Don’t call Goodbye Blue Monday a junk shop.
“That’s a disservice,” says Steve Trimboli, the middle-aged owner of Bushwick’s oddest, umm, place. “We’re so much more.”
I’ll say. Goodbye Blue Monday, located beneath the elevated J train, is part curio shop, WiFi coffeehouse, gallery, performance space and bar. By day, punkers and locals clack keyboards, sip ice coffee and shop for vintage typewriters. At night, music buffs flock to jazz and indie-rock concerts, sucking down two-dollar PBRs in a floor-to-ceiling pop-culture repository: old Polaroid cameras and dusty soul records abut Asian bobblehead dolls, a glittery bowling ball and an Urkel doll riding a motorcycle. And everything’s for sale, even seats.
“There are always more seats,” says Trimboli, a tireless dynamo with a neatly cropped mustache and glasses perched on shaggy grey hair. “Always.”
If this seems like a strange business plan, it’s because Trimboli never had a business plan. In 1998, a friend was bequeathed a 10-room house “that was all Collyer brothers,” says Trimboli, referencing the Harlem collectors who died surrounded by hoarded detritus. Trimboli was enlisted to sell the house’s books, records, board games on “this new website I just heard of—eBay.” After his Hoboken storage warehouse closed in 2000, he relocated to this tin-ceilinged, ex-Jamaican restaurant.
For five years, he sold ephemera like grandma lamps and plastic Popeye cups, as well as T-shirts and tote bags from side business Dirty Book Art. (Tees emblazoned with lurid, ’60s covers like Lesbian Wives and Fraternity of Lust plaster Goodbye’s walls.) Then last year, he decided Goodbye Blue Monday deserved a bricks-and-mortar presence. After sorting through more than 3,000 boxes (some from other cleared-out houses and apartments), he thought, Why not offer drinks? You know, à la Smith Street’s bygone furniture shop/bar Halcyon. So Trimboli secured a food license. Wine and liquor followed, “the next step in a natural process,” he says, standing behind a smooth bar the restaurant left behind, along with a band-ready stage.
An organic process? Ha. More like expected. Trimboli once co-owned downtown’s infamous Scrap Bar. It was a quintessential metal hangout, literally crafted from found steel. Its Day-Glo, rusty-edged décor attracted ne’er do wells and rockers like Metallica and Guns ’n Roses. At Scrap, which closed in 1995, crusty boozers slugged whiskey until daylight. That’s unlikely at Goodbye, because “I’m done with liquor,” Trimboli says. “Nothing could break at Scrap. But here, how many shots until a jerk-off knocks everything down?” Trimboli says, gesturing to teetering stacks of books.
Besides, he says, he’s tired of 4 a.m. nights. Most days, Goodbye closes by one or two a.m., unless there’s a “really good show,” he says. Trimboli books local and touring bands like Mouthus and Shearwater, as does ubiquitous promoter Todd Patrick, who instantly adored Goodbye because “Steve has created a time warp to some pre-gentrification, college-town vibe from the olden days. It’s totally a Slacker subculture that feels underground for real.”
Beer-swilling rock shows in an everything’s-for-sale shop may seem dangerous, but Trimboli doesn’t worry “because there’s an honor system. People start reading a book at a show, then they bring it up and say, ‘How much is this?’” That’s a likely question, for price tags are nonexistent. Sure, a placard announces the
$3 wine, $5 “sangria blanco,” $2.50 Ballantine cans and $3.50 Yuengling bottles (served from a fridge behind the bar), but nothing else is priced because “if I did that, I’d never get any work done,” Trimboli says, beneath world music pouring from 30-year-old speakers.
At that, a java fiend strolls in and glances around. “It keeps looking prettier and prettier in here,” he says. “It’s great with lots of light; I’ve never seen it like this.”
That’s Goodbye’s splendor. No two visits are identical. Tchotchkes appear. Tchotchkes disappear. Creatures of routine will be disconcerted. But fans of visual stimuli, uncertainty and poverty-priced drinks—the hallmarks of New York City living—will find an inimitable watering hole. Bartenders are accommodating, and the space has more flavor than Thomas Keller’s kitchen.
Name another joint where you’ll sit beside disco-era soundboards and Star Wars fan books, then find an ad for a Bay City Rollers “kissing kit” in the bathroom? Goodbye’s a throwback establishment to combat a cookie-cutter Starbucks world. It’s an oasis in amenity-starved Bushwick, full of warmth, surprises and constant wonder.
“Come back,” Trimboli says, smiling, “and I’ll tell you about our 350,000 comics.”
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway (betw. Lawton & Dodworth Sts.), Bushwick, B’klyn
718-453-6343
