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. How dare it be gone, we roared, and then sighed: St. It was shitty, but that was the point of it, and everything on the block—a 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? There are bars and restaurants and places to soak up the booze, just as there always have been. Here, we speak to people who, over the generations, have made St. Everyone seems to be drawn to St. 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. Marks Place. And I remember just being like, What is that? Going to high school in the Midwest, I was so New York—obsessed. During the mids, my dad took my family on a day trip to Manhattan—our 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—at least on the street—a little scared.
In my defense, I was just a kid. Bars have dotted St. When I became a teenager, we mostly just walked around I think St. Because people back in the day had 40s in paper bags. The sidewalks are the same. Marks is Dead. 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, Beauregard Houston-Montgomery strutting down the street in the black mini dress. It was a cultural marketplace and display space. But there were plenty of bars and clubs on the block itself, many of which are now long gone.
