Had a drink at Mars Bar this weekend. Without the overflow from CBGB's (vanished 2006), Mars misses the business from hordes of punks. Still, there's no indication that the bar is closing--according to The Voice, the owner has a "long-standing agreement" with the city and "It's here as long as the owner is alive, and that will be for some time."
However, Mars Bar is literally surrounded by brand-new luxury condo towers and that does not bode well. You never know around here when the next good place is going to vanish without warning.
A very drunk and friendly patron warned me not to take pictures inside the bar because, if he caught me, the owner would "go ballistic." I did not want that, especially after overhearing how the guy had recently beat someone bloody. I had to settle for a surreptitious snap of an infamous Martian toilet.
As scary as it looks, Mars Bar is a comfortable and affable place. I even got some good advice on how to stop my pulse, should I ever need to appear dead: "Stick a balled up handkerchief in your armpit and then just squeeze it real hard."
I used to hang out in there a lot in the late 80s and I remember a drink called a Blue Whale, and that my favorite song on the jukebox was My Baby Just Cares For Me, and that Taylor Mead was usually in there when I was. And it was very dark around that place at night then. And across Houston Street where the new ugly hideous condos are now was a wonderful big lot full of great old salvaged stuff, including a big metal Sinclair gasoline sign with the green dinosaur. We would come out of Mars full of Blue Whales and go over and hang on the chain link fence and imagine what we'd do if we had all of the stuff in there.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I'm all that fond of the place, but I absolutely love the possibility that it might linger indefinitely right up in the face of the surrounding development.
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