Image above: Photo by Michael Mulley

By Elmer Ploetz

The new year is off to a bad start for Buffalo nightlife.

Buffalo residents woke up to the news that Mulligan’s Brick Bar on Allen Streeet had burned over night and an emergency demolition has been requested.

The fire comes less than six months after the Old Pink next door was destroyed in an arson and amid what appears to be the last days of Mohawk Place as an ongoing music venue.

Each have had their own special places in the Buffalo music and culture ecosphere, serving the needs of their audiences. In the case of Mulligan’s Brick Bar, it has spent 40 years known as a place for a younger crowd to get their youthful indiscretions out of the way amid its reputation for jock culture.

It takes all kinds of scenes to make a community and for many people over two generations the Brick Bar was an integral part of the texture of their lives.

Now it’s gone and another part of the city’s shared history is gone with it. Cities evolve and scenes evolve, but it’s almost never good when the institutions that make up those communities are wrenched from us.