Burning the Bowery: A Night at John Varvatos with Jesse Malin
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Glitz and glam: chandelier at John Varvatos on the Bowery One of my major life regrets: I never saw a show at CBGB --though I lived very near New York City in the 1980s. My excuses are boring and involve being a broker-than-broke grad student in Yonkers where the buses stopped running at 11 p.m. CBGB closed its doors in 2006, and despite how large it looms in my imagination , I was pretty sure I'd forever missed my chance. Like The Ramones CBGB is no more A few years ago I even popped into the high-end John Varvatos boutique which stands on the hallowed ground CBGB used to occupy. I got kicked out for taking cell-phone pictures of its punk-rock posters and the stage now used to display men's shoes. Last Thursday night, though, I was miraculously granted a do-over when Jesse Malin threw a concert at John Varvatos. The doors opened and I hurried deep into the grungier-than-thou darkness, straight to the stage--or as close to it as I cou...