Buying an apartment can end in a bloodbath (Polina Sergeeva, flickr)

Sure, you might bring a shrewd mindset and a few inflexible demands to an apartment closing, but a revolver?

Some people do, The New York Times reports, in a story on acts of violence, temper tantrums and shouted threats that accompany some closings in the brutal world of New York real estate.

Is it laying out all of one's savings and then some that drives people over the edge? Not really, the reporter finds. Mostly, it's the little things.

Like the beaten-down old washing machine that the sellers removed from a $3 million Greenwich Village townhouse right before the closing. The buyers were outraged, so outraged, in fact, that one of them ripped up a certified check for more than a million dollars, then took things a step further.

"'Are you going to put back the washer?' Again the seller says no. At that point, the buyer puts the two halves of the check in a glass bowl, takes out a match, and lights them on fire. Then he marches out," real estate lawyer Stephen Raphael recounted a particularly acrimonious closing to The Times.

At other closings, the violence wasn't symbolic. After learning the price her husband had received for their apartment in the East 50s, one woman flung the house keys at his head, causing a bloody wound.

“All of a sudden there was blood all over the place,” Halstead broker Fern Hammond told The Times. “Evidently foreheads bleed profusely. Everyone was pushing the papers out of the way, and the husband was holding tissues to his wound. It happened almost 30 years ago, but it is something I will never forget.”

In the case of the revolver, a lawyer told the story of a man who took the gun out of his holster and laid it on the table before asking if anyone wanted to negotiate his terms. Apparently, no one did.

kvelsey@observer.com

Betsey Johnson

Almost a week after we learned designer Betsey Johnson would be featured in a new reality show, Betsey And Lulu, comes the announcement that the spritely 69-year-old's fashion line has filed for bankruptcy. As a result, over 300 Betsey Johnson employees will probably lose their jobs. To top that off, most of Betsey Johnson's 63 stores will close.

All is not lost, however. Ms. Johnson still has the eponymous show in the works (as far as we know) and according to Forbes, this certainly isn't the end of the brand name:

Steve Madden, who has owned the brand’s intellectual property rights since 2010, said in an email that the group will continue to support the Betsey Johnson brand and ensure existing orders will be produced and ship on time. Betsey Johnson clothing will still be sold at Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom.

Brand Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Friedman issued a statement regarding the action that indicated the move is intended to "address Betsey Johnson LLC’s cash flow problems."

Goodbye to Mars Bar?

A few weeks ago, The Observer spent a hell of a long time in Mars Bar, the storied punk-themed dive on Second Avenue, expecting it to close any day. Then, we got word of a grace period that could last up to six weeks. They wouldn't go out without a fight. Old habits die hard. All that good stuff.

But today, EV Grieve reported that Mars Bar's bottles of whiskey stopped pouring. Could the beloved tattered closet of a saloon be done for good?

We called, and it seems the time of demise is still up in the air.

"Hello," a man said when he picked up the bar's clunky plastic land line phone.

It's The Observer, we said.

"We're closed," he said.

What happened?

"Health Department shut us down."

So, is this the end?

"No," he said. "I have to go."

The stalwarts, then, insist the place will get its act together before the wrecking ball comes, but that date's just a few weeks away. Aspiring punk rock revivalists, start looking elsewhere. You better pray there's another charmingly rude rust den to serve you Leroux Rock & Rye because Mars Bar is done, dead today or dead tomorrow.

The company opened its season then with the New York premiere of A Quiet Place, the strange, flawed, fascinating final opera by Leonard Bernstein, one of the city’s favorite sons. The opera is close to the heart of City Opera’s artistic director, George Steel, and it felt, in the lead-up, like an “event.” The company treated it as such: in Christopher Alden’s thoughtful production the work received the best possible presentation, and the orchestra sounded great under the young conductor Jayce Ogren. The reviews—it was covered everywhere—were good.

No one came.

And no one really came to the rest of the season, either. City Opera struggled again and again to half-fill the 2,600-seat Koch Theater, its home at Lincoln Center. A Strauss rarity, Intermezzo, was charming in the fall, as was Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore in the spring. Elisir even featured an exciting debut from the tenor David Lomeli, the kind of up-and-coming artist City Opera used to support, and eventually turn over to the world’s major houses. But no luck.

A trio of 20th-century monodramas, inventively directed by Michael Counts, was a critical success, but didn’t have much traction. More devastatingly, neither did Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Seemingly engineered to attract fans of Mr. Schwartz’s Wicked and Pippin, it was scheduled for a 10-performance run (26,000 seats!). It was panned as a vanity project and failed at the box office. Fiorello LaGuardia famously called City Opera the “People’s Opera,” but this season it was far from popular.

It is one thing when an opera company struggles while packing the house. Ticket sales account for less than half of most revenue streams, so even selling out doesn’t guarantee a balanced budget: the economics of opera are ridiculous. I was told recently by an artist manager that the best opera house heads are the ones who “lose money responsibly.”

What selling out does mean is that people are interested in seeing a company’s work. And donors like supporting performances that people want to attend. Simply put: when no one comes to see your performances, it becomes difficult to convince rich people to give millions of dollars to so you can make more of them.

Unable to sustain itself financially, City Opera’s board has determined that its only option is to abandon the Koch Theater in favor of floating between different halls. In the next week or so, City Opera will announce its 2011-12 season. It will present a few operas in a few venues, some larger and some smaller. This will be done on a very tight budget, and the organization will squeeze by. The real question is the 2012-13 season, and the company’s long-term future. Barring a major fund-raising effort—and why and how would $50 million or $100 million be raised for a foundering company?—it seems unlikely that City Opera will survive.

Should we care? Certainly—and first of all, because a great many people stand to lose their jobs. (Many already have.) But also because it seems reasonable for a city that presumes itself one of the world’s cultural centers to have two opera companies. Then again, a city is a living, changing ecosystem. Companies come and companies go. City Opera may not be in a position to remain the “other” company.

City Opera’s Trajectory over the past five years has been depressing especially when compared to that of the Metropolitan Opera. The Met got a new general director who in short order guided it out of decades of ossification: freshening the marketing, bringing in (some) more modern productions, partnering with the Museum of Modern Art when William Kentridge’s retrospective overlapped with his production of Shostakovich’s The Nose.

Even if certain of the Met’s stolid ways remained unchanged, things felt different. The Met has made opera feel closer than it has in years to the center of the city’s cultural life. Through student and rush tickets, it’s possible to pay $20 or $25 for an orchestra seat. Its Live in HD broadcasts have filled a niche for many; making it to Lincoln Center for an opera feels a little less of an imperative.

Theatrical vibrancy; young, attractive singers; affordable prices: the Met has savvily made itself known for the very things that were once City Opera’s exclusive province. And while the Met was making these advances, City Opera was embroiled in a misadventure with one potential general manager and closed entirely for a season The financial crisis provided the fuel for the perfect storm, and the company, once the nimble underdog, has been unable to emerge from years of mismanagement and lack of responsible financial planning. Now City Opera is the sclerotic one, with oddly dense graphic design and little sense of purpose except—in a comically brief season—to be all things to all people.

“This city has supported two opera companies and a scattering of smaller outfits for generations, and there is no fundamental reason why it can’t continue to do so,” Justin Davidson wrote optimistically in New York magazine, espousing the potential virtues of flexibility.

There may not be a fundamental reason, but there are a lot of logistical ones. The goal should—must, I think—be a permanent home in a smaller theater. The question is whether such a space exists, and whether it’s financially plausible. (The Hammerstein on 34th Street near Eighth Avenue, an old opera house, would be perfect if we’re dreaming big.)

This is as delicate a moment as any in a cultural institution’s history. George Steel, who has never had to cultivate donors on this scale, will have to call on all of his considerable talent, charisma and vision to convince people to take a chance, something most people are unwilling to do with large quantities of their money during a recession. (Mr. Steel is still stuck with much of the board responsible for the mismanagement. Ex-chairman Susan Baker, I’m looking at you.)

But Mr. Steel’s best may not be enough. The company could sell out 500-seat theaters and get raves in every paper and still not convince people to give it the kind of support that could ensure its future. In that case, New York, like Minneapolis, will be a one-opera town.

editorial@observer.com

When The New York Observer was originally housed in a raucous townhouse at 54 East 64th Street, to this paper, Elaine's was a room stocked full of Algonquin Round Tables. Despite its 19-block distance from the paper, it eventually became an office away from the office, a reliable place to celebrate, convalesce, or report, a patron never lesser for having been. Not particularly known for its food or décor, it persevered as an essential scene, due to its vivacious, spirited proprietor and the company she brought: celebrities, writers, artists, politicos, and more simply blended into one motley crew under Elaine's watch. You did not have to be a superstar or boldface name to feel kingly while there.

Writing for Capital New York at the time of Kaufman's death, former, longtime Observer editor Peter Kaplan compared the restaurant to Rick's, the iconic bar in the center of Casablanca, calling Elaine's "a cultural gift that tied us to a New York that began to evaporate today with her demise."

Elaine's will be missed, just as the woman behind it continues to be, and will no doubt be remembered as an essential setting in the ongoing history of our great city.

[fkamer@observer.com | On Twitter]

But Max Fish will not, in fact, close at the end of the month. Owner Ullie Rimkus managed to secure a new lease that will keep her bar untouched for at least a year, thanks to a renegotiated deal. "They gave me an extension with no strings attached!" Rimkis told The Observer over the phone.

Happy news indeed, but the celebration seems to have caught The New York Times by surprise. In yesterday's paper there's an article about Max Fish that reads an awful lot like a eulogy with a note about the extension slapped on at the last minute.

We love Max Fish as much as anyone, but it seems a bit gratuitous for The Times to run such a nostalgia-on-sleeve weeper about a place that will keep serving up PBR and Old Crow for another 12 months -- especially when the Gray Lady already wrote its "Farewell, Max Fish" piece back in December.

Let's look at how much of the story is written in the past tense.

But Max Fish, with its cheap drinks and bright lights, was the center of it all for two decades, the place to stop before or between shows. Last month, when its owner announced it would close by the end of January because of a rent increase, I started wondering about what made it so cool. The bar was never self-consciously cool, like Moby’s Teany. Or anonymously cool like the 12 zillion dive bars around. Its cool was friendly but detached. Its bartenders cordial but with enough attitude that they didn’t really give a damn whether you drank there or not.

Yes, memoirist Helene Stapinski is referring to the Max Fish of her youth here, but the sentiment still seems misplaced. The dive's customers prefer those who choose not to wax romantic on Max Fish in The New York Times, especially now that it'll stay open. In the end, Max Fish is just a bar, and that's what makes it great.

Click for Scandal Report: Everything Will Be OK, Taylor Swift >>

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

But don't write your goodbye toasts just yet! Paper is reporting that Max Fish owner Ulli Rimkus has strong-armed her way into another year in the lease, keeping the bar on Ludlow until at least 2012.

We called up Rimkus to offer our deep relief that she'll stay there on Ludlow, serving PBRs late into the night.

"They gave me an extension with no strings attached!" Rimkis told The Observer over the phone. "Yesterday we got the signature."

We asked if the extra attention heaped on the bar had anything to do with the offering of a new lease.

"Why would people with money care?" Ms. Rimkus said, referring to the bar's charm. "The outpouring was very nice for us. So maybe?"

All of this has put a huge question mark on the funereal party scheduled for the 31st. The wall of slapdash sculptures, paintings and installations will stay its glorious technicolor -- "We're not gonna paint it black, no!" Rimkus assured us -- but there is certainly something to celebrate.

"I don't know if we're going to still have a party," Rimkus wondered. "We should."

Keep us posted, Ulli -- a lease extension party seems a bit more fun than a goodbye party.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

"At 5 p.m. on a recent Saturday," Finnegan wrote, "Max Fish barkeeps were cleaning up from the night before, lining up beer bottles and wiping down the booths. The iconic neon cigarette above the venue’s door was obfuscated by construction scaffolding. 'This place is a landmark,' a man in periwinkle pants said to his friend as they walked by. 'It’s called Fish Bar.'"

As landmarks tend to do, Max Fish would stick around for a while. The bar stayed open to see, in 2002, the city's rock scene explode all around it, and did its damnedest to get the bands wasted. Naturally, Moby was there, too.

"I know [TV on the Radio] a little bit just from being drunk at Max Fish at four in the morning," the musician told Pitchfork last year. "I don't know if they hang out there anymore, but I haven't been there in about six months either. There are certain people who I'd see at 3:30 in the morning at Max Fish or Motor City, people who I've never had sober conversations with."

Max Fish stayed open to see Dash Snow, Ryan McGinley and other spearhead a new downtown art movement.

"Snow was the Keith Richards [of the scene], a genius junkie with magic fingers." writes Joshua David Stein in The Daily Beast earlier this year. "During his life, those fingers were often clutching cigarettes (and darker pointier things) at various bars on the Lower East Side, including, and especially, Max Fish."

And Max Fish stayed open long enough to witness the deaths of both Elliott Smith and Dash Snow.

But it won't be open much longer. Eater reported a rumor that Max Fish would be shutting down and packing up due to high property taxes and stratospheric rent. Later, Animal confirmed it. Max Fish will shut its doors for good January 30.

The news comes the same day that The Pink Pony, another Ludlow Street mainstay, would also be closing. And yesterday the triumphantly dingy Mars Bar inched closer to its demise -- in short, this week has been one of the worst ever for classic 90s downtown bars. Surely there will be many who cheer on the fall of Max Fish, saying that it only perpetuates the Hollywood version of the Lower East Side by cashing in on the commodified version of the dangerous, edgy place that block used to be. And granted, the bridge and tunnel crowd makes that corner of Ludow absolutely intolerable on the weekends.

But it's a fine spot to have a few drinks on a Wednesday, a place with a history that should mean something to the people still living around it, and overall the Lower East Side should be sad to see it go.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234