I came across the photograph above whilst trawling around Tumblr (remember that?), at some point in the last six months, and set it to one side, so to speak. The sheer number of posts I’ve devoted here to photographs and video of the hardcore matinee scene outside of CBGB is entirely too unwieldy to cite here, but it’s all Googlable, should you give a damn.
While this photo -- tragically uncredited and undated (although given some of the band names on display, I’d suggest somewhere around 1982) -- checks the necessary boxes to warrant inclusion, there are other curious attributes to the photo worth mentioning, although I mentioned most of them in this recent post about the very same patch of real estate, involving invocations of Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," Drew Carolan's iconic matinee photographs and Shepard Fairey's tributes to Blondie and Bad Brains. ADDENDUM: According to photographer Drew Carolan, this photo was more likely snapped in 1984.
Obviously, this photo captures the easternmost intersection where Bleecker Street ends (or begins, depending on your perspective) at the Bowery. The hardcore kids with their backs to the camera are sitting directly in front of the front entrance of what was then CBGB, pretty much exactly where the No Wave all-stars were perched against the parked car in Godlis’ classic team photo below, from just a few years earlier.
In looking back up at the photo at the top of this post, however, I was struck by the kitchen-supply store that occupied that space on the far, southernmost corner in, again, roughly 1984. One aspect it boldly advertises is evidently an enviable selection of DOUGH RETARDERS. While that sounds like the name of a band that should otherwise be stenciled on back of one of the sitting punks in the foreground, it’s a legitimate baking implement. I looked it up. I’d never heard the term, but apparently dough retarders delay the fermentation process by reducing and maintaining the temperature of the dough in a controlled humidity and temperature environment. Generally, moulded dough pieces are placed into a retarder for a set period of time. So, there ya go.
Don’t bother looking on that corner for your dough retardation needs now, though. That kitchen-supply purveyor is long, long gone. In more recent years, that space played host to a succession of failed restaurants before morphing – to much eyebrow-raising – into an incongruous J. Crew outlet, although I’ve heard that venture is also shortly to vacate the premises. I have no idea what will take its place, although I seriously doubt it will be anything anyone is terrifically happy about.
Despite some financial hardships, John Varvatos still occupies the former footprint of CBGB, although I haven’t set foot in that haberdashery for years.
Where those hardcore kids and that cop are today, though, who can say?
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