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When the music's over (part 2)

One of the first things I did when I moved to NYC in the mid 90s was to look for Downtown Beirut, a favorite bar of my brother Donny, who moved to the City in the early 80s. Donny had built up Downtown Beirut in my imagination as the dive bar of dive bars--a dark, dank pit of squalor that served cheap beer and had a legendary jukebox. Although I had never darkened its darkened doorway, I could picture its seediness in my mind's eye--the beer-stained booths, the rank pall of stale cigarettes, the Clash's London Calling playing on the jukebox, and the crowd of East Village regulars that congregated there, misfits and wannabes and ornery old timers with their own personal bar stools.

Downtown Beirut was located at the corner of First Avenue and East 10th Street. I made my way there one night with a friend, only to find its doors shuttered, the bar being one of the first victims of the gentrification of the East Village that was underway. This was a time when Alphabet City, just to the east, still spelled trouble for those who walked its streets after dark.

Why am I writing about a bar that closed nearly 20 years ago? Because in addition to Colony Records, which I mentioned in the previous post, another NYC institution was lost last year: Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

Located only two blocks from Downtown Beirut, on St. Mark's Place between First and Second Avenue, Holiday was my Downtown Beirut (along with Rudy's on 9th Ave, between 44th and 45th), an unpretentious watering hole in the wall with an exquisite jukebox, cheap drinks, and a clientele utterly lacking hipster irony. The way that Donny wanted to bequeath Downtown Beirut to me, I envisioned passing Holiday on to my nephew, if he ever moved to the City.

Here's a clipping of an East Village nightlife guide from 1985, which includes Downtown Beirut. To my knowledge, only two of the establishments remain--McSorley's and Pyramid (where my band often played). You may also note that CBGBs--the hub of American Punk and New Wave in the 70s (and where my band played on Mother's Day 1997!)--is on the list, but it too has since joined the ranks of the departed, an ever-lengthening list in a city that not only never sleeps, but never seems to even sit still.

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