The Safe (officially The Last Safe and Deposit Co.) was the location of many zany Duck Duck muscial adventures.
The Safe is gone now, and in its place is no some sort of lunchonette or bistro. The Safe was in beautiful downtown Lowell, right on Merrimack Street.
The Safe was (quite literally) a hole in the ground. It got its name from the bank vault it used to house. It was a subterranean tavern, with all sorts of interesting nooks and cranies. I quite often likened it to being in a cave, and it oftentimes reminded me of old photos I'd seen of The Beatles playing in THE Cavernback in Liverpool in the early sixties (which was pretty cool). It had the backroom down past the bathrooms, where many a deep (and perhaps drunken) philosophical discussion was waged. The side tables descended down another level from the main floor and sank even lower beneath the Lowell streets. The storage room/dressing room behind the main "stage", which emptied out into the back alley, a place where the innocent and mischievous either tried to enter or exit. And THE BEAM, smack dab in the middle of the dance floor.
Eventually, the focus of Lowell operations for Duck Duck would move from The Safe to Smithwicks, which was the anti-Safe. It was palatial, with three huge and separate sections (I think the entryway to Smithwicks was bigger than The Safe) and pinball machines, and TV's, and a full kitchen. It was still Duck Duck, and still the regular gang, but somehow it was never quite the same, always a little bit more controlled, always a little bit more businesslike.
Thinking back, I guess my experiences at The Safe could really be summarized by just four words: Long Island Iced Teas.