Do Not Mourn

Maxwell's
CBGB
The Bottom Line
Mudd Club
The (original) Knitting Factory
The (original) Kitchen
The (original) Cutting Room
Brownie's
The (real) Birdland
The Five Spot
Nada con Todo
The (real) Fillmore East
The Bouwerie Lane Theater
The (original/real/jury's still out) Bowery Poetry Club
Gerde's Folk City
Max's Kansas City
Franklin Furnace
Tramps
The Limelight

Thinking of the last days of Maxwell's and night falling on Hoboken, I made up a quick, off-the-cuff, extremely incomplete list of some of the performance spaces in the area that are no more.
And so it goes...

Maxwell's Closing Night Block Party

I didn't get to all those places; some were gone before I ever made it here.  But I went to some of them quite a bit, and performed in a few.  And of course, New York/New Jersey is not alone in seeing this kind of transition: in my one-time-home-and-still-close-to-my-heart city of Boston, I can think of 2 or 3 places just in Kenmore Square.

This is what happens.  And it breaks your heart.  But then you have to put your heart back together, get up and find/build new spaces and make new work.

I think that's pretty much it.