There's a feature on the bar closing in The Wall Street Journal today... (Subscription required)
Said owner Ulli Rimkus:
"I wish it could be around forever," she said, dumping the walkway trash into a garbage can. "I wish I could pass it on to a daughter, have it around for 80 years. But if you don't own the building, what can you do?"
And!
"In 1989, our neighbors were all artists and musicians—it was perfect," Ms. Rimkus said, now sitting at the curvy bar, the Velvet Underground blasting over the stereo. "It changed when we started to see all our neighbors disappearing."
The bar, which opened in 1989, will have a new location in Williamsburg this fall.
Previously on EV Grieve:
The art evolution of Ulli Rimkus and Max Fish
From Tin Pan Alley to Max Fish
[Updated] Max Fish is apparently moving to Brooklyn; eyeing August close date
Max Fish was among the first of the gentrifying establishments in this neighborhood. The neighbors were not all artists and musicians, only the ones who patronized the place were. Despite their posturing, art galleries and new bars in this area were not a part of the existing community; the opportunities that attracted the owners were beyond the means of the people already living there. The idea of "pioneering" was probably the greatest divide between them.
ReplyDeleteThe people who moved into the LES during the first wave of gentrification adopted countercultural elements as a commercial strategy. The "found object" aesthetic became a trademark used to attract consumers. Distinctions between art and commerce were inevitably less clear in a community where many had relocated not just to be outside the mainstream, but because other "bohemias" had become too expensive.
This KILLS me
ReplyDeleteBars may come and bars may go but Max Fish was a friend a place where after we are all gone and we pass through the pearly gates we can walk once again through its seedy metal doors and all conspire with our fellow wizards
ReplyDelete@ shmnyc
ReplyDeleteJohn Cale moved to Ludlow Street in 1964. He lived with the filmmaker Tony Conrad.
Blame them for gentrifying the neighborhood. Ditto for Lou Reed, who practiced there.