The eclectic mix of bands and acts that played Trenton rock hall City Gardens in its 1980s and 1990s heyday is legendary – Bad Brains, Gorilla Biscuits, The Replacements, New Order, Green Day, Public Enemy. And Freakin’ Nirvana!
The Ramones headlined the most - 22 times.
And the stories of those shows are even better.
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Just google “we played City Gardens” or “our show at City Gardens” or watch, “Riot on the Dance Floor: The story of Randy Now and City Gardens,” where you will see many of the bands wax poetic about the club, including Lawrence’s Jon Stewart talk about his days bartending at the club on Calhoun Street in North Trenton.
REM’s Michael Stipe wrote a song there while gazing out the back of the club, as chronicled by the book, “No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens.”
Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora was at the club too, long before he led the capital city. “I saw Ween there,” the mayor told NJ.com Thursday. “That’s my claim to fame.”
Ween, from New Hope, Pennsylvania, were City Gardens regulars in the late ’80s and ’90s before the club closed, entering two decades of reopenings and closings under different names and nowhere near the impact that alternative and punk bands gave the cinder block building.
Now, it’s pretty much gone forever as a building. The city started tearing it down on Tuesday.
By Thursday, it was a pile of rubble. In about two weeks, it will be a flat lot.
No sign of the disco ball that still hung from the ceiling in 2022, when a NJ.com photographer spelunked into the dilapidated building and found remnants of the past, including the bar and stage.
The city said then they were about to tear it down.
This week, though, large machinery moved in for real.
Gusciora explained that the hazards in letting it remain – it had a hole on the south side from a collision with a vehicle – were just too great.
“We periodically patched holes, but it became a nuisance,” he said.
The city once owned the property, at 1701 Calhoun Street, which real estate records list the property at 225 W. George Street, which runs behind the property.
The city sold it to an Edison company at a public auction in 2019. Records show the sale was $152,000. The property has been racking up tax liens for years, which other companies then purchase, putting its status in limbo, Gusciora said.
Even when it looked like it would fall over, people still pilgrimaged to the club and posted pictures and memories of nights they spent and bands they saw.
Now, 1701 Calhoun Street is just another vacant property in the city.
Randy Now’s name is in the documentary because he booked the acts that put the club on the rock map during his 1979 to 1996 tenure. Randy Now was a moniker; his real name is Randy Ellis.
He was there Tuesday to see the demolition in person and posted pictures on Facebook. He told NJ.com in 2022 that when it goes, the name City Gardens will live on in the strong memories of many.
On Tuesday, he posted on his Facebook page, “Well, And so it goes, and so it goes & so it goes.”