i miss the wetlands

I just watched (for the second time) Wetlands Preserved, a beautiful documentary about the legendary downtown venue, the Wetlands Preserve. Between 1998 and 2001, I went to probably around 35-40 shows at Wetlands. Although I was going to mostly punk and hardcore shows there, I always felt a special bond with the place because of it’s hippie roots and dedication to the environment and other social causes.

So after watching Wetlands Preserved, I was feeling real nostalgic. I spent about an hour on YouTube looking for shows I might have been at. The best one I found was this video from a show in December of 2000. Anti-Flag headlined, Flogging Molly played an amazing set before them, and I’m almost positive Bigwig opened the show. I remember it being literally 19 degrees outside, but the Wetlands was known as being the hottest place in NYC, no matter what it was doing outside. After watching the docu, and a dozen other videos on the Tube, I realized that we don’t have anything remotely comparable to what we had in The Wetlands. There will never be a venue like that again. I’m also realizing how good Anti-Flag used to be. Before Justin Sane went all Davey Havok on us. Damn, I probably saw them 3 times at the Wetlands. These days, if you wanna see Anti-Flag you have to go see them open for My Chemical Romance at MSG. UGH!