East Village facepalm & nostalgia
This was going to be a Gally post. But instead it'll be a mini nostalgia trip.
Last night my friend K and I went out for food and drinks. It's been a VERY rough week at work and going out for a bit of fun seemed like a grand idea.
We went to a place called Yuca Bar where delicious food and strong Mojitos were consumed with reckless abandon. We then found ourselves in a nice little bar called "Dream Baby" where I sucked down Appleton rum and cokes after the bartender gave us a list of all the rums they had in stock. The place used to be the Lakeside Lounge, but you wouldn't recognize it as it had been gutted (and good too, because Lakeside was really gross). I remarked to K (and later to T-Rex who joined us when we'd probably already had too many) that the music was *really* good. I mean, unusually rare these days. The kind of music only a true officionado/rock nerd of a certain generation would know to play.
So I started chatting with the bartender and he was extremely likeable. We chatted about being from the 'hood in the same time, that we were pretty close in age, he was all "my sister!". And then I asked him "do you remember this restaurant . . . that bar . . . do you remember the Green Door parties on St. Marks in the 90's? I really miss that." And he was all "THAT WAS MY PARTY." Turned out, the bartender was Danny Sage from D-Generation and he and his bandmates more or less made a sizeable chunk of the scene I loved so much in my 20s.
So I felt like an idiot for asking the guy who ran the parties if he remembered them. DUUUUUH. But he was totally gracious and excited that I missed it. And so today I've been googling times past.
This "Top Eleven Since-Closed Live Music Venues in NYC" summarizes most of the places I hung out in.
And here, for your enjoyment/amusement, is D-Generation with one of their songs "No Way Out". It's very pop and I still find it hard to believe they never got The Big Break whereas contemporaries Green Day did, because they did have the right combination of 80s punk look and commercial viability, and more authenticity. But maybe I'm just biased cuz they were my local boys.
Last night my friend K and I went out for food and drinks. It's been a VERY rough week at work and going out for a bit of fun seemed like a grand idea.
We went to a place called Yuca Bar where delicious food and strong Mojitos were consumed with reckless abandon. We then found ourselves in a nice little bar called "Dream Baby" where I sucked down Appleton rum and cokes after the bartender gave us a list of all the rums they had in stock. The place used to be the Lakeside Lounge, but you wouldn't recognize it as it had been gutted (and good too, because Lakeside was really gross). I remarked to K (and later to T-Rex who joined us when we'd probably already had too many) that the music was *really* good. I mean, unusually rare these days. The kind of music only a true officionado/rock nerd of a certain generation would know to play.
So I started chatting with the bartender and he was extremely likeable. We chatted about being from the 'hood in the same time, that we were pretty close in age, he was all "my sister!". And then I asked him "do you remember this restaurant . . . that bar . . . do you remember the Green Door parties on St. Marks in the 90's? I really miss that." And he was all "THAT WAS MY PARTY." Turned out, the bartender was Danny Sage from D-Generation and he and his bandmates more or less made a sizeable chunk of the scene I loved so much in my 20s.
So I felt like an idiot for asking the guy who ran the parties if he remembered them. DUUUUUH. But he was totally gracious and excited that I missed it. And so today I've been googling times past.
This "Top Eleven Since-Closed Live Music Venues in NYC" summarizes most of the places I hung out in.
And here, for your enjoyment/amusement, is D-Generation with one of their songs "No Way Out". It's very pop and I still find it hard to believe they never got The Big Break whereas contemporaries Green Day did, because they did have the right combination of 80s punk look and commercial viability, and more authenticity. But maybe I'm just biased cuz they were my local boys.
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