Life on Mars today

Life on Mars debuts today at the Mars Bar. NYPress caught up with co-curator Grimace, who discussed whether the artwork will change the endearing atmosphere in Mars Bar:

Artwork has always been a very strong element of the look and feel as well as the patrons of Mars Bar. Throughout its 25-year history, many artists such as Basquiat, Keith Haring and Lee Quinones have spent time here, and today many of the people that hang out here and even the bartenders are artists as well. If you focus your eyes in the dim Marsian light, you can always see a ton of art everywhere in Mars Bar. There are canvases behind the bar, custom paintings on the walls, windows and outside. This combined with the history of Mars Bar, the Old-New-York feel that is impossible to get almost anywhere in downtown Manhattan, and very special regulars that have been patrons of Mars Bar for years with many stories to tell, along with the raw art, make the entire bar a living, breathing, drinking art piece on it’s own. This is not something that can ever be re-created in a stuffy Chelsea gallery.

Related:
hijinks and shenanigans at Mars Bar.. (Slum Goddess)

Let it snow (unless you have a flight tonight)

Bob Arihood has many great shots from last night right here.

GammaBlog shot this video.

Here comes Santa Claus...right in front of the Ninth Precinct....

A very nice event for the kids today on Fifth Street. They all seemed thrilled. I appreciate the community spirit.

Meanwhile, I did not have my sound monitoring equipment with me. At this hour around 10 a.m. or so, it seemed as if the sound was above the nominal 70 dB at 100 feet, the level the Ninth Precinct makes the bands in Tompkins Square Park adhere to...

Craft-o-holics back at it tonight

Local 269 Bar
269 E. Houston St. (@ Suffolk)
from 6 til 9pm (later if it's rockin' during the snowstorm!)
FREE/DONATIONS ACCEPTED
Daniella aka Our Lady of Perpetual PMS
Jenny Devildoll Gonzalez
Elisa Velasquez
Jessica Delfino
The Chi-Ciones

This can only mean one thing -- PANIC!

Wow, a foot of snow, huh. Everyone knows who to watch out for, right?...

The Tompkins Square holiday tree...is on

Hmm, the official tree lighting ceremony isn't until Sunday afternoon, though...Just practicing?

Here comes Santa Claus...right down St. Mark's Place...

Has anyone else spotted the SantaCar? Here it is on St. Mark's near Second Avenue. Missed the shot of the young men giving Santa the middle finger. Damn.

Holiday memories at CBGB

For more on Letch Patrol and Harris Pankin, go here.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

ABC No Rio's mystery $1 million donation (The Villager)

Out and about on a Thursday night (Neither More Nor Less)

A plan for Freddy's Bar in Brooklyn (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Boom Boom Room crowd invading the EV (Guest of a Guest)

Why New Yorkers are the unhappiest people in America (Runnin' Scared)

1970s NYC lives here (Flaming Pablum)

One reason to choose plastic over paper (BoweryBoogie)

Highlights from this week's CB3/SLA meeting (Eater)

Commercial break



The ever-expanding Max's Kansas City tribute (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

Photo highlights from Eden & John's CD release show (Slum Goddess)

Late-night shopping on the LES (Lower East Side NY)

Late-night in East River Park (Little Stories and Maybe Poems from Now and Then)

Laundry day in StuyTown (Lux Living)

Two music-related movies that we might just see next year (Stupefaction)

Beekman Tower gets a star

Well, not really. But so shiny nonetheless. Looking at the 7,000 story Beekman Tower going up down in the Financial District.

219 First Avenue shows progress, extra floor and all

The building at the corner of 13th Street and First Avenue (219 First Avenue to be exact), has been a boarded-up mess/construction site the last four or so years... Here's a shot of the corner from 2007....


(Via Flickr)

However, there has been some slow progress to report of late. According to the work permits, an additional two floors are being added on top of the existing four-story structure.

For starters, we're intrigued by the new roof...



Oh, anyway, if you look carefully at the building, there seems to be something off about it...like that seventh floor (technically the attic?)



Which may be one reason people have called in nearly 60 complaints about this site since 2005. (Several callers reported seeing squatters coming and going from inside the abandoned site.) The last complaint was logged in late summer:

CLR STS AT ABOVE CONSTRUCTION SITE, PERMIT POSTED IS FOR 2 ADDITIONAL STORIES, BUT 3 STORIES ARE BEING BUILT. WORK IS BEING DONE OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF THE PERMIT #104894152-01 AL

So now what, lop off that slanted roof?

UPDATED: Per a commenter, there was approval for the addition.


Meanwhile, you may recall what used to be in this space -- the Mee Noodle Shop. As NY Songlines noted, it "was Allen Ginsberg's favorite Chinese -- and mine, too, I guess. It closed in 2005 after the building started to collapse."

As the Times noted in its obituary on Ginsberg from April 1997:

Ah Lan Chong, a waitress at Mee's Noodle Shop and Grill on First Avenue, which was Mr. Ginsberg's favorite Chinese restaurant, remembered Mr. Ginsberg in simpler, less heavily freighted terms.

Sure, she knew he was someone important, someone artistic. She could tell that from overheard conversations and from the way other diners would sometimes point at him when he entered. But to Ms. Chong, he was mainly the unfussy man with a dependable hankering for steamed flounder in ginger sauce. "When he came in," she said, "we knew what he wanted."

About that abandoned jar on East Third Street

On East Third Street between Avenue A and Avenue B...



Uh, what is the hell is this?



Is this how Momofuku delivers its calamari salad these days?