After the bombing, whether the Electric Circus deserved goodness or not, it stayed in business just another 16 months. It closed in August, 1971. Perhaps it was the bombing, or that the club had been just a fad that petered out, or perhaps the nightly despair had eaten away at the customers’ psyches to the point where pleasures needed to be sought elsewhere.
As I looked at the boarded-up front of the club now, four years later, I wasn’t surprised nothing had replaced it. An economic downturn had decimated the East Village with shuttered stores, boarded up fronts, broken windows, and rusting, ramshackle metal fire escapes dangling at various levels above the streets. Squatters who commonly referred to themselves as “artists” inhabited many of the abandoned apartments.
I turned back on St.
