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.

And Another One Falls...

The music club graveyard grows more crowded. In addition to CBGB, whose days are numbered, The Village Voice tells us that The Continental, just up the street on Third Avenue and St. Mark's, will shut down this weekend and reopen as a bar adorned with not a stage, but a boring old wide-screen TV.

The Continental possessed far less notoriety than CBGB (The Spin Doctors, not the Ramones, started there) and has been around for only half as long (15 years). But it did have an equally kooky owner. Name of Trigger. Handle-bar moustache. Always wore one of those wide pointed Chinese coolie hats, like he'd just returned from laying rails out west.

In case anyone's worried, the McDonald's next to the Continental, and the Starbuck's across the street are not in danger and will remain in business.

New York sucks.

CBGB RIP

It looks like CBGB, the punk rock shrine on the Bowery, which has been fighting for it life in the press for more than a year now, will not prevail. Halloween is the closing date, according to most accounts. So, if you want to feel edgy, or at least grungy, and stare at the stage where The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Blondie and Telvision once stood, or staggered, and where much lousier bands have held sway in recent decades, better go soon.

The reason for its death is the usual one: a rent dispute with its landlord, the Bowery Residents Committe, which is run by one Muzzy Rosenblatt—a colorful New Yawky name just suited to face off against CBGB's owner, Hilly Crystal. Hilly vs. Muzzy. You can't make this stuff up.

I wish it weren't so—if any place ranks as a musical landmark in the city, it's this dank hole—but I'm not as sad as I thought I'd be, for two reasons. One: rock palaces always have a clock ticking somewhere in the corner. Max's Kansas City, The Bottom Line, Studio 54, etc. The shelf life is brief. They live while the music they specialize in is vital, and die quickly after. It has to be that way, because nothing is sadder or more ridiculous that a rock club that stays open for tradition's sake. CBGB lasted longer than most, but even its supporters agree its prime rounded the bend somewhere in the early '80s. It's been riding on it laurels and t-shirt sales ever since.

The second reason is Hilly. I don't know him well, but everything I've seen and every quote I've read suggests this is a man who can precede you into a revolving door and come out the other side behind you. He comes off as a shyster, lying and cheating his way through life, plying yet another con so he can slide through another day. It's hard to support CBGB when Crystal is it's public face. It's also hard to root against Bowery Residents' Committee, which is actually a nonprofit that provides housing and social services to the homeless. (Even if their wish to increase the rent more than three times to $50,000 a month proves nonprofits can be greedheads as good as the best of them.)

Appropriately enough, given his penchant for selling merchandise, Crystal has said he may reopen CBGB's in, of all place, Vegas.

P.S.—I saw a kid in my son's kindergarten class wearing a CBGB t-shirt. It already seems very retro.

Buy That Building!

I was strolling around the Lower East Side this past weekend with my wife. We were pointing out some unorthodox (read: not in Midtown) tourist sights to some visiting friends from Italy. While doing so, we made brief stops at two cherished vestiges of the old LES: Yonah Schimmel's Knishery on Houston and Guss' Pickles on Orchard Street.

When I visit such landmark businesses, I can never hold back from asking the One Essential Question: Do you own the building? This is the key to survival in our vicious, ahistorial real estate market. If you're a lowly renter, you can be kicked onto the the sidewalk at any moment (see McHale's, Second Avenue Deli, CBGB's). Own the building and you can stay in business as long as someone in the family is willing to get up at the crack of dawn to "make the donuts," as it were. (This is also essential. The great South Brooklyn salumenia Lattacini Barese, founded in 1927, owned its Union Street building. But when owner Joe Balzano had a heart attack, neither of his sons were keen on rising each morn to make the fresh mozzarella. They sold the building in 2002. It's a real estate office now—natch.)

In both cases, the answer was depressing. Yonah Schimmel's doesn't own the the old tenement in which they're housed. "Chinese!," the counter woman gruffly replied. The woman behind the pickle barrels at Guss' laughed at the notion of ownership. This is bad news for anyone who wants Manhattan to have at least one shop turning out, as a specialty, knishs and pickles—two foods any self-respecting burg calling itself New York City should always produce.