Target East Village

Target recreates CBGB (sort of) for grand opening of its East Village store

Hey ho let’s go? Target just opened an East Village location on 14th St and Avenue A, and for today’s Grand Opening (7/21) they “paid tribute” to the neighborhood with a facade that, in various shades of Target Red, colorfully sorta recreated a stretch of an East Village street circa the late ’70s. (An odd choice, given the store is seen by many as a bright red example of gentrification and the unstoppable behemoth that is NYC real estate, and part of a new building that is actually called EVGB (“East Village’s Greatest Building.”) Most notably, this includes an homage to CBGB, with “TRGT” in the old Bowery punk venue’s classic font (with “BANDS” in smaller font right below it), and display windows sporting TRGT t-shirts, “rock on” foam hands, and poster that said “The Resistance.” You couldn’t actually buy that stuff from the stand but, wink wink, they did have “bands” in the form of free boxes Band-Aids and exercise bands with the Target logo on them. Right next to the TRGT was a little stage with a “Battle of the Bands” banner and an oversized novelty Target bass guitar for selfie-ing. I did not enquire about the bathrooms.

Elsewhere along the faux EV street of yore there was a medium where you could get your palm “red”, a juice stand that did not actually have juice, a stand giving away pizza slice keychains and sunglasses and more. As for the store itself, the 27,000-square-foot, two-floor Target has an East Village mural behind the checkout counter, and but otherwise isn’t making any overt nods to the neighborhood’s history.

If you want the real CBGBs (and truffle fries), you’re gonna have to go to the Newark Airport.