No one has stories about this place yet? Best venue I've ever known. You could catch a good band just about any night, and drink a quart of beer on the steps of the Hippodrome in between bands. The last night of the Hardback will always be remembered. My friends ran off with the big red vinyl couch right before the cops on horses started beating up scenesters. Gainesville kind of sucked after that night.

I have great memories of this place - on of the only corners in Gainesville with some atmosphere. Every night for an entire summer (1992?) we just drifted between the harback, that pool bar down the street (maybe the mole's house) I saw River Pheonix there a couple of times Drank really bad beer and sweated profusely

I have some photos of the Hardback days on the web: http://www.lawbob.org follow the links... My own bands were Trailboss and Toltec

the hardback I am sure is etched in many a Gainesville sceneter's memory. It's almost famous in the minds of many despite it being only a punk rock club, yet there's some sort of romantic flashback that happens when I think of the place. I can almost smell the stale beer and picture every niche inch and nuance of the place. It seemed like so much was happening in those days. Music everywhere. I revisited Gainesville recently and it's conservative hell hole repblican state of shit. THe downtown area is infested by tits for tips and BK Broilers. There was nothing like eating beans and rice and carrot dogs at Coney Island and then heading over to the HArdback for a gig and turning the amps up to 11 and swim in endless pools of feedback beer and acid drenching. Too bad Gainesville sucks now. Romancing the past tho it may seem I am currently present and happy in center stage of life's lessons still reverberating from those days or yore. Albeit, I am happy NOW. Peace ya'll

I got laid at the Hardback...alot. I loved hanging out in the daytime there. I'd get off work at 4 or 5, ride my bike over and hang out in the AC with Cinny or Tina or Alan or whoever was working. There was a regular group of ne'er-do-wells who haunted the place in the afternoons. Sometimes my loser friends and I would be so loaded by the time the bands started that some shows are a dim memory. Did I mention I got laid at the Hardback?...alot?

When I visited Gainesville for the first time I went directly to the Hardback Cafe. I met some really incredible people there that night (you know who you are)that changed my life forever. In fact, I moved there three weeks later cause a rude, annoying, pesky BEAUTIFUL 16-year-old who lived in that area insisted on me being his chauffeur and I couldn't resist :)

Helmet, L-7, Jawbreaker. Many a band darkened the Hardback's doorstep on their way to a modicum of notoriety. What about Green Day? They're kinda big now. Who am I forgetting?