Home of Punk-Rock Battles for Its Home - NYTimes

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/arts/music/07cbgb.html?8hpib

For more than 30 years, CBGB, the eternally crumbling downtown nightclub, has with ragged pride withstood every hand the neighborhood and the music scene have dealt it: punk-rock, death metal, crack addicts, city inspectors and bad plumbing. But it may have met its match in one of the city's most respected charity group.

In a scrappy Bowery real-estate battle, CBGB has been in and out of court for much of the last four years with its landlord, the Bowery Residents' Committee, a nonprofit organization that helps the homeless. The dispute concerns enough unpaid rent to finance dozens of punk bands as well as numerous building violations that leave a paper trail as thick as the layers of fliers stapled to the club's walls.

In an arrangement known to few of the club's patrons, CBGB subleases its spaces at 313 and 315 Bowery from the organization, which shelters 175 homeless people in the floors above the club. In 2001, the organization began efforts to collect more than $300,000 in back rent from the club. Although much of that has now been paid, the club faces eviction over remaining debts of about $75,000, both parties say...

..."We're an institution," said Hilly Kristal, the grandfatherly 73-year-old who started CBGB - with plans to stage "country, bluegrass and blues," not punk - in late 1973. "I think we're an important part of this community. The city uses us in their Olympics ad, along with the Statue of Liberty."