OMFUG

January 28, 2004 9:04 AM

CBGB Photographic History. Includes one of the coolest Ramones photos I've ever seen. (One or two of the thumbnails are probably NSFW, but they're small, so unless you're really paranoid, I wouldn't be too concerned about it). (via things magazine)
posted by Ufez Jones (12 comments total)

I get sent to NYC on business 1-2 times a year and last year I finally got some free time to myself that I didn't have to fill with dinner and drinks with some sales guy from the Toledo office or some such crap.

I finally took the train out to CBGBs for some rainforest benefit show, but mostly to soak up the atmosphere. I had a good time just sort of looking around and seeing what was up.

The next day I was telling someone else about my trip out there and they said "did you go to the bathroom?" I had not, but he told me that the bathroom is littered with graphiti dating back to the early days of the New Wave movement that brought CBGBs to fame....
Can anyone confirm that? I haven't been back to see for myself yet.
posted by Jeffy at 9:14 AM on January 28, 2004

Mem'ries. Sigh.

Thanks, Ufez Jones.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:23 AM on January 28, 2004

That Ramones photo is clearly a fake. As any fule kno, the amount of times the Ramones played CBGB's divided by the amount of people who claim to have seen the Ramones play CBGB's mean that the audience should number roughly 56000, which that picture clearly does not. Therefore that picture is a lie.
posted by ciderwoman at 9:45 AM on January 28, 2004

Oh, and Jeffy, while I can't claim to have carbon-dated the latrine walls or anything, I will note that there are tags and stickers up in there for units that have been defunct for well over a decade. It's entirely likely to me that there's an untouched stratum of, e.g. Jerry Nolan graffiti there.
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:52 AM on January 28, 2004

Wow, those were the days - great new bands making interesting music and saving rock and roll from studio manufactured supergroups. I miss that. Today's music business is in even worse shape than at the end of the seventies. We need another revolution.
posted by caddis at 10:18 AM on January 28, 2004

Wow. I'm not going to get anything done today... Thanks, man. You rock.
posted by greengrl at 10:26 AM on January 28, 2004

yes... the bathrom is historic, among other things. it's been years since i was there. but it seemed that the bathroom had not functioned for DECADES. great stuff...
posted by bluno at 1:20 PM on January 28, 2004

The place is a hole. The only thing keeping the nasty smoke- and stale-beer stank walls up are those damn stickers of literally thousands of bands you have never heard of, and never will. Depressing.

The better spot is right next door -- CB's Gallery.
posted by drinkcoffee at 1:58 PM on January 28, 2004

Goddamn I'm getting old.
posted by fuzz at 6:08 PM on January 28, 2004

Back when I used to go all the time (okay, not as as old as these pictures, but a while ago), we used to have a running joke about the kind of guy that would take a shit in that bathroom. You see, the bathroom (at least at the time) was 3 urinals, no dividers and a toilet on the far wall. The last urinal was pretty close to the toilet. We always imagined some big guy with a green mohawk sitting on the crapper, reading the voice, and nudging you in the ass with his elbow. "hey, dude, gamma rays are one next. they're cool." I only saw that toilet ever used for piss and puke.
And yeah, there's some crazy old grafitti there.
posted by lumpenprole at 6:52 PM on January 28, 2004

lumpenprole, that sounds like a lot of punk/indie clubs I've been to. Sadly, I've never even been to NYC, much less CBGBs. But if I do ever make it up there, stop one will be a MeFi celebration, and stop two will be the famed club, even if it's a musical version of Perfect Strangers starring Joey Buttafuco and Yakov Smirnov.
posted by Ufez Jones at 9:33 PM on January 28, 2004

CBs is a hell hole, and even in the 1970s there was an inch of piss on the floor, and the "dressing room" was a little playground for the world's crappiest Long Island bands to act out their fifteen minutes of rock star fantasy by trashing something, anything, and scribbling their name on the walls. More horrible bands may have appeared at CBs than at any single spot on earth, and even in its heyday, when you could actually see the Ramones, Talking Heads, Necessaries and Poppees there, a full 67 percent of the bands onstage still blew to high heaven. Why all these middle-class kids had to turn their clubhouse into a pissoir is beyond me.
posted by Faze at 9:33 AM on January 29, 2004