The Khyber Post-Mortem

I went to my fare share of shows at the Khy­ber while it last­ed. Was­n’t it great? The stretch they had was noth­ing short of amaz­ing now when I look back on some of the shows I saw there. Sure, there were your obscure psych rock artists like Ghost, city main­stays Bar­do Pond and the occa­sion­al top flight book­ing that was an absolute coup.

I saw the Decem­berists there in 2004, when they were plen­ty famous enough to play a big­ger venue, yet not so big that every­one and their broth­er was a fan. I caught Trad, Gras och Ste­nar there, too. My first glimpse of the Nation­al came there, too. They booked almost any­thing worth see­ing, until John­ny Bren­da’s came along and Sta­cie George stopped book­ing there and the city’s music scene moved north to Fishtown.

It was a beau­ti­ful mess of a place, sand­wiched between too many bad Old City spots to count.  Most of them came and went and now the Khy­ber has (sort of) gone, too. When I read that they intend to trans­form the dingy bar into a fan­cy Japan­ese eatery, I near­ly died laugh­ing. It was the sweati­est, smok­i­est club I’ve ever had the plea­sure of patron­iz­ing. Don’t get me wrong: Steve Simons has had suc­cess as a restau­ran­teur else­where in town, even if those spots are pret­ty unre­mark­able, but this is noth­ing short of using con­ceal­er to cov­er one of Old City’s most trea­sured blemishes.

I’m glad they had the good sense to run the venue into the ground for a good four years or so before doing this. Oth­er­wise I might have real­ly cared.

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