Photo: Youngna Park

Hank Penza, the owner of the one and only Mars Bar, is perfectly okay with the possibility that his punk dive (one of the last holdouts on the new Bowery) might have to close for a couple of years while its building is renovated (“They won’t choke me,” he assured the Local East Village yesterday. “I didn’t get off the boat yesterday with a pound of spaghetti in my hand”), but even though it’ll supposedly reopen in an expanded space, the East Village bloggers are griping. “He’ll have a bigger bar,” writes Lost City. “Great. But it won’t be the same bar, any more then [sic] Upper West Side icon P&G; Cafe is now the same bar it was. It won’t be the Mars Bar.”



Flaming Pablum is dubious that the closure will be temporary (assuming construction is green-lighted by the community board): “That’s exactly what they said when they closed the Cedar Tavern for pretty much exactly the same reason. Now, the Cedar is gone and a soulless, ugly and STILL LARGELY EMPTY condo stands in its former footprint.” And after an initial reaction of “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” EV Grieve recycles some photos of the bar during its nineties heyday and posts a list of “5 similar bars to try in case the Mars Bar closes (temporarily).” The list, of course, is blank.

Plan Would Add Low Income Housing [Local East Village]

After the Mars Bar, Then What? [Lost City]

Revisiting: Mars Bar Was A Riot in the Nineties [EV Grieve]

God Save Mars Bar [Flaming Pablum]