MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD: CBGB to Reopen as Restaurant in Newark Airport:

The famous New York City punk outpost CBGB & OMFUG, where Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Talking Heads and many others cut their teeth and sullied its notoriously disgusting bathroom, closed in 2006. But now it will get a second life, nearly a decade later as … an airport restaurant.

The club, which will be rechristened the CBGB L.A.B. (Lounge and Bar) will serve “American fare in a fun environment recalling the legendary music venue,” Gothamist reports. The first location will open in New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport at a yet-to-be-revealed date and it will be helmed by chef Harold Moore, who runs the comparatively upscale New York City eatery Commerce.

CBGB L.A.B. will serve everything from $9.00 Disco Fries to a $42.00 Prime Rib, according to a menu posted online by East Orange, New Jersey radio station WFMU. It even features Harold’s World Famous Chili on the menu, a nod to club owner Hilly Kristal’s chili concoctions. Other items the L.A.B. will offer include crispy chicken paillard, seared togarashi tuna and matzo ball soup; diners can order birthday cake for dessert.

And thus New York restaurant culture comes full circle. The prototype for Manhattan’s swank destination restaurants of the 1960s through the 1980s, the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, the Four Seasons, Windows on the World, all launched either by the firm of Restaurant Associates or its former executive Joe Baum, was Restaurant Associates’ first venture, The Newarker. This was a surprisingly upscale destination restaurant located in the Newark Airport of the 1950s, in an era before metal detectors and shoe searches made airports a no-go zone for anyone without an airplane ticket. (And before Newark’s 1967 riots made the city itself something of a no-go zone.)

But then, as Gerard Van der Leun tweets, linking to Rolling Stone’s article on CBGB coming to the Newark Airport, “First as tragedy, then as farce.”

“I’ll take the Richard Hell burger with a side of hemlock,” Iowahawk deadpans in response.