The Queens Museum is a site of pilgrimage for punk rock fans
from all over the area thanks to its Ramones exhibit, which is open
until July 31.
I made it there not long ago one weekend after seeing
friends posting photos of their visits there over social media for the last
several months. It is a fine exhibit, one long overdue in the borough that gave
the pioneering punk rock band to the world. I made a point to wear my Norman Bates & The Showerheads
t-shirt when I visited, because one great Queens punk band deserves another.
The exhibit is colorful and brief. It’s only two
modest-sized rooms and a screening room. I went there with my family, which
means that a good deal of our time was spent stopping our two and half year old
twin girls from banging Tommy Ramone’s snare drum. We didn’t have time to
really take all of it in, maybe we should have gotten a sitter.
But as rushed as our walk through the exhibit was, it was
important to be there. Queens is often overlooked in the pantheon of New York
City artistic greatness. But Queens has given the world not only the Ramones
but Johnny Thunders, Run-DMC, Simon & Garfunkel and more.
Queens doesn’t get the respect it deserves – all the outer boroughs carry with
it that basic desire to poke their finger in the eye of the city being defined
as Manhattan.
One thing that the contemporary adoration of the Ramones tends to
obscure is that they were grossly underappreciated when they were a functioning
group, at least here in the U.S. I remember going to see them in 1989 in
Connecticut and they were playing at Toad’s Place in New Haven, an admirable
music club but a small venue (it was a 21+ show and I had no fake I.D.). When I
finally saw them in late 1995, they were playing a larger venue, but as part of
a shitty alternative radio show, headlining but sharing the bill with the
unworthy likes of Better than Ezra and Silverchair (the oft-hated Silverchair
were actually very good to be honest).
Queens is fully embracing its Ramones fame. Murals of the Ramones now grace Forest
Hills. There are plans to rename the intersection next to Forest Hills High
School Ramones Way.
The Ramones who moved to the East Village in the 1970s could
not afford to live there today. While the Joey Ramone Place street sign is the
most stolen in the city, the area looks nothing like it did when the Ramones
first played CBGB in 1974. The refrain is a familiar one: New York is no longer
affordable to the artists who made New York’s art scene famous. The artists I
know don’t talk about New York, they speak of Philadelphia, Buffalo, or Berlin.
New York’s East Village is a victim of its own success in a lot of ways. I’m
not ready to give up on New York just yet, but it’s easy for me to say that
from Flushing.
To be a punk rock fan in New York City means to constantly
wrestle with nostalgia. There is a rich history to celebrate, but nostalgia can
be a trap as much as a motivator.
New York continues to produce great punk bands. You may have
to travel farther away from Manhattan and the trendy parts of Brooklyn to see
them, but great local bands, the Ramones of tomorrow, are playing somewhere in
Queens today.
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