Hoofin' It to the Bowery Ballroom

From Dave Brigham:

This is the fourth short post about my trip to New York City in October (the first one is here; the second one is here; the third one is here). You can't throw a rock in the Big Apple without hitting a famous restaurant, park, store, art gallery, person, movie setting or nightclub. As I was walking through the Bowery in Lower Manhattan, I stumbled across an example of the latter.

The Bowery Ballroom opened on Delancey Street in 1998, in a building that's nearly 100 years old. It is considered one of the best music clubs in the country, per Wikipedia. As with Webster Hall that was featured in my second NYC post, I'd heard of this place but haven't been there.

I became more interested in this well-known spot after looking up and seeing "TREE-MARK SHOES" chiseled into the facade.

Wikipedia says this store never opened, because its planned debut came just before the Wall Street crash of 1929. "It stood vacant until the end of World War II, when it housed a series of shops." Ephemeral New York, however, says Tree-Mark moved in after the big war and was there for the next 30 years.

Whatever.

When I think of the Bowery, which over decades of decline became shorthand for down-and-out, I think of the Bowery Boys, probably thanks to my Dad mentioning the fictional New York City characters from a series of movies made from 1946 to 1958. The Boys were successors to the East Side Kids, who were an imitation of the Dead End Kids.

Got all that?

Here's a sample of the Boys in action: