First Avenue to reopen Friday with GWAR show - And a thank you to the many volunteers who helped along the way

If I only had a dollar for every time in even the past few days people said to me, "So I hear First Avenue closed....." I'd have a good chunk of HowWasTheShow's annual $384.75 budget right there. It seems like a long two and a half weeks, but the club will be back in operation tomorrow.

On Tuesday evening, a slough of volunteers gathered at First Avenue to help clean up and ready the club for re-opening on Friday evening for the GWAR show. (Those volunteers are just a few of the people fans should thank for the quick turn-around after two weeks during which dozens of people basically worked for free--I'm just guessing this doesn't include the lawyers involved--to get the club back on its feet and ready to open.) The irony of the clean-up is that GWAR is known for hurling fake body fluids from the stage during their half theater/half heavy metal shows that are practically guaranteed to have a little something to offend everyone.

In true antagonistic fashion, GWAR's website even includes a "fuck you, welcome to the email blacklist" to the people people that kept emailing them with questions about whether the First Avenue show was on or off in the interim. The website asks: "Do ANY of you read this funny little section of the site that is dedicated to NEWS? Anyways..."


HowWasTheShow intends to be onhand (though standing out of distance of the reportedly machine-washable liquids.)

The First Avenue calendar has now been updated to reflect what you can actually expect in the coming weeks at both the Main Room and the Entry. As reported here earlier, the Ike Reilly show (w/ Friends Like These and The Lift) will stay at the Triple Rock on Thanksgiving Eve where it was moved during the closure, but Urge Overkill will be at First Avenue.

Read more in today's Star Tribune: First Avenue gets OK to reopen Friday