“This looks like the kind of place the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 would go to catch a band.” My friend agreed, “That’s so weird… I was just telling a dude a few minutes ago that I felt like I was in a rock venue from an early 1990s movie.” This actual conversation that took place at Luna Lounge last week isn’t surprising – particularly because the original Luna felt super-antiquated in an early-1990s sense when I arrived in the late 1990s. The new-ish venue keeps the old name because, despite the fact that, like Arlene’s or Spiral, it was a first-rung joint where hundreds of local bands a year played before, and if, they could get a gig at Brownies or Mercury or Knit or Coney Island High, a few of ’em wound up eventually making it a few-dozen clubs up the line. This isn’t to say that the front room didn’t have table soccer, or some of my favorite bartenders, or the bafflingly kind Elliot Smith perpetually on a stool, or the coolest looking doorman in the entire burg. I’m just saying that wise men (and wise guys) avoided the back room like the plague. Located in the heart of one of the more vibrant music communities in the world, the new location that carries the same name, despite a fine PA and plenty of dough to throw around, as with the decor, has thus far, with a few exceptions, chosen to spend it on some of the most fair to mediocre indie pop our town and country has to offer. Which is so sad because, particularly with the absence of NorthSix, we could’ve used a proper decent-sized neighborhood underground music venue. But, as the all-but-forgotten club’s website attempts to reinvent their name and place in New York music history, and, if you didn’t know any better, you’d leave the site imagining that you somehow missed another f*ckin’ CBGB, you can take comfort in the fact that, if you get there early night after night after night, you may just find the next Stellastar or Interpol or Strokes or whatever opening a show for their first gig before moving on up to the Mercury on their way to a guest spot playing in a bar scene on Desperate Housewives. The stuff that legends are made of.

361 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11211

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