Hilly Kristal died a month ago. For those of you who don’t know the name, he was the founder of CBGB-OMFUG, the club in New York City where American punk rock really got started. Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell of Television literally built the stage, and bands like Television, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, the Heartbreakers, and the Voidoids found a home within. As Smith said in tribute, “CBGBs wasn’t just about Hilly or the people who played there or New York City, it represented freedom for young people. To me the name CBGBs could be a slang term at this point meaning freedom. Hilly offered us unconditional freedom.”
Road to Ruin
The back room is part of the Chicago mythos. It’s a tucked-away place where city players—people with connections—breathe in cigar smoke and broker inside deals to divvy up taxpayer money. It’s a place where power is expressed in naked patronage, rarely to the benefit of the citizens whose interests elected officials are supposed to oversee. The back room is also a place, as the Chicago Tribune’s recent series on the CTA makes clear, that’s very real.
Scapegoating our Shortcomings
Recently I’ve begun riding my bike to work. It’s a move that’s brought with it a lot of benefits—I get my exercise organically, without having to carve time out of my day for it, and my commute is actually quicker than it was via bus. I feel fresher when I get to work and—what the hell—a little smug as well, since my daily commute doesn’t require any energy other than the English muffin I have for breakfast every morning.
En Memoriam
It’s surprising that, six years down the road, we don’t seem to be overwhelmed with commentary about September 11. Part of that may be because no election awaits us in November; I’m sure that next year will bring with it its fair share of heartfelt testimonials, somber speeches, and assignments of blame.
Getting Gored
Despite what you may have heard, Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. He never claimed to have discovered the Love Canal. And if the fact that Tipper is still alive doesn’t convince you that the couple wasn’t the inspiration for love story, well, Evgenia Peretz’s most recent article in Vanity Fair is something you should read.
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