Former CBGB Club Transformed Into Museum/Retail Fashion Outlet

John Varvatos, a well known menswear designer recently opened his boutique upon punk rock and roll’s most hallowed ground; CBGB’s. Here, one can now combine the experience of seeing pop culture kept alive using CBGB club memorabilia with eye-popping prices on items like t-shirts and jeans to jackets and cashmere sweaters. Cashmere on the Bowery? It must be 2008. Varvatos also plans to promote live music events in the near future. Perhaps the surviving members of the Ramones can drop in and jam when the store has a new stage … or shop during it’s first sale.

Bowery Becoming “Boutiquey”

Down in the Lower East Side, just off East First Street, in a filthy back alley called “Extra Place,” another neighborhood makeover of the Bowery from bum days and CBGB nights will soon take place. Developers plan to reclaim this seedy place. Where the punk rock Ramones once posed, half a dozen high-end retailers will soon ply their trade. Add them to the other new fancy shoppes, high-rise co-ops, banks and yuppies that now frequent this once infamous part of town. It’s getting so that a young drinker who can’t hold his liquor won’t be able to find a free spot to puke or piss anymore! Maybe pay toilets are next.

FYI CBGB

For a previous generation of fringe music fans, a once sordid spot on the Bowery became a world famous, punk rock mecca. CBGB’s was born, lived and died in just a few dozen years. Not much time by some measures. Enough time though for CBGB’s to become legendary. To clubbers who entered and enjoyed, the memories will live on.

A chic boutique will become the first of several upscale businesses to open on CBGB’s grave. The Bowery and the surrounding neighborhood are changing; supposedly for the better. That it’s happening isn’t news, really. Like a volcano periodically spewing out lava, rebuilding the land around, New York City too incessantly rebuilds the new over the old. Dig deep enough and you’ll see generational histories, one built on top of another.

If punk is old now, those who “lived” it are older. Punch an air hole in the lava, rockers. It’s your only chance to survive. Or lay still beneath a trendy boutique in what was once the center of your world.