Well, that was fun. After some 34 years hosting rock music's influentials (and putting the stench of high school locker rooms to shame), CBGB & OMFUG said goodbye with one last hurrah. Cue the twentysomething East Village hipsters who don't know what "CBGB" stands for to wrap the block, every other one of them sporting a classic CBGB tee. And while the farewell show brought home some of the club's most notable performers, it also conjured up a level of existentialism one would usually head to the Bowery to escape.

• "It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out." —John Nikolai, 36, Staten Island photographer

• "It’s a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city." —Patti Smith

• "When you get beyond the layers of interior decoration that is CBGB, the architecture of the structure probably evokes the 19th and early 20th century years of the Bowery better than any other building on the strip that we know of.” — Marci Reaven, managing director of City Lore, a nonprofit arts group

• "Are they still selling T-shirts?" — Asshole with asymmetrical haircut we just made up

CBGB Brings Down the Curtain With Nostalgia and One Last Night of Rock [Ben Sisario, NYT]

(Photo: Randsom)