Goodbye, Crowbar: An Ybor Institution Signs Off with Talib Kweli and a Sold-Out House

It ended the way it began: loud, packed, and unmistakably Tampa. On Friday night, July 31, Crowbar closed its doors for good after a 20-year run, sending Ybor City's last independently owned music venue out with a sold-out final concert headlined by Talib Kweli and built, pointedly, as a showcase of Tampa hip-hop — Kweli backed by a homegrown bill of DJs Sandman and Qeys, Aych, Dynasty, Queen of Ex and Perception.

Crowbar opened in 2006 on the corner of 17th and 8th and spent two decades as the connective tissue of the local scene: hardcore matinees, hip-hop showcases, touring indie bands and album-release nights, all run through one black-box room and a covered patio. Owner Tom DeGeorge has been clear about why it's over, and it isn't for lack of love. He points to "the rising costs of rent in Ybor City and monopolistic practices of corporate ticket sellers and venue operators" — the same squeeze flattening independent rooms nationwide.

If you expected the send-off to be maudlin, DeGeorge would like a word. "I feel good," he told Creative Loafing. "I feel strong. I feel rested. I have energy." But he doesn't undersell what the closing weekend felt like from the stage. "It was as close as I could imagine to when somebody's about to die, and they say they see the bright light, and all of a sudden they're surrounded by everyone they've ever loved."

That's not hyperbole from a man prone to it. This is someone who described the venue itself as a living thing: "I wouldn't spend as much time away from my own family if I didn't think of it as its own life form." Twenty years of bookings will do that. So will a final week that ran the full Crowbar gamut — Chance Reynolds, Surfer Blood and Com Truise among the acts filling the last calendar before Friday's finale.

The loss is real, and worth naming plainly. Crowbar wasn't just a venue; it was infrastructure. It was where a Tampa hip-hop artist or a scrappy punk band could graduate from the garage to a real stage, where touring acts on the way up made their Bay-area stop, where the scene's various tribes — metal, hardcore, indie, rap — all cycled through the same room and, over 20 years, became something like a community. You don't replace that with a ticketing app.

But this is not, DeGeorge insists, an obituary. He's already the Southeast Director for the National Independent Venue Association — the trade group fighting exactly the corporate consolidation he blames for Crowbar's demise — and he'll keep booking shows through his company FMAM at rooms including Coppertail Brewing, New World Tampa and Microgroove. He's even hunting for a venue he can own outright, no landlord to answer to. "It's the end, and that's OK," he said, "because the future, I think, will be good. Everything comes to an end. Nothing lasts forever."

He's right, and Tampa Bay would do well to listen to both halves of that sentence. Nothing lasts forever — not even a room that felt permanent, that a generation of Ybor kids assumed would always be there on the corner of 17th and 8th. But the future can be good, if the people who filled Crowbar for 20 years transfer that loyalty to the rooms still standing: New World, the Orpheum, Jannus, the breweries, the record shops.

Crowbar is gone. The scene that Crowbar built is not. Prove it — pick a room, buy a ticket, and go make the next 20 years worth writing about.

Sources: Crowbar's closing, but a new era for Tom DeGeorge might just be taking flight — Creative Loafing Tampa; Talib Kweli will headline the final concert at famed Ybor City venue Crowbar — Creative Loafing Tampa; Photos: Crowbar ends 20-year run in Ybor City with a showcase of Tampa hip-hop — Creative Loafing Tampa