From Pretty Broken Punks: “The outside of Don’s was like a rusty, overpainted beer-joint-looking place your mother would never have allowed you to go for a pee in: ‘Let’s keep looking’ ‘But Mo-om, I ha-ve to go-oooo!’ The front glass door of the club creaked and pivoted on and off its hinges, which had probably been there since Don Hill’s was Munson’s Diner. An aluminum-cast 60s door frame held a thick piece of storefront glass littered with band stickers, ASCAP stickers and marker graffiti. The place looked different in the daytime than the palace of kitsch it became at night. Somehow, the filth seemed intentional.”

I think one of the things that made this place unique was its ‘diner + music’ heritage. So many other clubs were just these concrete-wall joints – nothing special at all. And I didn’t much like the inside of CBGB’s and places like that – just a super dive  – good for punk I guess. Yet, at Don’s you never forgot you were in what was once a diner. The menu press boards were even left in their place. Kinda’ like a party for one in your living room – big enough to get wild and let loose, yet also had a home-y, grounding effect. It was confortable, no matter how jam-packed it got. I like to be comfortable in a club.

It’s also wild to read in this NY Post piece, that “Friday nights from 11 on, they’ve been peeling them off the rafters…” Good Karma for what would become the night for Squeezebox!

Now that clubs are all corporate megastructures, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the charm of a Don Hill’s quite as often…

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