New York’s Lower East Side is so spiritually, intellectually and aesthetically malnourished, the notion of a legitimately cool and cheap bar, club or art gallery setting up shop seems as likely as Mayor Bloomberg throwing a cupcake and soda party for fat kids on welfare.
But everyone seems to want to keep the old school, now kind of sad and sputtering lil bars and clubs that could in business.
Mars Bar and Max Fish are two of the inevitable stops on the “New York City used to be more than a playground for suburbanites!” nostalgia tour. Landlords at both venues have cited sky-rocketing rents as reasons for shuttering and moving their spaces, respectively.
Max Fish will stay put at 178 Ludlow for a year, until its owners can figure out a new place to hang their hook. Inevitably perhaps, it won’t be the same. Because, really, part of a dive bar’s charm is the oozy, polluted terroir from which it springs–plant it somewhere else, and it’s unlikely to thrive.
Shepard Fairey, himself a walking legend about whom many have mixed feelings regarding his degree of doneness, was a regular at Max Fish back in the day (he worked as a weekend host and had his first show at The Alleged Gallery next door).
Check out a conversation between Fairey and Charlie Rose on the pitfalls and beauty of mainstream transcendence, street culture, selling out, and yes, hope–despite it all.
TOPICS: Eat to the Beat, Kathleen Willcox