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From brisket to comedy, this downtown Wilmington spot is steeped in entertainment history

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7 months ago

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From brisket to comedy, this downtown Wilmington spot is steeped in entertainment history

Things always change in downtown Wilmington, but the history remains.

Take The UnderFront Co., a relatively new establishment at 265 N. Front St. in the basement of the building (hence the name UnderFront). Opened a little over a year ago by Joseph Sena, its focus is craft cocktails, retro DJ nights and some live music, along with being a chill hangout spot.

“Our demo is late 20s to 60s, definitely invested in the cocktail scene,” said Sena, a builder who also helped create the Rumcow restaurant and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot bar around the corner on Grace Street.

“It’s a cool space,” Sena said of UnderFront. “The wood that’s down there, it’s 110 years old. Those are 40-foot heart pine beams. We didn’t change it.”

Which brings us to the history. The building UnderFront is in spans 261-265 N. Front St. and includes a street-level shop and upstairs apartments. According to Tony P. Wrenn’s “Wilmington, North Carolina: An Architectural and Historical Portrait,” it dates to about 1900.

Looking through old Wilmington city directories, the space has hosted Hyman Supply Co. (in the 1950s), Shoemaker’s Office Supply (’60s), Randy & Bill’s Trading Center (’70s) and Fountaine Bridal shop (’80s). Sena said he’s found old grain hoppers and thinks the basement might’ve been some kind of storage warehouse at one point.

It’s not clear exactly when the basement became a separate space for business, but by the late ’90s 265 N. Front St. was home to the popular Cowboy’s barbecue restaurant and bar. Which brings us to the colorful, entertainment-fueled history of the UnderFront space, which has long been defined by the long staircase where patrons enter.

Cowboy’s specialized in Texas-style brisket, an exotic change of pace for ’90s-era Wilmingtonians used to Eastern N.C.-style barbecue. Back then, the space was filled with wooden booths, with built-in wooden floors littered with peanut shells. (Cowboy’s served bowls of peanuts for free, like chips and salsa at a Mexican spot.)

Cowboy’s also capitalized on the alt-country craze of the 1990s, hosting such bands as the Drive-By Truckers (their first Wilmington appearance was at Cowboy’s), Truckadelic and Cigar Store Indians in its cozy bar.

Once Cowboy’s closed, new owners changed the name to The Firebelly Lounge, opening circa 2000. They cleared out the old wooden booths and a wooden-floored bar area and opened up the space, keeping the stage on the long, narrow room’s east side and adding pool and foosball tables.

Drive-By Truckers came back to play there, and the Firebelly hosted such acts as Britt Daniel of Spoon (solo show), Elf Power (of Athens’ Elephant Six collective), Eric Bachmann (of Archers of Loaf) and John Vanderslice, along with local acts including Summer Set and Mullet Revolta.

Firebelly’s most famous patrons, however, are probably the actors Steve Buscemi and Vince Vaughn, who were involved in a famous 2001 altercation there while in town filming the movie “Domestic Disturbance.” Buscemi suffered knife wounds while trying to break up a scuffle, and Vaughn and a local man wound up facing criminal charges.

Wilmington’s hated noise ordinance of the 2000s caused Firebelly to stop hosting live music, but they served food until the early 2010s, when it relocated. The space then sat vacant before the Dead Crow Comedy Room, formerly the Nutt Street Comedy Room on the other side of the wall, moved in around 2014.

Dead Crow hosted such well-known comics as Jim Gaffigan, Nate Bargatze, Tig Notaro and many others there before moving into its current home on North Third Street.

When people who’ve been there before come in, “You can place them by their ages,” Sena said. “Folks who are over 45 or so remember Cowboy’s,” while younger patrons might bring up Firebelly or Dead Crow, he said.

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