I already said my formal goodbye to The Continental in February of 2006, when they removed the stage at the rear of the room and stopped hosting live music. I literally never set foot in the place again, after that. Once it reverted into just another shitty East Village bar – the type of venture the neighborhood already had in unwieldy abundance – there really was no reason for my further patronage.
This all said, in the last couple of weeks, the easterly strip of Third Avenue between the corner of St. Marks Place and the Cooper Union dormitory has been effectively razed. The buildings that once housed that McDonald’s, the Continental, St. Marks Pizza (and its many abortive, follow-up concerns) and the vape shop on the corner that used to be an Optimo newspaper shop are all gone for good, soon to be replaced by a massive development that will block out the sun and decmiate any remaining semblance of neighborhood character.
You may remember I posted a pair of “then and now” pics of that strip in recent weeks, which prompted one specific regular reader to typically take me to task for lionizing and lamenting a patch of the East Village the viability of which as a genuine hub of subculture (or whatever) has been long extinguished. I don’t argue with that point, necessarily. It’s been a long, damn while since this strip held fascination for anyone beyond SantaCon participants. This all said, despite its final thirteen years as just another antagonistic douchebag bar, once upon a time, The Continental counted me as a regular.
As laboriously cited elsewhere on this blog, during the 90’s, I was routinely found in attendance at the venue in question for any number of shows by bands like Nashville Pusssy, The Unband (above), The Figs, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, The Upper Crust, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Candy Snatchers, Furious George, Falafel Mafia, Iron Prostate, The Niagaras, Mephiskapheles, The Bullys, the criminally short-lived Lee Harvey Keitel Band, and countless others. No, it wasn’t the nicest joint, and the stories of owner Trigger’s thorny eccentricities are myriad and colorful, but as a place to catch bands of a certain variety, it checked all the right boxes and then some.
One of my favorite pictures of my dear friend Rob D. and myself was captured there. We’re depicted downstairs, loitering outside the restrooms while – if memory serves – the Candy Snatchers were dodging projectiles above us. Here’s the photo now. Decorum was not necessarily the order of the moment.
And here’s all that remains of The Continental now.
Recent Comments