Enjoyed this video emencely ... I had some of the Best times ever at City Gardens . Memories I will cherish forever. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. You made a lot of people happy. 🤘
What a great video. The building was originally a car dealership when it first opened. My grandpa who was born in Trenton in 1920 used to buy cars there cause he lived right down the street in the Donnelly Homes.
Thanks man. The footage was pretty dark but figured I'd slap it together anyway. And thats cool! Apparently it used to be a Bible storage Warehouse also
I grew up going here to see all the hardcore shows as a kid in highschool I just turned 50 , amazing how time flies, I had the best time here, got to see alot of great bands.😅😅 Super crazy stop😮. I got my car broken into and they sold my new guitar, I thought it was hidden, guess not...
Thank you for posting this video of a place that was a very important part of many a Mercer County/Tri-state area, and Trenton resident experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fond memories of this place during my college years and my early 20s. Imagine seeing Faith No More, Soundgarden and Voivod (on the same bill) for $15 in 2021. Imagine there being a dance club today having a 99c cover charge. I don't think there will ever be a place like it. It was our affordable shithole hangout that you ended up at every weekend. Thanks for giving us what could be our final look at City Gardens.
Amazing memories at CGs. Many a Thursday nights, 90 cent dance night, were spent there. Oh, and Friday nights and Saturday nights. Met my husband there in 1990!!!!
That would be amazing. It's definitely a good location, unfortunately I think the building has to be demolished. There is Major settling all over the place and it's structurally unsound.
Went there alot in the early 90s,so many great shows. Seeing Ramones,Bad Religion,Ice T,Social Distortion w/Rev Horton Heat opening,Rollins Band as well as Rollins spoken word.. the list goes on. The drive down I95 from Freehold was a pain in the ass, especially if halfway there you had to use the bathroom. But worth it. The bathroom there with no doors on the stalls and unnecessarily high urinals,the Billy Idol drawing on the ceiling (Dance!) So many fond memories of this place
I saw & filmed many a gig there, many decibels ago. After a Kreator and Coroner gig, I found a beer bottle, in the dead center of my car's front wind shield, half in and half out, of the windshield.
I went there several times in the mid-1980's and never had a problem. Some drinks, some outstanding live music in an intimate space much more convenient and less expensive than NYC or Phil. Good intermediate stop for the smaller to mid-drawing bands too. They got a nice enthusiastic audience with a lot less hassle than performing in NYC or Phil.
That’s so cool you guys got in. As a metal/ punk and hardcore fan I wished this club was still going being from Trenton too. Hopefully someone buys it and turns into a concert venue.
That building now has a big hole in the side of it facing the street. I live a few blocks from there. My older siblings used to see concerts there in the 80s. I never been there.
@@NNKH2 I heard someone drove a car through it. We get a lot of bad drivers here in Trenton. It's not the first time someone drove a car through a building. Once, someone drove a car through someone's house on Southard Street.
Sure is sad to see such an important part of so many people's young lives in such shit shape. I spent every Sunday night they had a show (and more than a few Fridays) there between 1985-1988 while in HS. We were so incredibly lucky to have a place like city gardens where we could, if ever so briefly, escape the hell of jersey in the 80s and be around our own kind. W/o it I'm sure more than a few of us would've ended up hanging from trees in our backyards. Growing up in jersey in the 80s sucked ass it wasn't only soul crushingly boring (small towns small minds) it was also dangerous, looking the way we did back then my friends and I would get jumped by cars full of, let's say people not quite ready for our kind, regularly just walking down the street (sometimes by full on adults) and have to throw down. But we had CGs, an oasis of fellow freaky kids, as our safe place (no irony there considering its location) So we used to drive across the entire state of NJ (literally from as far east as you could get w/o getting your feet wet) through about a 40 minute gauntlet of route 195 (the road that runs the width of the state from the ocean to trenton for anyone unfamiliar) crawling with NJ state police itching to pull over a car full of punk rock kids. Yes, we did get pulled over more than once and one time we even got stripped down to jeans and t-shirts, no jackets, no shoes, hell they even took off our socks on a >20° night in heavy wind (it was just a little cold) at gun point by jerseys' finest as they tore us and the car apart looking for drugs. 15yrs old and luckily still the only time I've ever had a gun to my head while someone telling me just how badly they wanted to shoot me. After surviving the trip to Trenton and safely (haha) in the club we were always treated shows that usually cost $10 or less to get into with lineups that today people cannot believe. 3 or 4 bands sometimes quite often with 2 or more acts that would be the headliners in smaller clubs. Randy Now had a genius ability to put these shows together and was a hell of a nice guy to boot, always making sure to say hi to us "shore boys". Funny, years later I discovered he had used a photo of me on the homepage of his website for a few years. But then there were the bands. The groups always brought their A-game to CGs. After HS I moved to DC and became friends with a lot of guys that played there and they all pretty much told me the same thing about playing Trenton. One, they always played so hard because they didn't want to disappoint these huge crowds (4-500 people some nights was a big crowd back then, remember the world wasn't ready for our music yet) and they'd always say the energy in that room was contagious. And two, they were a bit scared of doing a bad show. The clubs reputation for violence was not undeserved, watch the movie and see the part about the Exploited show, it's not exaggerated. And despite the reputation for violent crowds the guys in the bands could usually be seen amongst us common folk from time to time too. I could tell you about the time Ranking Roger and me shared a game on the 'high speed' pinball machine. Or there was the time about an hour after a show ended when the Descendents helped us break into my friends car when he locked the keys in it. I got more but, this comment is now going on forever and I still haven't talked about punk rock 7-11. So the shows over our ears have started ringing and won't stop until sometime the next day (two or three days if it was the Ramones) and now there's the long, hungry, ride home. Not wanting to risk the hotdog machine at the club, not to mention Jon Stewart (yes, that one) always seemed incredibly annoyed everytime you asked for one, food was now needed. Shows at CGs could sometimes be in the 4-5hr range, anyone's gonna be hungry after that. It just so happened on the outskirts of Trenton just about 100 feet before the on ramp to 195 there was a 7-11. Punk rock 7-11 as it came to be known would get invaded by somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20-50 starving, near deaf and screaming punks and skins. I swear the people that were working there had to have been terrified of what I'm sure they could only have imagined was an escaped bus load of inmates from an insane asylum for the deaf.... until they finally got used to the clockwork like timing of the 10:15 pm Sunday night rush. And then the long ride home, until next Sunday. Whew that went on a lot longer than I meant it to. This covid virus cabin fever sure is a bitch... don't know about you but, I could sure use to get out more, maybe go see a show
Went there about a month ago and let me tell you... Be glad you went when you did! The building is in horrible condition now with walls caving in ever since a car smashed into it. I might upload the pictures I took of it on Google Maps sometime soon.
City Gardens was all business. Friend had his car stolen at a show in the early 1990s. Grateful mine emerged unscathed after several visits. Cool venue.
saw ECW wrestling shows there a couple times, 1994, 1995ish. people in the crowd were even hitting the wrestlers with them, lol. crows size 800, 900. quite grungy
Sad story about our old haunt falling down here: m.ua-cam.com/video/lndDBaro0Kw/v-deo.html ☝️my buddy and are in the agnostic front photo towards the end, guess that's pretty cool though
Went here with my Joisey cousins when I visited them, saw a few killer shows and had a lot of good times there, now one's a NJ state cop, treasonous bastard! Those big stand up fans would've left with me if I went there, lol and with some reinforcing those stainless fixtures make awesome teardown tables, I scored one at an abandoned restaurant.
Follow Up Video Getting A Memento for Randy: ua-cam.com/video/enrVsERuKLw/v-deo.html
City gardens is in Ewing not Trenton
It's on the borderline
I saw so many bands there. Go in the bathroom by the stage. Bands signed the wall.
John Stewart served me many a rum and coke at that bar, 90 cent drink nite on Thursdays.
Enjoyed this video emencely ... I had some of the Best times ever at City Gardens . Memories I will cherish forever. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. You made a lot of people happy.
🤘
What a great video. The building was originally a car dealership when it first opened. My grandpa who was born in Trenton in 1920 used to buy cars there cause he lived right down the street in the Donnelly Homes.
Thanks man. The footage was pretty dark but figured I'd slap it together anyway. And thats cool! Apparently it used to be a Bible storage Warehouse also
I grew up going here to see all the hardcore shows as a kid in highschool I just turned 50 , amazing how time flies, I had the best time here, got to see alot of great bands.😅😅 Super crazy stop😮. I got my car broken into and they sold my new guitar, I thought it was hidden, guess not...
I spent alot of time there in the Early 80's. Alot of great memories.
My best years here Trenton city gardens...dance nights
Emerald city club formerly Latin casino turned into car dealership
So many many many fun nights there!
I've lived here 4 years, move from the Pacific Northwest, and nobody's ever told me this story. Trenton is a hard place to figure out
Thank you for posting this video of a place that was a very important part of many a Mercer County/Tri-state area, and Trenton resident experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No problem Elisa!
It was Club XL right before it closed again. Some years after it was City Gardens.
Fond memories of this place during my college years and my early 20s. Imagine seeing Faith No More, Soundgarden and Voivod (on the same bill) for $15 in 2021. Imagine there being a dance club today having a 99c cover charge. I don't think there will ever be a place like it. It was our affordable shithole hangout that you ended up at every weekend. Thanks for giving us what could be our final look at City Gardens.
This is crazy. Especially being from the PNW and living in a nice area near by
Amazing memories at CGs. Many a Thursday nights, 90 cent dance night, were spent there. Oh, and Friday nights and Saturday nights. Met my husband there in 1990!!!!
Seen Sick of it all , Offspring, Crowbar and Overkill all different events there back in the 90s!
Look around for left over Concert tickets! Quite collectable!
Loved playing on that stage! Sad to see!
The men’s bathroom was dirty as hell. Great times there. Thanks Frank and Patty!
I’d love to see somebody do something cool with that building.
That would be amazing. It's definitely a good location, unfortunately I think the building has to be demolished. There is Major settling all over the place and it's structurally unsound.
@@NNKH2 Yeah that makes sense. Thanks for showing us the building in its current state. There are so many stories among the rubble.
It's beyond saving. Someone did purchase it with the intent to reopen, but I can confirm R No's suspicion. I know for a fact that it cannot be saved.
Area is likely much worse to revive. And it was a place for a different time. It doesn't fit with today.
@@VanHellsing12 Trenton is a scary place
Went there alot in the early 90s,so many great shows. Seeing Ramones,Bad Religion,Ice T,Social Distortion w/Rev Horton Heat opening,Rollins Band as well as Rollins spoken word.. the list goes on. The drive down I95 from Freehold was a pain in the ass, especially if halfway there you had to use the bathroom. But worth it. The bathroom there with no doors on the stalls and unnecessarily high urinals,the Billy Idol drawing on the ceiling (Dance!) So many fond memories of this place
I saw & filmed many a gig there, many decibels ago. After a Kreator and Coroner gig, I found a beer bottle, in the dead center of my car's front wind shield, half in and half out, of the windshield.
Nice! And damn sucks about the broken windows.
I went there several times in the mid-1980's and never had a problem.
Some drinks, some outstanding live music in an intimate space much more convenient and less expensive than NYC or Phil. Good intermediate stop for the smaller to mid-drawing bands too. They got a nice enthusiastic audience with a lot less hassle than performing in NYC or Phil.
I hung out there and partied there. Good memories!
Sweet! I'm jealous. Never got the chance
Thank you R NoNonsenceKnowHow
No problem! If ya get the chance, toss me a subscribe on my main Channel NoNonsenseKnowHow. Thanks so much!
That’s so cool you guys got in. As a metal/ punk and hardcore fan I wished this club was still going being from Trenton too. Hopefully someone buys it and turns into a concert venue.
not a chance - it needs to be torn down
I saw the dead Kennedys there was a great show👍🏻
Crazy.. No one told me about the bands that played here. I'm down the road but from Seattle
That building now has a big hole in the side of it facing the street. I live a few blocks from there. My older siblings used to see concerts there in the 80s. I never been there.
Yea I saw that recently. Maybe the wall partially collapsed?
@@NNKH2 I heard someone drove a car through it. We get a lot of bad drivers here in Trenton. It's not the first time someone drove a car through a building. Once, someone drove a car through someone's house on Southard Street.
I feel like I’m watching the Titanic, Many Great memories at City Gardens!
So many shows and Thursdays here for me and friends!
Gardens of the World New Jersey !
Sure is sad to see such an important part of so many people's young lives in such shit shape.
I spent every Sunday night they had a show (and more than a few Fridays) there between 1985-1988 while in HS. We were so incredibly lucky to have a place like city gardens where we could, if ever so briefly, escape the hell of jersey in the 80s and be around our own kind. W/o it I'm sure more than a few of us would've ended up hanging from trees in our backyards. Growing up in jersey in the 80s sucked ass it wasn't only soul crushingly boring (small towns small minds) it was also dangerous, looking the way we did back then my friends and I would get jumped by cars full of, let's say people not quite ready for our kind, regularly just walking down the street (sometimes by full on adults) and have to throw down. But we had CGs, an oasis of fellow freaky kids, as our safe place (no irony there considering its location)
So we used to drive across the entire state of NJ (literally from as far east as you could get w/o getting your feet wet) through about a 40 minute gauntlet of route 195 (the road that runs the width of the state from the ocean to trenton for anyone unfamiliar) crawling with NJ state police itching to pull over a car full of punk rock kids. Yes, we did get pulled over more than once and one time we even got stripped down to jeans and t-shirts, no jackets, no shoes, hell they even took off our socks on a >20° night in heavy wind (it was just a little cold) at gun point by jerseys' finest as they tore us and the car apart looking for drugs. 15yrs old and luckily still the only time I've ever had a gun to my head while someone telling me just how badly they wanted to shoot me.
After surviving the trip to Trenton and safely (haha) in the club we were always treated shows that usually cost $10 or less to get into with lineups that today people cannot believe. 3 or 4 bands sometimes quite often with 2 or more acts that would be the headliners in smaller clubs. Randy Now had a genius ability to put these shows together and was a hell of a nice guy to boot, always making sure to say hi to us "shore boys". Funny, years later I discovered he had used a photo of me on the homepage of his website for a few years.
But then there were the bands. The groups always brought their A-game to CGs. After HS I moved to DC and became friends with a lot of guys that played there and they all pretty much told me the same thing about playing Trenton. One, they always played so hard because they didn't want to disappoint these huge crowds (4-500 people some nights was a big crowd back then, remember the world wasn't ready for our music yet) and they'd always say the energy in that room was contagious. And two, they were a bit scared of doing a bad show. The clubs reputation for violence was not undeserved, watch the movie and see the part about the Exploited show, it's not exaggerated. And despite the reputation for violent crowds the guys in the bands could usually be seen amongst us common folk from time to time too. I could tell you about the time Ranking Roger and me shared a game on the 'high speed' pinball machine. Or there was the time about an hour after a show ended when the Descendents helped us break into my friends car when he locked the keys in it. I got more but, this comment is now going on forever and I still haven't talked about punk rock 7-11.
So the shows over our ears have started ringing and won't stop until sometime the next day (two or three days if it was the Ramones) and now there's the long, hungry, ride home. Not wanting to risk the hotdog machine at the club, not to mention Jon Stewart (yes, that one) always seemed incredibly annoyed everytime you asked for one, food was now needed. Shows at CGs could sometimes be in the 4-5hr range, anyone's gonna be hungry after that. It just so happened on the outskirts of Trenton just about 100 feet before the on ramp to 195 there was a 7-11. Punk rock 7-11 as it came to be known would get invaded by somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20-50 starving, near deaf and screaming punks and skins. I swear the people that were working there had to have been terrified of what I'm sure they could only have imagined was an escaped bus load of inmates from an insane asylum for the deaf.... until they finally got used to the clockwork like timing of the 10:15 pm Sunday night rush. And then the long ride home, until next Sunday.
Whew that went on a lot longer than I meant it to. This covid virus cabin fever sure is a bitch... don't know about you but, I could sure use to get out more, maybe go see a show
just wanted to say thanks for writing this!
Saw many concerts there in the summers of '85 & '86
This is great.
Yo that entrance just got boarded up recently, I'm so sad I couldn't pop in and check it out
Oh damn. It was boarded the one time I saw it but I was able to push it out of the way with ease
You were definitely out of your mind sampling that dusty Corona beer. You a wild one.
City Gardens FUCKING RULED in the 80's !!! Miss that place !
Went there about a month ago and let me tell you... Be glad you went when you did! The building is in horrible condition now with walls caving in ever since a car smashed into it. I might upload the pictures I took of it on Google Maps sometime soon.
How do we get to this location? Got an address I kinda wanna check it out
1701 Calhoun Street in Trenton.
You would have like exploring the Satellite lounge in Wrightstown nj before they tore it down.. i have a lot of cool items from there!
City Gardens was all business. Friend had his car stolen at a show in the early 1990s. Grateful mine emerged unscathed after several visits. Cool venue.
I seen Neds Atomic Dust Bin there in 93
This is my hometown 😁
saw ECW wrestling shows there a couple times, 1994, 1995ish. people in the crowd were even hitting the wrestlers with them, lol. crows size 800, 900. quite grungy
That's awesome!
15 minutes fun here man. I need to check it out.
Can we just go in? (I mean it's probably not legal)
Yeah pretty sure it's still open. Definitely bring a buddy
Loudness was a great Japanese metal band
I saw that 85 tour in Seattle.
Loudness rocked!
😊 Eddie and The Cruisers 😊.
🙂😀😃😄😁👋🤞✌️👌🤙👍☝️👏🙏
This reveals a pretty wild side of Chris, searching for a decent unopened liquor bottle. Funny!
Back years ago, late 70’s-80’s, I believe this was called Chocolate City.
Yeah. You're right about that. I heard even Kurtis Blow played there
In 1976 I used to hang out at chocolate City I had some fun times there... Anybody heard of The Time machine on New York avenue?
I was music supervisor and co-producer for the documentary.
Played there, grew up about 30 minutes north of. Please check the documentary.
That's awesome! I watched the documentary on Amazon Prime. Killer job man!
Hey what were you Riding? I have an Indian scout and ive been going to abandoned places with it. Thanks for the content dude.
Who remembers Randy Ellis????
Before my time. But i just got to meet him yesterday. Great guy! Check out the part two. Link in the description.
Of course.
hasn't changed much at all! lol
Beer expires after like 6 months lol
Club xl it was when I went there
Its a damn shame whats become of that building. My dad went to every Ramones show that came through there back in the day.
Are you from NJ?
It's amazing how much crap is still in the building. Also amazing that nobody is living in there.
Definitely crazy how much was left behind. All that beer!
@@NNKH2 No lie I want those milk crates.
So hard to find nowadays.
“the soundgarden”… 🤣
What About Bruce Springsteen?
If those walls could talk.
How many babies were made on those couches
Sad story about our old haunt falling down here:
m.ua-cam.com/video/lndDBaro0Kw/v-deo.html
☝️my buddy and are in the agnostic front photo towards the end, guess that's pretty cool though
Beer is like food, only lasts a couple of years.
Saw so many great shows there in the late eighties. Yeah it was a shit hole but it was our shit hole, besides where the hell else were you gonna go.
Owner should be arrested for alcohol abuse
Went here with my Joisey cousins when I visited them, saw a few killer shows and had a lot of good times there, now one's a NJ state cop, treasonous bastard! Those big stand up fans would've left with me if I went there, lol and with some reinforcing those stainless fixtures make awesome teardown tables, I scored one at an abandoned restaurant.
Thank you for being honest about their Treason
bro was jus tryn get drunk for free the whole time
Lost my pristine hearing in this place in the late 80s. A cement blockhouse in one of Trenton’s worst neighborhoods
No longer ☹️
Don't drink that booze.
Lol yea
Free booze is the best booze
Njhc