In the East Village for 27 years, the Continental will be closing. The owner writes:
"Continental has less than a year left. Some time after the end of August 2018, this corner will be knocked down and developed. It’s truly heartbreaking that we and so many Old Skool places are falling by the wayside but unless you own your building that’s how it goes."
photo via EV Grieve
Read the rest at the bar's website.
And, yes, this entire corner will be gone, from the shuttered McDonald's to Papaya King. Something new and horrible will rise in its place.
The irony - kind of lamenting the loss of a McDonald's, because of what will come in its place.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've always thought of this as a place for rich kid NYU posers. There was a much grittier bar there, as I recall, back in the 70s and 80s.
ReplyDeleteIm still trying to find info on the guy that used to sell house music right outside, right next door. he just dissapeared with the gloss.
ReplyDeletecant even find a pic of him, or his little set-up. so sad.
That was "Little Peter" in the 70's. I did not even walk past that place.
ReplyDeleteCatze - you are thinking of DJ Lenny M!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/DJLennyM/
Pat - oh, Lord, you're absolutely right - Little Peter's. Now THAT was a genuine lower east side experience, not one of these 1990's faux boho things that the Johnnie-Come-Latelys bemoan losing. It had real women as well as transsexual strippers/hookers, and Charles Ludlam even used to perform there.
ReplyDeleteI was told when I came here that you couldn't know "real" New York if you weren't here in 1970; you certainly didn't know it if you cam here after 1990.
My band played a few times at Continental in the early to mid-90's. Our derivative power indie rock was well accepted at Continental unlike CB's where we were way too "normal". Perhaps Continental attracted a slightly more mainstream crowd, I dunno...at the time we were always happy to see more regular chicks in the crowd. For a while, that now shuttered McDonald's was a little dive lounge/club that was cool. I can't exactly remember what was on the corner of St Mark's there.....I thought it was a pizza place? It was some kind of fast food take out like Papaya King or 50 cent hot dogs. Whatever, in the 80's and early 90's, that whole St Mark's corridor was just so much F'ing fun...., the punk rockers, the weirdos, the girls, the record shops, Coney Island High, occasional Dee Dee Ramone or Lemmy encounter....we could drink, smoke, laugh, and freakin' forget about life for awhile. I remember when that McDonald's first went in that spot, Coney Island High closed, things were changing, the writing was on the wall and the halcyon days were sun-setting. But I guess the people who loved the East Village in the 60's and 70's might have said the same thing when the 80's came along. However, I was down there back in the summer and the East Village is a clutter of tourists and yuppie millenials......a total drag. Who cares now if another high rise goes up there now.
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ReplyDeleteDON’T TURN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD INTO SILICON ALLEY!
Rally + Demonstration Wed. 11/15
5:30pm at 3rd Avenue & St. Marks Place
http://www2.gvshp.org/site/R?i=0ZrqKJl-LJWsHd817HKA9Q
I've reached the point in life where posts about something like this, which has "only" been around for 27 years, are increasingly meaningless, as most of my memories of the East Village come from the 1960s and 70s.
ReplyDeleteSaint Marks Pl., "say goodbye to what you know".
ReplyDeleteWhen you resort to selling 5 shots of anything for $12, you know it's just a matter of time. I'm not a fan of tearing down to build up, but really, this place is not what the neighborhood needed.
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