"You Are Real": A Salute to the Mars Bar-A repost from 7/7/07.

The Mars Bar is the latest old school place that is getting the wrecking ball, although not really old in the old sense of the word, the Mars has been around since the late 1980's and has been the last hold outs of the type of east village bar where the punks, the postal workers, the homeless,the artists and all matter of people in between mingled. Things and conversations happen in that shoebox of a place that frequently seemed like hallucinations. It kind of stepped in where another 80's era east village bar, Downtown Beirut left off. Anyhow, it's closing. I don't care what the owner Hank says, the developers are probably not "good guys". Another bar that went on the chopping block this week was Max Fish on Ludlow Street. Also not really old but old compared to everything else on the block. I guess they were the beginning of the onslaught.

Anyway this is a post I did about 3 years ago saluting the Mars or as I like to spell it Marz.
How I spent my 7/7/07.
Man, am I glad I didn’t go to that drumming thing over at Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday! Sounded like it turned out to be an over crowded nightmare. It was sort of fascinating to me that the Boredoms had managed to attract such a crowd. Was it the Boredoms or the hype of the importance of the date 7/7/07? OK I just answered my own question, clearly it was the latter….What did we do on 6/6/06? Does anybody remember?! On 7/7/07 I could NOT get out of bed or out of my house, it must have been the centrifugal force of the sun telling me to stay home and meditate or simply exhaustion. So, after the sun set I ventured out and it was quite a lovely evening.

A friend was in town from LA and wanted to meet at the Motor City Bar on Ludlow Street in Manhattan. I ventured out into the 7/7/07 night to join Margie aka Vena Virago and CalmX (long time East Village resident and artist).Well, we lasted about 10 minutes before fleeing. The saturday night bar scene on Ludlow Street is pretty soulless. The music at Motor City was loud yet you still couldn’t hear it. SO the three of us old timers ended up at the Mars Bar, one of the or shall I say THE ONLY old school cheap punk rock NYC bar left. It is now surrounded by what else? Luxury condos! The ugliest tall tower glass and metal kind with Whole Foods just a hop skip and a jump away. The Marz is still doling out the cheap drinks (2 really strong vodka drinks and one beer = $11.00)has ranting bartenders, (this evenings hostess started complaining at the top of her lungs when someone put some jazz type music on…’WHO PUT THIS SH*T! ON!!” Of course she intercepted it and put on what SHE wanted to hear, “Too many creeps’ by the Bush Tetras) and a cast of regulars right out of “Midnight Cowboy” mixed in with an eclectic bunch of others. There is a lot of coming and going at the Marz Bar (it is a total “I’m waiting for my man’ bar, IF you know what I mean) but it's sort of a punk rock "Cheers" for all the "black sheeps" of the family to feel at home.

I salute you Marz Bar, long may you continue to be a zit on the airbrushed cityscape that our town has become. You are REAL.

See the original post here.