In a move only slightly less punk rock than casting the ginger kid from Harry Potter as Cheetah Chrome, Gothamist brings the downbeat (sorry) news that legendary New York City punk club CBGB is reopening…at Newark Liberty International Airport. Perhaps obviously, considering it’s at a damn airport, once reopened CBGB will no longer serve as a concert venue, but as the Hot Topic shopper’s alternative to TGI Fridays and the like. (The name, presumably, no longer stands for “Country, BlueGrass, and Blues,”but “Cheesy BuffaloGlazed Burger.”) Jersey City-based radio station WFMU shared a picture of the new facade and menu on Twitter:
But although this might appear to be simply another instance of the holding company that currently owns the CBGB trademark shamelessly trotting out the punk movement’s bloated corpse for its own capitalistic ends, it kind of makes sense if you think about it. (Kind of.) After all, in the decades since Debbie Harry and Joey Ramone adopted CBGB as their disease-ridden clubhouse, rents on the Lower East Side have skyrocketed, scattering starving artist types to the furthest reaches of the five boroughs. Surely a bohemian exodus to Newark can’t be far behind. And airports are practically international waters, allowing all sorts of wild partying to go on at the new, traveler-friendly CBGB after all those bohemian artists get off work at their minimum-wage airport jobs. But clean bathrooms? Now that would be unacceptable.