News came out this week that
Motor City, a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is
closing. Motor City was a good bar, though honestly it had been years since
I’d been. It could be hit or miss. It could be full of trendy yuppies or full
of punk rockers or metal heads on any given night. I’d spent much time drinking
there with punk rock friends but sometimes I’d go and leave before I could even
get a drink because it was full of rude
people in their Upper East Side finery. You could buy someone a drink even
if they weren’t there. They had a chalk board and would write the name of the
person and the drink you bought them. And when I’d leave a drink for “Mike
Dynamite” or “Knick Knickers,” the bartenders knew who I meant.
The Lower East Side is nothing like it was when I was a
youth. I’m still amazed at the fancy hotels and wine bars that now sit where
there used to be flop houses and hoards of homeless. But for many Motor City
was one last vestige of drinkable grit in an area of New York that once boasted
grit and toughness as its major charm.
Possibly worse news was that Coney
Island’s Cha-Cha’s is gone for good as well. Cha-Cha’s was a beach bum’s
dive on quickly gentrifying Coney Island. It was troubled even before Hurricane
Sandy and Sandy put the final nail in the coffin of the pace, even though there
had been plans to reopen. It was full of leather-skinned, salty beach people
who were glad to spend their days getting blind drunk at the beach. It was a
bastion of authentic Coney Island sleaze and booze. And they even had live
music. It was a pleasant place to be when you were at Coney Island, a sign that
the old times were still alive in some way. Not that’s gone also.
We’ve gotten used to it now, places closing. It no longer
fazes us. The churning engine of real estate capitalism built New York, and
spares no one in its money-fueled gallop. There is no sentimentality in
calculating the bottom line. If they could tear down Yankee Stadium without a
fight; nothing is sacred.
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