Barramundi
A HERMAPHRODITIC FISH AND gentrification have much in common. Take Australia's barramundi: After several raucous and reckless years, the male awakens as a female, his bachelor party bamboozled. Take the Lower East Side: After a decade of raucousness and recklessness, revived tenements are morphing into condos, revitalization bulldozed by developers. Perhaps I'm stretching, but try telling that to Ludlow Street's Barramundi.
For a decade, Barramundi and art nutzos Collective Unconscious anchored 145-147 Ludlow, a one-story complex built in 1873. The outfits arose when the Lower East Side was more heroin than haute, and Max Fish the neighborhood's sole beer-and-liquor joint. Collective Unconscious offered razor-edged entertainment: Tesla coils, dramas about airplane disasters and Reverend Jen's poetry backlash, the Anti-Slam. Barramundi offered razor-edged refuge: a pixie-like garden, fireplace-equipped makeout nook and an illuminated pin-encrusted chair, set above the doorframe like an S&M throne. Alas, the chair remains, though its light bulb is out, as must be Barramundi at the end of September.
"What is historic doesn't really seem to matter anymore," says Lockhart Steele, publisher of real estate website curbed.com. Progress marches, and that means demolition. By next year, Barramundi and Collective Unconscious should be rubble. Subversive pasts may become foundation for eight to 10 stories of luxury apartments. Could Barramundi have battled fate, à la Prospect Heights residents fighting Bruce Ratner's proposed Brooklyn stadium?
"We weren't even offered a new lease," says Ania Chowaniec, co-owner of Barramundi with husband Shane Patrick.
A tan, fast-talking woman with long, sandy- blond hair, Chowaniec has known about Barramundi's demise since November. Instead of lamenting the loss of her "Caesar's Palace décor" (light-filled faux Greek columns-relics from a turn as a Dominican restaurant), she and Patrick cooked up Plan B. Relocation, relocation, relocation. But not far.
"We live and work on the Lower East Side. Where else would we go?" Chowaniec says.
How about home. Chowaniec and Patrick own 67 Clinton St., smack in restaurant row. And when their commercial tenant, Olga's Bridal Shop, chose not to renew, the couple knew Barramundi would be reborn.
"Plus, we won't have to commute anymore," Chowaniec says, laughing.
While Patrick saws and hammers Barramundi redux, Chowaniec sorts through 10 years of a "time and place that will be lost forever." Moving into a space with fewer square feet and no garden, it's a struggle deciding what to keep. Strings of fish lights? The bird cage fashioned from 35 mm photos of her and Patrick? Or maybe the thick slabs of tree tables, growth rings mottled by bygone cigarette scars?
"You collect all this stuff and, with a basement, you never think you'll throw it away," says Chowaniec.
The bar stools are coming. As is the ice machine. And tables. Everything else might depend on the strength of the last-call patrons.
"Maybe we'll have a New Orleans-style processional," says Chowaniec, smiling. "Everyone can carry a bit of Barramundi to the new bar."
The location leaves her optimistic. "I feel Clinton St. is a bit more grown-up and mature than Ludlow," says Chowaniec. Over the last few years, the block has become a drunken playground. A Saturday-night stroll reveals stumbling 21-year-olds tumbling out of tube tops. Squatter spirit-as well as the bar scene-is on life support.
The next several years will see an L.E.S. shakeup. Live-music institution Luna Lounge will taste the wrecking ball. Rock dive Motor City is reportedly up for sale. Hell, a chain Irish bar may even move into Ludlow's old restaurant, Torch.
"I hear they'll have glossy menus," says Chowaniec, wrinkling her face in disgust. "Once all these bars are gone, it'll be back to Max Fish."
It may not be the end, but it feels so for Steele. "There will always be bars on the Lower East Side, but the quality of bars is the problem."
He continues, "I once took a female friend from the Upper East Side to Barramundi. She walked in and said, 'I can't stay here. This is the scariest place I've ever been.' That's the point of the Lower East Side-a little bit unusual, a little bit frightening." o