I don't really have a dog in this race, but I've seen practically everyone and their mother commenting on it so I thought I'd needlessly throw in my two cents. As I first spotted on E.V. Grieve, evidently a blogger named Broke-Ass Stuart entered the hallowed walls of the East Village's Mars Bar with a friend recently and had an incident involving the unsolicited application of some salivary amylase (i.e. "some big punk fucker" licked his girlfriend's face). Stuart then asked the management if they had some soap with which to stealthily cleanse the offended face in question. The bartender responded to this query with an admittedly cartoony answer, that being "There's no soap in the Mars Bar!" Hilarity ensued.
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, Stuart, but what were you expecting? The Mars Bar has cultivated its storied reputation for a reason. The last time I set foot in there (with one or two members of The Unband back in the 90s), I had my life very credibly threatened for sitting on another (very drunk and excitable) patron's bar stool. That's just the way that place is – and has always been. Do most of the dive bars you frequent feature hand-sanitizers? In any case, you should have just used a bit of whiskey, being that it's a natural disinfectant.
It's the rare evening that you'll find me in the Mars Bar, but I love that it's still there (and it's always a delight to photograph -- the pic above dates back to about 1999). I also love that it's still a hotbed of ill-advised behavior. I'm not excusing the yucky tongue encounter, but don't go into a Motel 6 expecting Waldorf-Astoria room service. And don't get too huffy about it. At the rate its neighborhood is going, the Mars Bar will doubtlessly soon be closed, torn down and re-built as an unfailingly polite and olfactorily inoffensive L'Occitaine any day now.
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