Aaron Conte, Steve O'Donnell, Justin Kirk, Jay Wilkins, and token rock chick.
As you can see in this photo, 1994 was a confusing time—you were either going to go full grunge, or you were white knuckling onto your '80s fashion sensibilities. Let's go back for a moment: Bill Clinton was in office, Schindler's List would practically sweep the Oscars, Woodstock '94 would deliver us the gift that was Trent Reznor covered in mud playing Closer (revisit now, we'll wait), Pearl Jam would go after Ticketmaster, Jeff Buckley would release his full-length studio album Grace, ice hockey would become Canada's official winter sport (what was it before, curling?), and Kurt Cobain would be found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound just 16 days after this photo was taken.
On March 20th, 1994, on 9th Avenue (somewhere between 47th and 49th Street), the Dimestore Darlings were shooting the cover for their Sunrise Semester album. The band (full disclosure: one of the members went on to marry Gothamist's Jen Chung) has recently put up some of their past on Tumblr; that's Aaron Conte on the left (formerly of Nada Surf), and yes, that is Justin Kirk in the middle. You can check out some of their songs on the site—at this time they were playing venues like Spiral and CBGBs (RIP).
