“I think I saw Joan Jett in there once,” Mahayana Landowne said as we walked past 269 E. Houston St., the once home of beloved bygone lesbian bar Meow Mix.
Landowne is part of a group parading through the Lower East Side, paying homage to shuttered cultural landmarks as part of an event called Radiant Revelry. The procession is led by a brass band called Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venues, with many of the instrumentalists wearing white sheets and shower curtains (to look ghostly).
“I hadn’t really been in a lesbian bar before and it was so sexy and fun and interesting and friendly and kind,” remembered Landowne as a tuba player entered The Mayfly, the bar that now exists at Meow Mix’s old location. “Just, a sense of joy and celebration and everybody being fabulous.”
Event organizer Sara Valentine.
The event, focused on the LES, was the third annual Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venues, produced by merriment-making groups Make Music New York, HONK NYC! and Moment NYC. Previous editions took place in the East Village and Williamsburg, with this year’s parade beginning at Allen Street’s Baker Falls (itself the former Rockwood Music Hall) before noisily proceeding through the neighborhood, visiting the graves of various venues fallen to gentrification and the waves of time.
The staffers at the Duane Reade, located where an abandoned gas station became a joint metal workshop and music venue aptly called Gas Station (1984-1996) previously existed, were perplexed but delighted to see a 16-piece brass band making its way down the cosmetics aisle. The pharmacist even came out to take a photo.
The staff members at craft beer bar d.b.a. — located on the site of early thrash scene haunt Lismar Lounge (1984-1991) — were less enchanted, and promptly kicked out the band.
At the T.D. Bank branch that now sits at legendarily disgusting dive Mars Bar’s old address (1984-2011), the band and revelers piled in, packing the place with brass instruments from ATM to ATM.
“Mars Bar was a s--thole,” former band promoter Keith Ozar remembered fondly. “It smelled like pee.”
And perhaps that alone, Mars Bar and the T.D. Bank branch which now sits on its grave, have in common. As Anney Fresh, one of the day’s revelers, separately remarked, “Well, it does smell like pee in there. I'll tell you that.”
The sun set but the band and a procession of 40 or so revelers armed with puppets, thunder tubes, and improvised percussion situations marched on through the biting December evening, eventually summoning the ghosts of 10 shuttered businesses and countless fond if blurry memories.
In the end, the route proved over-ambitious for the frigid weather, and a number of ghost venues were skipped, among them Joseph Moskowitz’ Roumanian Wine Cellar (1913-1920), Surf Reality’s House of Urban Salvage (1993-2003) and Cake Shop (2005-2016). No matter, though — perhaps they can be included in a future Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venue, as cocreators Stefan Zeniuk and Sara Valentine hope to continue putting on the program around the city.
“We tried to summon as many parts of the neighborhood and its history as we could, through the ages,” Zeniuk said about this year’s itinerary, adding that he sees the parade less as a funeral than a hyper-local recent history lesson.
“It’s connecting with the past,” Zeniuk said. “Like the rings on a tree. They don’t go away. There’s still energy in those physical locations. There’s still history there.”
