St. Mark’s Place T-Shirts To The Contrary, Punk’s Probably Dead By This Point

Punk rock comes full circle as a former East Village club actually becomes a “dive bar”:

After a 15-year run on Third Ave. near St. Mark’s Pl., Continental celebrated its last night as a punk rock club on Sunday night. Trigger, its owner, plans to convert it into a dive bar, offering acoustic folk music on Sunday nights.

But for Continental’s punk finale, the volume was definitely higher than acoustic. Way, earsplittingly higher.

The final performers included such legendary acts as the Bullys, Lenny Kaye, Handsome Dick Manitoba with most of the Dictators, and C.J. Ramone.

. . .

Throughout the evening, the musicians made references to the neighborhood’s demise and the spread of New York University.

“Can you imagine in 40 years — this will be happening in Bushwick?” Kaye mused, envisioning the end of a future music venue on the current edge of gentrification.

C.J. Ramone, sans Ramones black mop of hair but with a clean-shaven head, blasted through Ramones favorites like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Chinese Rock” with Daniel Rey on guitar. As the familiar Ramones songs blared, young punkers in jeans and black T-shirts started diving off ledges into the crowd and surfing on top of the packed sea of punk fans’ hands.

“N.Y.U. just f—ked the whole area up,” Ramone said in between splashing the crowd in front with beer. “No offense to you guys paying a lot of money to go there — but this sucks.”

Not to ruin the mood, but it doesn’t seem like its NYU’s fault more than it’s just the fact that punk’s not as lucrative as it once was:

After the club’s last show ever ended, Trigger said what killed Continental wasn’t just the neighborhood’s change.

“A punk rock club in this neighborhood — so much has moved out to Brooklyn,” he said. But he also added, “There’s not such a strong scene as there was. I used to get 400 demos a week. Now I get five or 10. Kids are into hip-hop and electronica. S–t happens.”

And not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t Dick Manitoba like 52 years old?

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