For a bar called Identity, this place on East Sixth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B sure didn't have one. (You know — Identity.) Two floors of a little bit of anything. Sports! DJ! Darts! From the outside, it looked like a place you'd find in a suburban strip mall with a crowd to match. (I admit — I was never inside. Still. C'mon.)
But! All this is changing... As we understand it, the owner dismissed his bar staff... and now you'll find four former bartenders from the recently closed Bar 82 here — Dan, Jackson, Meghan and Nicole.
[The owner] is letting us be the vibe. If we pull its head out of the water we can make it a bar to remember," bartender Jackson Riffe told me via Facebook. "It's an awesome opportunity to keep us together and rock that crazy Bar 82 vibe into the future. Just trying to keep some real Lower East Side culture on the Lower East Side."
So in the coming weeks there be making plans on putting to use the underutilized basement space. Meanwhile, Identity's resident DJ, C2, is gone... and Jackson, who works weekend nights, is now playing the music from behind the bar — "1977-style punk with country songs about booze and drugs, with some 60's hot French go-go music paired with surf songs about the jungle."
[Image via Time Out New York]
Stopped in there on a Saturday night last summer. Place was empty. Bartender was cool, though so we stayed for a couple drinks.
ReplyDeleteFollowing that, I think we stopped in there on July 4th looking for some A/C and it smelled like late-night, fish-guts Canal St.
Maybe it'll be better with these new bartenders?
Glad to hear the Bar 82 crew found a new gig so quickly.
ReplyDeletesounds good!
ReplyDeleteI hope they get Chloe over there too!
ReplyDeleteAh, but it will never be Bar 82.
ReplyDelete