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\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n On paper, it\u2019s absurd that anyone would be sad about a Dallas BBQ closing. And yet here we were, my colleagues and I reminiscing about the ribs-and-Daiquiris chain that had once lived on the corner of St. Marks Place and Second Avenue in Manhattan\u2019s East Village. How dare it be gone, we roared, and then sighed: St. Marks isn\u2019t what it used to be.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The Dallas BBQ has been replaced recently by Caf\u00e9 Maud, a perfectly lovely all-day caf\u00e9 painted in desaturated oranges and greens, where I recently enjoyed a bowl of fries and a $16 glass of wine with some friends after a show down the block. But as I sat in the semicircular booth, I caught scenes of myself in the corner\u2019s past life. Eating bacon cheeseburgers and drinking illicit Pi\u00f1a Coladas as a 17-year-old, giggling in wonder that the server never asked to see my ID. Bringing friends who had escaped New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina so we could drink something close to the frozen Daiquiris we wouldn\u2019t have again for months. It was shitty, but that was the point of it, and everything on the block\u2014a little weird, a little haggard, but always ready for a party. Was that who was attracted to St. Marks, or did the block make it so?<\/p>\n
In Ada Calhoun\u2019s seminal book St. Marks is Dead, <\/i>she traces the strange and slippery history of the street as a center for misfit nightlife, with each successive generation claiming that their time drinking and sleazing on the street was the<\/i> time, that anyone who came after just doesn\u2019t understand what it was like. And yet, walk down the street today and there\u2019s no shortage of people having a good time. Now it\u2019s packed with dumpling houses and izakayas, serene wine bars like Caf\u00e9 Maud and the rowdy Barcade. There are bars and restaurants and places to soak up the booze, just as there always have been.<\/p>\n
Here, we speak to people who, over the generations, have made St. Marks what it is, and who know it\u2019s not dead\u2014even if their favorite parts of it are.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cI\u2019d been going to the East Village since about probably \u201969, to Fillmore, East Side Books, all those places. It was, you know, the hippies, the drugs, the bookstores, the record stores, the concert venues, and eventually the used clothing stores too. There were a lot of those.\u201d \u2014Lucy Sante, critic and author, most recently of <\/i>I Heard Her Call My Name<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cI got really into punk pretty early on, and I remember very specifically I had inherited the Replacements album with \u2018Alex Chilton\u2019 on it, and he talks about checking out the trash on St. Marks Place. And I remember just being like, What is that?<\/i> Going to high school in the Midwest, I was so New York\u2013obsessed. I kept seeing \u2018St. Marks Place,\u2019 and the way it sounded was like this open-air bazaar for punks or something.\u201d \u2014Jason Diamond, co-author of <\/i>New York Nico\u2019s Guide to NYC and the forthcoming novel <\/i>Kaplan\u2019s Plot (Flatiron, 2025)<\/i>
<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad was a devoted bookstore crawler and Allen Ginsberg fan. During the mid-1970s, my dad took my family on a day trip to Manhattan\u2014our first time in the city. I trailed him along St. Marks Place as he hit every bookstore on the strip. It was summer, I was overheated, bored and\u2014at least on the street\u2014a little scared. In my defense, I was just a kid. And to me, it seemed like everyone we passed looked like the photos of Allen Ginsberg I had seen on my dad\u2019s books.\u201d \u2014East Village blogger EV Grieve<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up on Ninth and B, so it was kind of just home.\u201d \u2014Danny Orlin, second-generation owner of Cafe Mogador<\/i><\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cI was born in 1976, and so nightlife for the first 10 years was listening to very loud people on the street. When I became a teenager, we mostly just walked around… I think St. Marks Place is so much about the street traffic and the sidewalks and the stoops that the actual places matter, but they also don\u2019t, right? Because people back in the day had 40s in paper bags. I don\u2019t even know what the equivalent is now, but that doesn\u2019t change. The sidewalks are the same.\u201d \u2014Ada Calhoun, author of <\/i>St. Marks is Dead<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cYou had these businesses that were actively trying to get the weirdo kids. Like Search & Destroy\u2014the rumor was they used to pay crust punks to hang out on the steps, $10 to sit here and harass people.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Diamond<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cI just struggled to remember a single club on St. Marks Place. It was never about that… People would just strut for the benefit of everybody else. It was a natural catwalk. When I first started seeing trans people, or at least drag queens, it was on St. Marks Place, you know, <\/span>Beauregard Houston-Montgomery<\/span><\/a> strutting down the street in the black mini dress. It was a cultural marketplace and display space.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Sante<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/section>\n \u201cThere was the Electric Circus [a nightclub between Second and Third avenues]. We weren\u2019t old enough, though I guess we put on enough makeup to look old enough to get into the Electric Circus. And I think we went in \u201969 or \u201970 to see Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I remember the first time we went, or one of the first times I remember, that there were murals all over the wall of naked people, like almost orgy-looking. And they had some rotating thing in the middle that you could sit on, and it would just rotate you around the room. And there was a dom downstairs.\u201d <\/span>\u2014Tish Bellomo, co-founder of Manic Panic<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nEveryone seems to be drawn to St. Marks Place for a reason, even if that reason isn\u2019t drinking.<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
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<\/p>\nBars have dotted St. Marks\u2019 storefronts for generations, but the thoroughfare itself has often been a place to see and be seen.<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
But there were plenty of bars and clubs on the block itself, many of which are now long gone. They differed in style, but there was a focus on live music and performance, artistic experimentation and just having a wild time.<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/section>\n