Billionaire Cuban to save punk birthplace?
Scott Ard Former Editor in Chief, CNET
CNET former Editor in Chief Scott Ard has been a journalist for more than 20 years and an early tech adopter for even longer. Those two passions led him to editing one of the first tech sections for a daily newspaper in the mid 1990s, and to joining CNET part-time in 1996 and full-time a few years later.
Mark Cuban has emerged as a potential savior of CBGB, the New York club that is considered the birthplace of punk but now faces eviction.
According to this Associated Press report, CBGB owes some $91,000 in back rent and faces a potential doubling of its monthly nut of $19,000. And that's just too much, says Hilly Kristal, founder of the club that incubated such bands as the Talking Heads, the Ramones and Blondie in the 1970s.
Enter Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks pro basketball team who became a billionaire when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. "It's an icon of the New York music scene," Cuban told the AP in explaining his offer of assistance.