The once-gritty Lower East Side has grown trendy in the 50 years since the punk movement was born – but don’t tell residents the neighborhood has lost its rebellious edge.
Some locals are tired of hearing about how rents have soared and about how the iconic CBGB’s – where bands like Talking Heads and Blondie cut their teeth – has been replaced by a chic men’s store that sells a leather “biker” jacket for a cool $3,500.
“Every day it’s becoming a little more sanitized, a little more homogenous, not as exciting, not as gritty, and we’ve lost a lot of live music venues, that’s a problem. But we’re trying,” Abby Ehmann, owner of Lucky Bar on Avenue B, said.
“The people who are part of this community – we’re doing our best,” Ehmann added. “The landlords have gotten super greedy. We need politicians to penalize landlords who leave storefronts empty.”
The Ramones first show at CBGB’s on Aug. 16, 1974 is marked as a turning point – even if no one can pinpoint an exact moment punk began.
On the 50th anniversary of that gig last month, those in the know celebrated its significance but the nostalgia made it tough to ignore how much the neighborhood has changed.
In the 1970s, the Lower East Side was known as a haven for sex workers and drug addicts but the former CBGB’s on the Bowery at Second Avenue is now a John Varvatos. Nearby there’s a Chase Bank, designer clothing stores and upscale coffee shops where almost no one is ordering just a plain, regular coffee.
“It was filthy, really dangerous area, just horrible, junkies shooting up in the street, breaking into cars – but there was this great culture over here,” musician Mark Monwid, 60, said.
It’s safer – and a bit pricier – these days, but the artist energy that made the neighborhood famous “hasn’t changed that much,” Monwid said. There are some music venues and art galleries where the counterculture spirit is still strong, locals said.
“The culture is still here, you’re going to see galleries, the art is super edgy,” said Monwid, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years. “The edge is still here, you cannot kill it. I think it’s going to survive. The fashion is still edgy, it’s still palpable … It’s alive.”
PUNK Magazine founder and cartoonist John Holmstrom said he’s actually surprised how little his beloved East Village has changed compared to some other neighborhoods in the Big Apple.
“I still live in my crappy old tenement building,” he told The Post in a recent interview. “The whole block is filled with them, the whole area is filled with them. You know, just they now cost 4,000 instead of 400.”
Holmstrom argued the punk movement was seeing a resurgence as he planned a new issue of of magazine set to drop later this month, with a big concert scheduled in Tompkins Square Park.
The whole area is a “breath of fresh air” for artist Aramis Guzman, who was visiting the neighborhood from uptown.
“You don’t get bored when you come here,” Guzman, 36, said . “You never really know what you’re going to find. There is new businesses, new organizations always opening up. Downtown you’re always going to find something that inspires you.”
Places like the Bowery Electric have old school downtown appeal – but are passing the torch onto what comes next too, said Diane Gentile, musician and manager at the club.
“People are still the same but they do things a little bit differently,” Gentile said. “What the kids going out experience is not the same as what the kids who were going out to CBGB experienced, but they’re still going out and experiencing a great rock’n’roll band.”