Setting the record straight on the Marz Bar Shirts

I broke the Sink again

    This month my favorite (and only true) bar closed. The bar, was Mars Bar, 25 e 1st St NYC. Over the past 5 years I've been making shirts for the place, since the place went down tons of folks have started wailing about how people always rush in to make a buck off the carcase of anything with even remote meaning to those perceived as 'interesting' or 'different'. Trying to buy into being the outsider minus the true experience (Remember CBGB's? Most people don't, but that doesn't mean they don't own a shirt). Anyways, I wanted to quietly clear the air on the Marz Bar shirts. Instead of posting on every site with someone decrying commercialization in the comments of a Mars article, I decided to say my little piece here. Read on after the jump.

The LAST "Defend" shirt.

I first made the DEFEND MARZ BAR shirts because everyone wanted a shirt, including me. I asked someone to ask Hank for me and He was cool with it so the first lot came out and sold out fast... And I made no Money. I gave a bunch away, sold most at cost to regulars and Bartenders, And then had the rest of the money stolen by a Bartender who moved to France (who I knew and used to be friends with).  Fine, I actually made around $40... But that was after designing and selling 40 shirts!

Second batch, 100 of em, Sold em all, Let the Bartenders have a cut (unless they pissed me off) and I finally made some dough, which I used to... Fly back home to NYC for x-mas (I live in LA currently) and sell the FALLOUT shirts.

Repeat...

First "Fallout" order

The 4th and final batch sold out a good month or so before the bar closed, and I know I could Have sold a Butt-ton (an actual measurement of weight in NYC) more shirts, But I had decided by then that anyone who deserved/needed one had gotten it, AND I now have enough money to fly back to NYC for xmas again! (but of course I have no place to drink... so should I even bother?)


So in the end, the only thing Marz bar shirts were used for was to make me money so I could Fly to NYC once a year and Drink at Mars. No Joke, I calculated it, and after selling a little south of only 300 shirts over 5 years I have never spent the money on anything other then more Shirts, getting to NYC, Mars booze, Bartender gifts, and making sure people who loved the place had something to remember it by.

I just wanted to say that. No one knew all the details, but believe it or not, the shirts were a labor of love (and Alcoholism).

Yes, Thats Me.

I Grew up over on Lafayette and ended up in Mars after some punk show at CBGB's when I was 18 in 1998 (like, back when it was surrounded by empty lots and abandon buildings. I've been to tons of Bars in NYC, but the only Place I've been to at least triple digits was Mars (Stoops and 40s don't count) and I could probably fill a book with stories about the place (as I'm sure most could). I wish I was there for its final days. Maybe I should have sold more shirts to make it happen... Nah!


P.s. is it normal to miss Ray? Because I think that may be a sign of mental illness.