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News
June 28, 2012, 11:50 am

The Times Square CBGB That Never Was

By STEPHEN REX BROWN
IMG_3884Stephen Rex Brown Blueprints for the CBGB in Times Square.

Some punk rock purists might roll their eyes at Tuesday’s announcement that the CBGB Festival will hold a “multi-stage” concert in hyper-commercialized Times Square. But before you go cracking a Disney-meets-Dead-Boys joke, consider this: a few years before the legendary club on the Bowery closed, founder Hilly Kristal was on the verge of reopening it in Times Square.

The new location wouldn’t have been a mere recreation of the club that fostered the likes of The Talking Heads, Television, Blondie and many others, either. Mr. Kristal planned to drastically expand it. Blueprints drawn up of 1540 Broadway, which are pictured above, hint at the scale of his ambition.

He aimed to demolish a four-screen movie theater next-door to the now-closed Virgin Megastore and make it a club. Given that the theaters could seat 1,626 people total, it is clear that Mr. Kristal was fine with CBGB — which by then had developed into the merchandising bonanza it is today — moving on from the dirty bathrooms, dingy bar and sorry speakers of the original location. Read more…

News
June 12, 2012, 1:00 pm

Slideshow: CBGB Gets Packed Up and Shipped Off (Yup, Even the Toilets)

By STEPHEN REX BROWN


Photos: Lauren Carol Smith.

The old CBGB is ready for its close-up, and The Local was on hand as a section of the bar, the phone booth, a urinal, pieces of wall and founder Hilly Kristal’s desk hit the road yesterday for Savannah, Georgia, where they will be used in the upcoming CBGB movie.

The assorted items still have hints of the glory days at 315 Bowery. The beat-up old desk has a list taped to it of phone numbers for old staffers at the club that closed in 2006. The toilets are still filthy and showed no signs of scrubbing (a latrine and a urinal from the women’s room are shown in our slideshow). Most surfaces are covered in band stickers, and the cash register still has a cut-out image of Mr. Kristal alongside a photo of Shakira.

Yesterday it had all been packaged with care in storage near the Brooklyn Navy Yard and loaded into a moving van bound for south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Read more…