Why the titans of Wall Street may know about Mars Bar after today

The Mars Bar is featured today in The Wall Street Journal:

That Mars Bar continues to operate at all on a corner that bears witness to East Village development at its most rampant is nearly a political statement in itself. The bulk of the rest of the block between Second Avenue and Bowery is occupied by the Avalon at Bowery Place apartment complex. In 2005, the Avalon supplanted two parking lots, as well as the Church of All Nations (which used to look out over pre-Whole Foods Houston Street) and a tenement building that was the former site of McGurk's Suicide Hall, perhaps the most infamous dive bar in Bowery history.

"You look at it now, and it's just amazing that it's even hanging on," said David Allen, a downtown resident since the mid 80's. Mr. Allen, an influential illustrator with several paradigmatic punk album covers to his credit, will participate in this month's Mars Bar show. He noted that a tiny and scrappy corner bar dwarfed by luxury housing is itself a combination of poetic irony and economic reality. "It does, I suppose, speak to the kind of twilight period that the economy's in right now," he said.