As I queried the construction worker regarding the future tenant he said, “evolution”.
“Really”, I said, “what’s the concept”?
“Flair”, he replied, “flipping bottles, fire tricks…you know, bringing a Las Vegas style bar to New York”.
Van Dalen was born in Amstelveen, Holland, in 1938 to a conservative Calvinist family during World War II. He began rearing pigeons at 12, seeking solace in the companionship of a community outside the instability around him.Enraptured by the magic of their flight, van Dalen saw his own migration journey, from Holland to Canada and ultimately to the United States, reflected in the migratory nature of the birds.After arriving in New York's Lower East Side in 1966, before ultimately settling in the East Village, van Dalen served as witness, storyteller, and documentarian of the dramatic cultural shifts in the neighborhood.While active in the alternative art scene in the East Village during the 1980s, van Dalen began his career as a graphic designer. Working as a studio assistant to Saul Steinberg for over 30 years, van Dalen learned the stylization and design aesthetics that would ultimately ground the visual language he used to discuss the culture around him.Van Dalen became known for his Night Street Drawings (1975–77), a monochrome series of graphite drawings documenting the surrounding Lower East Side with tenderness and empathy, including vignettes of car wrecks, sex workers, crumbling buildings, and more.As poet and critic John Yau wrote, all of van Dalen's work arose "out of a meticulous draftsmanship in service of an idiosyncratic imagination merged with civic-mindedness."
I consider myself a documentarian of the East Village, yet I am a participant and spectator to its evolution. Began documenting my street surroundings in 1975, urged on by wanting to note and remember these lives. Came to realize I had to embrace wholeheartedly, with pencil in hand, my streets with its raw emotions.
It looked like a fairly serious change as the interior has been gutted and the exterior walls have come down. As I queried the construction worker regarding the future tenant he said, “evolution”.
“Really”, I said, “what’s the concept”?
“Flair”, he replied, “flipping bottles, fire tricks…you know, bringing a Las Vegas style bar to New York”.
“Wow, sounds great”, I replied……..thinking that the description sounded vaguely similar to the former ethos of the hallowed halls of E4volution/2X4/Ambiance…
You can catch a livestream of Cults on Oct. 1 from (Le) Poisson Rouge. Find the details here.
This is not the end of Max Fish by any means. In the meantime while we look for a new location we will be working on our webstore, collaborations, and participating in pop up events. We look forward to seeing you at our new location in better times!
Thank you all for your love and support. We’d also like to shout out bar and service family and friends throughout the city, best wishes to everyone, please stay safe. These have been hard times for all of us. Hopefully we’ll see all of you sooner than later!
From The Max Fish Family
This was the second iteration of Max Fish, the second on the Lower East Side. The bar opened here in August 2014... this after 24 years at 178 Ludlow St.
Higher rents caused them to move out to Williamsburg after the Ludlow Street original closed in July 2013. However, those plans for a bar in Brooklyn never materialized.
The buildings in the proposed district are a wonderfully intact ensemble of primarily early and late 19th century structures which are largely unchanged and representative of architectural styles of the era as well as the development of this section of the East Village. Building types within this small section of East 11th Street include tenements, tenementized row houses, a concert hall/community gathering place, a parochial school and a government building. These buildings housed, educated, entertained and served the working class and immigrant residents of this area. Thus the district perfectly captures and embodies the evolution and many facets of working class New York in the late 19th and early 20th century in the East Village.
112-120 East 11th Street
These are five Old Law tenement buildings located on the south side of East 11th Street and built between 1887 and 1892. Significantly intact, they were designed largely in the Beaux Arts style.
