New York Club Bows Out

A memorial service for punk rock was held at the weekend at New York's CBGB club, birthplace of the movement in America, which closed its spit-spattered doors after 33 loud years, a victim of gentrification.

Some of the punk stars who launched their careers in the cramped and grungy East Village venue on Bowery are close to pension age, but still playing. They returned to pay their respects and wallow in nostalgia for a movement that once despised such sentiments. Punk's most celebrated poet, Patti Smith, 59, was due to play the club's final gig last night and Blondie's lead singer, Deborah Harry, 61, took the stage on Saturday. "This is a little weird ... but anything for old CB's," Harry told the crowd of punk-nostalgics. "What are we going to do now?"

The club's full name is CBGB OMFUG, (Country, Bluegrass and Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandisers) reflecting the kind of artists its founder, Hilly Kristal, hoped to attract when he opened in December 1973. But it soon became home to the sound of rebellion, delivered by bands like the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads.

Mr Kristal lost a rent dispute with the landlords and can no longer afford the cost of operating in the upwardly mobile district. Although 75 and struggling with lung cancer, Mr Kristal has pledged to strip the venue of everything he can carry out, including the urinals, and start again elsewhere.