CBGB’s: A Virtual Tour

For those of you who never got the opportunity to visit the legendary punk venue CBGB’s on NY’s Bowery, what you missed was the equivalent to a gig being played inside a garbage truck. Plastered floor, wall and ceiling with graffiti, old pay-bills, grime, grot and the blood and sweat of hundreds of legendary performers, the venues eventual demise in 2006 was felt throughout the world.

But just like the Whiskey A Go Go, The 100 Club, TJ’s and a truckload of other “World Famous” venues, CBGB’s was always remembered fondly for only a certain point in time; well maybe two. Credited as the birthplace and spiritual home of American punk rock and new wave in the 70’s, the club got a dusting down by a new generation of punks in the 80’s, with Hardcore bands like Bad Brains, Cro-Mags and Sick of it All appropriating the venue for ‘Thrash Days’ on Sunday afternoons. The violence that dogged that particular scene would force CB’s owner Hilly Kristal to end Hardcore’s tenure at the venue in 1990, with the club never really recovering any committed interest. By the time of its demise, CBGB’s had become merely a tourist attraction.

If you didn’t have an opportunity to get inside CBGB’s over the 33 years that it stood sentinel on Manhattan’s Bleeker St, you can guide your way through the club via a virtual tour that will drag you along the rotten walls, the piss stained cubicles, behind the ramshackle bar and, poignantly, past the sadly deceased Kristal, sat (hopefully intentionally) underneath a hangman’s noose in the club’s office.

CLICK HERE to take the tour.