So, did you hear? They finally shut down CBGB this past weekend. Patti Smith presided over the final performances on Sunday night; Richard Hell wrote the eulogy. I decided to walk down the Bowery on Monday afternoon to see what was left. The answer? Not much. The famed logo awning had been removed and disassembly of the interior seemed to be in full swing - preparation for the relocation to Las Vegas, I guess. Farewell messages were scrawled around the door and someone had scattered wordy, indignant sidewalk stencils - something about the decay of art and museums and the church and the world as we know it. Okay. I paused on the sidewalk and watched two middle-aged men with camcorders filming the ex-club's entrance. And then, since there was nothing left to see, I went on my way.

As someone who was drawn to New York at least in part because of its rock'n'roll history, do I feel a tinge of guilt for not actually caring that CB's is gone? Yup. Am I kicking myself because I never set foot in the place, not in all the times I visited the city when I was in college, not once in the three and a half years I've lived here? Nope. Thing is, I can't remember the last time a band I wanted to see was booked at CBGB (well, Patti Smith the other day would've been good). I've seen loads of shows in New York - but at places like Southpaw, with its dramatic curtained stage and friendly bartenders; the Delancey, presided over by the inimitable DJ Mojo and BP Fallon every Wednesday night for Death Disco; the Bowery Ballroom and Irving Plaza for big-event shows; Northsix, with its awesome bleacher seats and scuzzy basement. I'll tell you what clubs I miss. I miss the Luna Lounge on Ludlow Street, because every show was free and you could wander in any night of the week and see what there was to hear. Sometimes what you found would be an out-of-town band playing their first New York show. Or you'd find a horribly inept attempt at pop-punk. Or maybe you'd find something really fantastic. You just never knew. Some people joked that "anyone can play at Luna," but that was half the fun. (The building is being converted into luxury condos even as I type.) You know what else I miss? The cheesy goth decor of the Apocalypse Lounge, where the bartenders poured sake (no hard liquor license) and served dishes of M&Ms. I had the immense satisfaction of playing a show in the Apocalypse basement, with a band of suburban teenagers opening and a crowd of people jammed into the corners and up the stairs. I skinned my knees on the concrete floor and bled on my skirt; at the end, everyone danced to the Archies.

Back to CBGB. Sure, the place has history - just not my history, at least not my personal history. My record collection's history, maybe. It's a step or three removed. I respect what it was, but at this point its absence means, well, as much as its presence meant to me: not much. My only clear memory of it is walking by one evening and seeing a pre-teen boy standing outside with his dad, both of them wearing brand-new official CBGB t-shirts. I can't relate.

A thing I've found interesting is that in the midst of all the discussion about what CBGB's loss means to New York, a lot of people have made reference to the city's heart or its soul or its character. But that's just it: shutting down CBGB is the character of New York, because the real soul of the city is its relentless pursuit of upscale change and development. Its heart doesn't lie in the increasingly nonexistent lofts where the kids play their guitars; its heart is better reflected in the glass condo towers rising over Greenpoint. New York was built on commerce, not art or punk. Those things happened symbiotically, perhaps, but mostly in spite of New York. They still do, and probably still will, although the hunger for luxed-up real estate will build barriers faster than they can be torn down.

Then again, New Yorkers (and by this I don't mean that I am one yet, just that I've developed a habit of theirs) spend an awful lot of time ruminating on Topic A - their own city. That narcissistic cartoon map of the United States that shows Manhattan in the foreground and the rest of the country blurred out until the Pacific Ocean isn't too far from the truth, sometimes. Maybe, as little as it matters to me, it matters even less to you, dear comrades on the west coast.