Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog Home
Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog

No Local Bands From New Jersey But Boy That Plasma Television Has A Great Picture!

Those proud photos of the Spin Doctors performing there may have been a bad omen:

C.B.G.B. won’t be the only East Village music venue to close this year. Continental, the punk club where Joey Ramone, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, D-Generation and the Dictators once took the stage, will no longer host live music after Aug. 26, said Trigger, the club’s owner.

A little after 6:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, Trigger sat in the club’s basement greenroom and talked about his decision to stop hosting bands after 15 years. Wearing a winter hat with earflaps, snow boots and a black zip-up sweater, his deep voice echoed in the empty room. “There’s not much of a scene anymore,” he said. “We have a few great nights a month here, but nothing like the old days.” The club currently books four to five bands a night, seven days a week.

Back when the club opened, there wasn’t a Kmart on Eighth St. or even a single Starbucks on Astor Pl., and the late Joey Ramone, who lived a block away from the club, was a regular. The first year Continental was open, Iggy Pop came in and asked Trigger if he could book a show. “I told Iggy to bring in a demo,” Trigger said. Pop took him seriously — for a minute — before Trigger told him he was joking, he said.

The neighborhood has changed since then. Continental, which is near the corner of St. Mark’s Pl. and Third Ave., is now sandwiched between a McDonald’s and a kosher falafel restaurant named Chickpea. “A punk rock club on a corner like this — it’s just impossible,” Trigger said. Band members who used to live in the neighborhood have been priced out of the East Village. “Rents have really changed the complexion and energy of the city,” he said.

A little after 10 p.m. on a recent Sunday, about 40 people filled the long, narrow club space. T-shirts, baseball caps and various laminated signs advertising drink specials hung above the bar. Black-and-white photos taken at the club of various musicians, including Iggy Pop, Dee Dee Ramone, the Spin Doctors and the Wallflowers, decorated the black walls.

. . .

The renovations will not be dramatic, and the overall look and feel of the club will remain relatively similar, Trigger said. He plans to install a jukebox and a flat-screen plasma television screen upstairs and a pool table in the basement greenroom. The greenroom’s benches, red-and-black-checkered floor and sticker-covered walls will stay completely intact, he said.

Posted: February 27th, 2006 | Filed under: There Goes The Neighborhood
Oy Vey, Vot A Power Broker! »
« It’s A Front Row Ticket To The Best Show On Earth

Recent Posts

  • “Friends And Allies Literally Roll Their Eyes When They Hear The New York City Mayor Is Trying To Go National Again”
  • You Don’t Achieve All Those Things Without Managing The Hell Out Of The Situation
  • “Less Than Six Months After Bill De Blasio Became Mayor Of New York City, A Campaign Donor Buttonholed Him At An Event In Manhattan”
  • Nothing Hamburger
  • On Cheap Symbolism

Categories

Bookmarks

  • 1010 WINS
  • 7online.com (WABC 7)
  • AM New York
  • Aramica
  • Bronx Times Reporter
  • Brooklyn Eagle
  • Brooklyn View
  • Canarsie Courier
  • Catholic New York
  • Chelsea Now
  • City Hall News
  • City Limits
  • Columbia Spectator
  • Courier-Life Publications
  • CW11 New York (WPIX 11)
  • Downtown Express
  • Gay City News
  • Gotham Gazette
  • Haitian Times
  • Highbridge Horizon
  • Inner City Press
  • Metro New York
  • Mount Hope Monitor
  • My 9 (WWOR 9)
  • MyFox New York (WNYW 5)
  • New York Amsterdam News
  • New York Beacon
  • New York Carib News
  • New York Daily News
  • New York Magazine
  • New York Observer
  • New York Post
  • New York Press
  • New York Sun
  • New York Times City Room
  • New Yorker
  • Newsday
  • Norwood News
  • NY1
  • NY1 In The Papers
  • Our Time Press
  • Pat’s Papers
  • Queens Chronicle
  • Queens Courier
  • Queens Gazette
  • Queens Ledger
  • Queens Tribune
  • Riverdale Press
  • SoHo Journal
  • Southeast Queens Press
  • Staten Island Advance
  • The Blue and White (Columbia)
  • The Brooklyn Paper
  • The Columbia Journalist
  • The Commentator (Yeshiva University)
  • The Excelsior (Brooklyn College)
  • The Graduate Voice (Baruch College)
  • The Greenwich Village Gazette
  • The Hunter Word
  • The Jewish Daily Forward
  • The Jewish Week
  • The Knight News (Queens College)
  • The New York Blade
  • The New York Times
  • The Pace Press
  • The Ticker (Baruch College)
  • The Torch (St. John’s University)
  • The Tribeca Trib
  • The Villager
  • The Wave of Long Island
  • Thirteen/WNET
  • ThriveNYC
  • Time Out New York
  • Times Ledger
  • Times Newsweekly of Queens and Brooklyn
  • Village Voice
  • Washington Square News
  • WCBS880
  • WCBSTV.com (WCBS 2)
  • WNBC 4
  • WNYC
  • Yeshiva University Observer

Archives

RSS Feed

  • Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog RSS Feed

@batclub

Tweets by @batclub

Contact

  • Back To Bridge and Tunnel Club Home
    info -at- bridgeandtunnelclub.com

BATC Main Page

  • Bridge and Tunnel Club

2025 | Bridge and Tunnel Club Blog