MAX FISH, a bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, celebrated its 21st anniversary last Sunday. Balloons adorned the pastel walls, tin trays freighted with lasagna and chickpeas were unwrapped, and rock bands thundered through sets in the back lounge. But the mood was less exuberant than reflective. Days earlier, patrons learned that the storied dive bar would be shuttered at the end of January, another victim of high rent.

One patron, Kevin Long, a 26-year-old professional skateboarder known as Spanky, showed off a new tattoo on his elbow, which depicted a small broken bottle, a teardrop and the letters M and F. He and a veteran bartender there had designed it on a cocktail napkin in protest. “The top 100 times of my life have all been in this bar,” Mr. Long said.

He was not alone in his enduring allegiance. Several regulars had identical ink, and a woman even left the bar, visited a tattoo parlor around the corner and returned with her arm branded.

How does a grimy watering hole inspire such indelible loyalty? For two decades, the bar affectionately known as the Fish was a hub for downtown intellectuals, creative types, skateboarders and assorted derelicts. It was the type of place that seemed to sum up the anarchic, youthful spirit of the Lower East Side during the 1990s and, later, stand as a kind of living, punk-inflected relic while the rest of the neighborhood gained respectability.