Someone had to immortalize the Trash Bar before its impending move to Bushwick and the ABC crime show Forever has gone and done it in the most ridiculous possible way. The episode ingeniously named “Punk Is Dead” opens with the above clip, wherein a NYPD detective hanging at Trash Bar with a smooth hotelier (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) tells him, “You know this place was actually open before CBGB.” (Leave it to a show about an immortal medical examiner who’s been alive since 1779 to get its chronology wrong.) Turns out, Cuba plans to tear the club down and put up one of his hotels. “But this is a New York landmark,” the cop whines.
We won’t spoil the clip’s ending, because it’s amazing. Watch the rest of the episode here to find out whether Eddie Warsaw, the “violent and unpredictable” lead singer of the Buzzcracks, will be vindicated for assaulting his punker girlfriend with an “axe” (as in, a guitar).
As for the real Trash Bar, it had planned on closing its doors in March but its calendar is packed with shows through April. We’ve messaged the “raw and authentic and full-of-drugs” New York landmark and will share the latest when we find out.
In the meantime, a Facebook commenter has this to say: “Hopefully it will not become a high end men’s clothing store for douches with disposable income in a neighborhood gentrified by douches with disposable income.”