'Wetlands Preserved'

Rating:

Rafer Guzmán

March 19, 2008

Earthy, crunchy and proudly activist in a city that was increasingly wealthy and self-concerned, the TriBeCa nightclub Wetlands Preserve fought the good fight for more than a decade, opening in 1989 - just in time to completely ignore the grunge movement - and finally closing in 2001, crushed by Rudy Giuliani's relentless clean-up efforts, NIMBY neighbors and the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Director Dean Budnick, an editor at the classic rock magazine Relix, paints a glowing picture of the bong-fogged club and its idealist founder, Larry Bloch, crediting them with kick-starting the jam-band movement and supporting his argument via interviews with Dave Matthews, Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler and other latter-day groovers.

This tie-dyed hagiography is far from impartial: The club's final owner, Peter Shapiro, is not only an executive producer of the annual Jammy awards (sponsored by Relix), but also helped produce the film. If you never twirled barefoot in the funky old club, "Wetlands Preserved" may be of limited interest, but it's a loving and thorough document of a small slice of rock history. 1:36 (mild language, drug references).

At Cinema Village, Manhattan.