Hilly Kristal Follows CBGBs to the Afterworld

It happens sometimes. A restaurant or club's host becomes so intrinsically entwined with the life of the joint, that it's impossible he should survive the death of the business. Sherman Billingsley died almost exactly a year after his Stork Club went under. And now Hilly Kristal is gone, just under a year since his grungy rock palace CBGB's was forced out of commission by a rent dispute. (And that, my friends, is the first and last time you'll see Billingsley and Kristal mentioned in the same paragraph.)

Kristal had lung cancer, of course, so I'm not saying that his landlord or the real estate market killed him. I'm just saying...

One silver lining. Neither Kristal nor anyone else will have to live to see the indignity of a CBGB's opening in Las Vegas, as he often threatened to do.