Punk Vegas

The New York Post is reporting that CBGB's owner is in negotiations with the Desert Passage Mall at the Aladdin to bring the legendary punk club to Las Vegas. I somehow don't see that happening, but if it does it will be a disaster for the New York institution that birthed The Ramones, Television, Blondie and the Talking Heads. The most obvious spot they are negotiating over would be the space now occupied by Krave which I hear from sources has had an increasingly strained relationship with Desert Passage.

Krave is the first club on the Strip to explicitly market itself as gay, and, if it closes or moves, some may see this as a failure on that score. But it won't be. I think Krave is one of the worst locations on the Strip for a club. Amazingly, you can't enter Krave from either the Aladdin or Desert Passage--the entrance is on a side street off the Strip. The space's short history illustrates the problem: It opened as the Blue Note jazz club in 2000, closing in January 2003. For a while, it was a dance club called Ibiza, before Krave assumed the lease in late 2004. People in a position to know tell me that Krave's rent is around $70,000 a month. When I last interviewed Krave's owner, Sia Amiri, back in October he told me that Desert Passage in the past has given Krave an up to 50% discount on rent. But that is still a lot of punk rock tickets to sell, and CBGB's owner would do well to consider the history of this spot very carefully.

(photo by ADAM ROUNTREE/AP)