An inauspicious occasion to be sure, but this week marks the thirty-second anniversary of the death of GG Allin, who overdosed on heroin on June 28, 1993, after a typically tumultuous final performance at the infamous Gas Station -- aka the Space 2B Art Yard -- on East 2nd Street and Avenue B.
I’ve written about this fabled show probably too many times here, despite having not attended it. My friend Aaron went, though, and even appears in the notorious video of same – shot by Lower East Side legend, Clayton Patterson -- which I’ve posted here periodically. Like Chantal Akerman's "News from Home" (albeit in this way only), the GG Allin Gas Station footage frequently pops up on YouTube, only to be brusquely taken down in very short order. If you’re not up to watching it (which is perfectly understandable, if not advisable), it documents the fateful day, starting with an abortive soundcheck, a brief, brutal performance rife with the Geeg’s signature brand of ribaldry, and culminates in an ersatz riot that spills out onto the byways of Avenue B and the surrounding environs. Not exactly “The Last Waltz,” but you get the idea.
As mentioned in several other posts here over the years, while my pals and I were frequently tempted to go see GG Allin & The Murder Junkies play, the very real possibility of being physically assaulted by the star attraction, let alone getting messily pelted with greasy fistfuls of the man’s own freshly produced dung, always kept us away. If you have a hard time picturing that outlandishly unseemly scenario, might I recommend watching Tod Phillips’ grimly hilarious 1993 documentary, “Hated: GG Allin & The Murder Junkies.”
Thirty-two years later, you’d be exceptionally hard-pressed to find any evidence of the messy shenanigans of that day on that particular strip of Avenue B. The Gas Station was razed in 1995 to make way for a brutalist eyesore of a building with a Duane Read in its ground floor. I used to periodically suggest that the troubled ghost of GG Allin probably haunts its back aisles. The building itself, meanwhile, according to my excellent bloggy comrade EV Grieve, changed hands, last year, for the princely sum of $43 million dollars. Street Easy describes the current iteration of the building this way…
194 East 2nd Street is a full-service elevator building with a 24-hour doorman, elegantly re-designed lobby, hallways, and common areas, a new high-end fitness center with an infrared sauna and yoga/pilates room, and a tenant’s lounge with a billiard table.
The rest of that block is now peppered with sports bars and brunch destinations that cater to young, monied aspirationals and cloying, self-styled influencers, who are just as revolting, to my mind, as some might have found GG Allin & the Murder Junkies, but to each their own, I guess.
Once again, if you’re genuinely curious, you should seek out the full Clayton Patterson footage (currently to be found here), but someone synopsized the day’s events in this homemade music video for an early GG Allin track (when he was a bit more genteel behind the mic) called, somewhat presciently, “NYC Tonight.”
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