sets. The Venue — you cannot close a street corner. The Accident — CBGB was supposed to be a country bar. That is an accident. The Curtain Call — the Ramones played twenty-two songs in forty minutes and walked off.

David Peel

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