The ville nightclub full#
The ville nightclub windows#

In 1977, Devo and the Rubber City Rebels both signed record deals and left for LA. It was here that the Rubber City's soon-to-be-renowned punk scene emerged and quickly attracted an audience and the attention of the music industry. As long as they paid the rent and the utilities, it was theirs. Turned out the owner wanted to bail and retire to Florida and simply gave the bar to the members of Devo, the Rubber City Rebels and the Bizarros. In 1976, some of the more entrepreneurial musicians were scouring Akron for a place to play, having tired of house parties and basements, and asked the owner if they could use his bar for shows a couple times a week, if they guaranteed him a fixed gate. It was a failing, blue-collar bar in the basement of a building on the far edge of downtown, out near the Goodyear plant. And then a group of punk rock musicians approached Allison and asked if they could play there.ДЄkron's previous punk club was The Crypt. It was open Thursday night through Sunday night and, not surprisingly, the club was struggling. Some big names played there: Jean Luc Ponty, Keith Jarrett, etc. He opened the Bank as a jazz club, apparently undaunted by the preposterous notion of cool jazz in a clanking, backwater factory town. The Bank was the brainchild of the mysterious impresario, Howard Allison. Streetlights, the ones that worked, cast the street in an eerie apocalyptic glow.

The ville nightclub windows#

Plywood covered the windows of soot-blackened buildings. By the late 70s, half the stores were closed, replaced by seedy bars and porno shops.

Like most downtowns, it fell inexorably into ruin during the Sixties as white-flight, urban sprawl and gleaming, new shopping malls drained it of its vitality. Downtown Akron was, for 100 years, the commercial center of city life. Whole sections of town sprouted up before zoning laws could be passed. That's how fast boomtown Akron grew in the early 20th century. Akron's tire plants were all shoehorned into the city, often surrounded by residential neighborhoods. As Bank patrons filed out of the club at closing time, the Goodrich plant loomed high into the night sky a mere two blocks away.

The ville nightclub full#

'The Goodrich,' as Akronites referred to it, was a massive red-brick factory that covered five full blocks and still, even as the Great Recession gutted the Rustbelt, spat thick plumes of yellow, pungent smoke into the air. Goodrich tire plant, where my grandfather worked for 45 years.

South Main St., where The Bank was located, was Akron's once-bustling retail center, a 10-block-long stretch of department stores, shops, offices and lunchtime eateries that stretched from the Viaduct, a crumbling 1920s-era bridge that spanned the Little Cuyahoga River and rained chunks of concrete on the abandoned homes below, south to the very doors of the hulking B.

As I detail in the book, punks often rubbed elbows with the weathered mutant denizens of the $5-a-night Anthony Wayne Hotel. Fittingly, the tower above the club, a hotel, was now a dreary flophouse. It was a perfect setting for a nihilistic punk scene: an opulent financial institution gone to seed, a physical embodiment of the American Dream gone bust. Thick velvet curtains hung from the walls and stylish Art Deco chandeliers dangled from the high ceiling. The interior was built with marble, mahoghany and brass. A ten-story brick tower that rose high above the other modest, squat buildings on the block, it was once a grand place. The Bank was just that, an old bank, one that closed years earlier. Here's a quick primer on The Bank and Rubber City Punk. It is remembered, by those who recount such things, as one of the greatest clubs of the punk era. The Bank New Music Club, the setting of my graphic novel, Punk Rock & Trailer Parks, opened in the Recession-battered downtown of Akron, OH in 1977. Follow the unforgettable Otto, as he ventures forth from his smalltown trailer park in search of love, fame A sprawling, riotous, gritty Rustbelt epic.