Venues we lost in the '00s

In the last decade, rock clubs were as difficult as ever to keep open. Sure, Twin Cities music fans got new, thriving venues like the Triple Rock and the Varsity, but they also witnessed the shuttering of some favorites (not to mention near-death experiences for First Avenue and the 400 Bar). Here's The A.V. Club's list of venues we still haven't gotten over losing.

The Foxfire Coffee Lounge
The Foxfire was the kind of teenage hangout that usually only exists on television: couches, coffee, and a jukebox full of indie bands in the front; dark, loud, all-ages rock club in the back. During its two-year run, the Foxfire was a go-to for underage music fans and a hot bed for burgeoning local talent. The club had a steady flow of national bookings too: At The Drive-In, The Magnetic Fields, and The Faint all played the 97-person-capacity, concrete-and-brick-walled room before moving on to bigger venues. But Jones Soda doesn't turn a profit the way cocktails do, and the Foxfire reached its end in 2000. News of the last-minute final show hit the club's message board in the afternoon, and within a couple of hours the place was packed. The impromptu lineup included Foxfire regulars The Plastic Constellations, The Hidden Chord, Walker Kong And The Dangermakers (who marked the occasion by retiring their song "All Age Club"), and one of the first (and few) live performances by Craig Finn's post-Lifter Puller, pre-Hold Steady techno project, The Brokerdealer. The sad evening was brightened by much talk of keeping the club's spirit alive, but the Twin Cities have yet to see anything like it. (How many local clubs have a Facebook page 10 years after closing down?)

Here's a 1999 Foxfire performance by a thrash-metal band called Humanity Raped:

The Quest
Prince founded this downtown club as Glam Slam in 1990, but by '95 he'd severed ties and it was reopened under new management as The Quest. Doomed to play second banana to First Ave, the club nevertheless made a name for itself with a diverse calendar (50 Cent might headline one night, with Travis taking the stage the next) and over-the-top decor. To avoid the many view-obstructing pillars in the main room, patrons could head to the balcony, which was decked out with curved couches and outer-space murals glowing under black lights. Next door, the smaller Ascot Room, which specialized in all-ages shows, was the most wonderfully gaudy thing you'd ever seen: A huge tree seemed to grow out of the floor, with branches stretching overhead. Vine-wrapped Grecian columns framed the entrance, painted flowers covered the walls, and at the center of it all was a fountain filled with stagnant water. As one musician quipped from the stage, it was like playing "an '80s crack dealer's mansion." But the club was hindered by its reputation for violence and frowned-upon ties to Clear Channel. Shut down in 2006 after a series of damning events (loss of liquor license, a shooting outside of a Lil' Flip concert, a fire and subsequent water damage), the venue reopened as Epic the following year.

The Church
For most of the 2000s the unassuming front of the former Olivet Methodist Church at East 26th Street near Chicago Avenue held a secret from the everyday world: It was a swirling hotbed of underground music, a quasi-legal performance space where parties went into the next morning, the acts were definitively sacrilegious, and all manners of dress, experimentation and noise-making were encouraged. National acts stopped in and Twin Cities experimentalists like Faggot, Skoal Kodiak, and Knifeworld played epic shows there. The last show was in the summer of 2007, as the building was bought out by the Children’s Hospital Of Minnesota and slated for destruction (which has not happened yet), turning the freedom-loving tenants out into the street. The Church may be gone, but other venues have come up to give a home to the underbelly of the Twin Cities scene—just keep it on the down low, OK?

Hip-hop group Kanser performs at the Dinkytownercourtesy KanserThe Dinkytowner
The loss of the Dinkytowner Cafe was one of the more unfortunate casualties of 2009. Located in the heart of the University of Minnesota's late-night party hub, it managed to attract clientele beyond the frat-boy crowd by establishing itself as a quality music venue, especially for local hip-hop, and home to some of the best skillet food a bar could boast. The studious caffeine addicts and heavy-drinking lotharios that typically swarm the area got the chance to descend underground and mingle with film geeks and hip-hop heads from outside the campus scene, thanks to recurring events such as the bizarre-movie night Cinema Slop and the rap-producer showcase Last of the Record Buyers (which has since moved to Fifth Element). The local hip-hop scene was especially saddened by the club's closing, as the Dinkytowner was renowned for breaking many well-known rappers and supporting the unknowns early on. The former owners have discussed the possibility of relocating the cafe, but the dark, comfortable atmosphere of the original location may prove difficult to recapture.

The Uptown Bar
To be sure, it was sad to see the Uptown Bar serve its final bloody Mary in October after the venerable watering hole and music venue was sold to developers, and torn down  the following month. But unlike the scare a few years back when First Avenue nearly closed—which would truly have been a dagger in the heart—the Uptown's shuttering was more like seeing a fading grandparent ease out of this life: It's sad, but the occasion calls for remembrances of its prime, not today. The Uptown Bar was a symbol of the Hennepin and Lake area's days as something like the Twin Cities' version of Greenwich Village, a central gathering point for the young bohemian types that are the lifeblood of every city's cultural scene. For quite a while in the '80s and '90s, the Uptown was a major force in the music scene here, attracting musicians from Oasis to the Afghan Whigs to Wesley Willis to its tiny stage, not to mention its importance to local bands trying to get themselves noticed. A lot of the credit has to go to then-booker Maggie McPherson; when she left in the mid-'90s, a big part of the spirit did, too. Over the last decade, the personality of the Uptown neighborhood grew increasingly suburban and marked by chain stores and upscale bars and eateries. A scruffy haven for punk and indie rock seemed more and more out of place there, while new clubs elsewhere in town, particularly the Triple Rock, provided a fresh start and, it has to be said, a better place to see a show. As a concert venue, the Uptown was adequate at best; it wasn't the place but the people that made it special. Even as the club was closing, though, booking manager Brian McDonough was spearheading efforts to reopen in a new space nearby, and more power to them. Demographic changes aside, there's still a place among the Gaps and American Apparels for a thriving indie music venue, and what would be better than seeing the Uptown Bar become a phoenix instead of a dying ember?

Here's a tribute to the Uptown by local band The Hawaii Show: