Goodbye to The Pyramid

I've written about the Pyramid several times here, over the years, but I was very bummed to learn via EV Grieve, this morning, that the fabled club on Avenue A is the latest to succumb to the financial rigors of pandemic and will not be re-opening. 

While, in more recent years, the venue catered to a seemingly more conventional brand of nightlife (which I lamented here), back in the 80s and 90s, it was something of a remarkable melting pop of disparate subcultures. As I mentioned here ages ago, you were as likely to run into characters like Tommy Victor of Prong or Tim Chunks of Token Entry there as you were to encounter drag royalty like RuPaul or the Lady Bunny. Bands I saw on that tiny stage included Surgery, the Hot Corn Girls, Rats of Unusual Size, Fractured Cylinder, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black and my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, but it also famously hosted names like Sonic Youth, SWANS, White Zombie and, oh, Madonna and Nirvana -- not on the same evening, mind you, although that wouldn’t have been out of the question, given their forward-thinking booking policy.

For that plot of the East Village, not to mention NYC writ large, it’s a tremendous loss.