Downtown Manhattan’s beloved and historic 169 Bar looks set to be destroyed by a bizarre battle between the owner of the dive and the owner of the building that has housed it since 1916.
The irresistibly scuzzy spot has been part of many generations of Lower East Side scenes, from punk to Dimes Square, and attracts clientele like Zoe Kravitz, Cillian Murphy, Jason Momoa, and Aziz Ansari, whose “Master of None” character, Dev Shah, partied there on the show. (It was also a haunt for Gina Rodriguez in her 2019 film “Someone Great).
We’re told that the building itself has been a neighborhood institution of sort, providing an, er, vivid slice of Lower East Side life as home to apartments (many often housing bar staff), a mahjong parlour, a law office, a dominatrix, and a hall housing mattresses used for oil wrestling matches.
But it looks like 169 will be 86’d.
The bar’s owner, Charles Hanson, bought it in 2006, but we’re told relations between Hanson’s and the owner of the building soured several years ago, and have gotten worse since.
Insiders allege that amid the bad blood, a representative of the owners has even dressed up in wigs, hats, sunglasses and other disguises for reasons that aren’t entirely clear but which contributed to the conflict with management.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the building’s owner, who bartended there in the 1950s when it was nicknamed the Bloody Bucket, transferred ownership of the building over to her daughter, and last March she decided not to renew the bar’s lease.
Hanson told us he was stunned because the family had assured him they would let him reup, but he learned via his lawyer they weren’t going through with the plan, just 15 days before his lease was up.
The bar has been operating without a lease, and he’s fighting in court to keep the lease.
Buzz in the neighborhood is that the family wants to take back control of the much-loved bar. But Hanson tells us that it’s not going to happen, at least not under its historic moniker. “I trademarked the name [of the bar], so if I go, it goes.”
They’re due in court on April 2 and Hanson tells us, “I’ll find out if I get 30 days, 60 days, or one year or two years [for the bar to operate], who knows?” The owner of the building did not return multiple phone calls for comment.
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