AMNY continues the ongoing story about clubs and venues in New York closing. They report on the irony of it all:

"Images of edgy nightclub Sin-é are flashed on oversized plasma screens in the sales office of a new condominium development.

Buyers, lured by the mystique of the Lower East Side's arts and music scene, pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to live at the center of it.

A few years later that same edgy nightclub goes out of business, having received many noise complaints from the new condo owners, and pinched by skyrocking rents driven up by those same well-heeled neighbors."

We'll get over the fact they referred to Sin-é as "edgy" (which sounds like something one of the condo purchasers would refer to it as), and get to the real issue at hand. Without the venues and unique little nooks in each neighborhood that make that neighborhood, all we'll be left with are condos. Hopefully, city politicians can learn something from Austin Mayor Will Wynn, who at our show down at SXSW earlier this year said (video here): "We need venues to be successful, we've got to have a bunch of venues in our downtown. We've gotta have musicians...we've gotta figure out how to support them financially, spiritually, economically and otherwise. We've gotta have a bunch of citizens who will turn their televisions off, get their asses off the couch, and go out there and listen to live music!"

We couldn't agree more, and in New York the powers that be are finally looking at ways to provide public support for music clubs. City Councilman Alan Gerson, after meeting with club owners, musicians and city accountants last week, says he plans to introduce bills to lower property taxes for venues, and seek special zoning requiring neighborhoods to set aside land for live performance spaces. He then stated, "If we don't do this we are going to lose the verve of New York as a cultural incubator." Maybe the musicians at City Hall were heard after all.

Some think this will be a failed effort. The fact of the matter is that it's not just venues like Tonic and Sin-é closing - it's also superclubs like Roxy - leading many to believe that even Manhattan's famed nightlife era will relocate to Brooklyn. In the end, we'll all likely end up with some post-apocalyptic scenario where illegal shows and parties in gutted out warehouses and apartments become the norm (but hey, those are fun too).

Photo of Blue Condos via p0psharlow's flickr.