Pilgrimage to CBGB

When I was 15 I was a punkrocking fool—steel-toed boots splashed with paint, chains and bandanas around both ankles, worn out blue jeans, resin-stained fingers, and Bad Religion tunes, in perfect discord, playing in a tape deck I found in a dumpster and blaring from the open windows of my ’89 Sundance. Those were the days.

Throughout high school I was fascinated by everything punk. The thick, bold, in your face beat of the anti-hero; songs that jeered and mocked the throngs of blank faces being ground up in the powerful machinery of an unforgiving world; songs that stretched laws and broke rules; songs that got people out of their chairs long enough to wonder why they were sitting there in the first place; songs that whipped up a frenzy of contradictions—youthful immortality wrapped in a melancholic self depredation.

The anti-hero wasn’t simply the subject of punk rock; punk rock was his expression. The music was a loud, guttural celebration of mediocrity. The screaming cacophonous simplicity of a fast-paced snare and high-hat, the pitchless reverberation of an out-of-tune base, and a the grinding wail of a filed-down pickup on a guitar playing three simple chords in rapid succession was a veritable monsoon of wretched talentlessness.  And it was sheer magic to me.

The center of the punk rock world was at 315 Bowery, New York City: CBGB & OMFUG. Originally intended to feature, as the acronym suggests, Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers, it quickly became the center of the punk rock world and, arguably, the birthplace of American punk.

After years of imagining what it would be like, I decided to take advantage of my time here in New York and see it for myself this afternoon. I took a quick look at the map, decided I would head from the 9th ST. station through Union Square, and hopped on the PATH.

Union Square is about what I thought it would be—a paved and grassy assortment of benches, walkways, hippies, bums and storytellers. I took a spin around George Washington’s statue and headed down 6th toward CBGB. As I got closer I could see the beveled awning above the front door. And as I approached I noticed that it was black and not the white and red I remember; but this was hardly something to cry about.

Then, I saw it. “john varvatos!!??!!??” What the fuck is that??!! I strained to contain my exasperation. This wasn’t punk rock!! This was some kind of designer clothing store!!

I walked in wearing a beaming scowl. It certainly was CBGBs. They had preserved the stage, the flaking paint, graffiti, and the old flyer boards from out front. But, there were racks of sued jackets blocking the standing room, designer boots cluttering up the stage, and stacks of overpriced T-shirts lined up along the wall where the ball should have been. I walked to the back and asked one of the workers if the new owner had preserved anything else. Save the picture in the bathroom, he explained, there was nothing left.

The bathroom?? The bathroom??!! The birthplace of the Ramones and the New York Dolls, the light of my adolescence, the cultural firmament of my youth , . . . this was now a mere picture hanging in the bathroom waiting to be splashed with piss or gazed at through the strained, squinted eyes of somebody taking a big shit? To ask “what the fuck” was hardly sufficient. Screw these people! Next time I’ll leave the ideals of my youth right where they belong, in my head.