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 owne