It just never stops, does it.
Submitted by reader Robin yesterday, it seems that the great Downtown Music Gallery -- one of the truly final bastions of Lower Manhattan's discerning alternative music community (and I don't mean "alternative" like Smashing Pumpkins, but rather truly left-field stuff) -- is in grave peril of falling prey to the ravenous wrecking ball of real estate development. It doesn't surprise me, but it sure as hell depresses me.
I first discovered DMG when it was still located on East 5th (next to my favorite relatively low-key Irish bar, The Scratcher). I'd gone in looking for some long-out-of-print German compilation of industrial music and ended up chatting with shop-founder, Bruce Gallanter, for about forty minutes about obscure old NYC bands (I was livid with envy that Bruce had caught some seminal performances by a then-fledgling Cop Shoot Cop). The shop moved to 342 Bowery a few years later and continued to peerlessly cater to music fans of informed, adventurous, avant, esoteric and jaw-droppingly eclectic taste. In a nutshell, Downtown Music Gallery's stock makes the music on offer at Other Music seem as banal and conventional as the product you'll find in K-Mart's music department. Bruce, Manny and Co. know their stuff.
In any case, they need to find another locale with the quickness. If you can help them, do so -- or face a bleak and unlivable future of knowing you've let another furtive enclave of authentic NYC cool get exterminated by the influx of cosmopolitan-swigging "Aspirationals".
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