Good to see some Futurists are still stalking the Lower East Side! And look at the pathetic attempt to cross it out with what looks like crayola by some outraged olde punke! Stenciled at various junctures on the Bowery near CBGBs, this graffiti is somewhat mystifying though, since the club's lease expired some while ago and the building currently looks like this:

Still as an illogical howl against the Heritage-isation of rock (isn't CBs going to be recreated in Las Vegas, city of simulation, a la Hard Rock Cafe et al?) this is definitely something to come out in solidarity with.

Perhaps if I'd ever been there when it was the epicentre of something I might have felt a twinge about its demise, but nah, not a tear...

I can recall only a few memorable gigs there: PJ Harvey's NYC debut; AR Kane circa that Luaka Bop compilation or maybe it was even New Clear Child, doing freakishly accurate-to-the-record live performances of all their Up Home/69 classics (when in their late 80s heyday AR Kane gigs they'd been amorphous to at times Ariel Pink-live degrees). Oh, and Cop Shoot Cop, possibly the Lower East Side's last true Futurist rockers come to think of it, who even had a song called "Smash Retro" or something to that effect, and who berated the CBs audience's impassivity with "I am not your television set".

Mainly the things I remember about CBs: it had a really horrible toilet. And the most disgusting backstage dressing room I've ever seen--densely encrusted with stalactities or do i mean stalagmites of chewing gum stuck on the low ceiling...