Photo by marcus jb

It’s odd that of all the congeries of dead-end weird ass rock places around CBGB, Mars Bar is the last to go. Apparently it will be at the end of this month, to be replaced by a “12-story luxury high rise.” There is no more CBGB, there is only DBGB and John Varvatos, a good miniature for what this city has become.

I was at Mars Bar at 8 PM on a Monday night a couple of months ago – apparently early enough to avoid the throngs of tourists who now crowd into it nightly. There were regulars hunched over their bourbons, and a shuffling personage programming and barking over the jukebox. It was the first time I’d been there in years and years. It was the place where I first did cocaine (summer of 1988). Nothing had changed.

You have to wonder where the equivalent places are nowadays. I’m guessing the inner suburbs.

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