CBGB

CBGB opened on December 10, 1973, at 315 Bowery in Manhattan — Hilly Kristal's attempt to run a country, bluegrass, and blues bar, hence the initials. Within eighteen months it had become the most important rock venue in America, hosting a movement that had no name yet and no real idea it was a movement. Television played their first show there in March 1974. The Ramones became the house band. Patti Smith, Blondie, Talking Heads, Suicide, Richard Hell, Mink DeVille — the list of artists who developed their sound on the Bowery stage constitutes the full roster of American punk and new wave. None of this was planned. Kristal's original booking policy simply required that bands play original material, which accidentally turned the bar into the only room in New York where that was a condition of entry.

The room itself was a narrow, filthy, graffiti-covered space with a stage at the back and a dog — Kristal kept a dog — that treated the venue as its private territory. The sound system was poor, the toilets were notorious, the ceiling was low. None of this deterred the musicians who needed somewhere to play original music in front of an audience that might understand it. The Ramones played CBGB 74 times between 1974 and 1976, developing a set that compressed entire albums into under thirty minutes in a room that held about 350 people. Bruce Springsteen came to watch. Seymour Stein of Sire Records signed the Ramones and Talking Heads from what he saw on the Bowery.

CBGB closed on October 15, 2006, after a dispute with its landlord. Kristal died the following year. The space became a John Varvatos clothing boutique in 2008; the new owners preserved the band stickers and murals covering the walls, so the shop is decorated with the sediment of thirty years of music history. The address is now simultaneously a luxury fashion store and an accidental museum, which is an appropriate and slightly depressing outcome for a venue that accidentally changed everything.