Mars

Overview

Multi-floor Meatpacking warehouse (1988–1992) co-designed and operated by Rudolf Piper (Danceteria, the Tunnel) and programmer Yuki Watanabe, stacking house, hip-hop, reggae, new wave, and soul across five levels where RuPaul performed, Moby DJed the basement, skateboarders had their own dedicated entrance, and a 'Trip' hip-hop party drew Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, and Big Daddy Kane.

Mars occupied a former warehouse at 28–30 Tenth Avenue near 14th Street in the Meatpacking District, opening in 1988 when the neighborhood was still dominated by working meatpacking operations and rough street life. Programmer Yuki Watanabe designed Mars as a deliberately fragmented sound landscape across five levels: the ground floor ran house music alongside performances by trans and drag entertainers; the second floor was hip-hop; the third ran reggae and African music; a roof deck played soul; the basement—smallest and most subterranean—held new wave and industrial. Watanabe recruited DJs from New York's house, hip-hop and dancehall scenes alongside figures from Chicago and Europe, running what contemporaries described as the best multi-floor sound systems in the city. RuPaul worked Mars in 1988–89, reportedly first at the door and later hosting and performing shows—Dazed & Confused documented a 1989 evening in their CultVault archive. In the basement, Watanabe gave Moby his first paid DJ job after Moby dropped off an unsolicited demo tape (hip-hop on one side, house on the other); Watanabe later recalled calling him because the novelty caught his attention. The 'Trip' party — hosted by DJ Duke of Denmark with MCs Almighty Kay Gee and Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers — was the club's flagship weekly, drawing hip-hop performers from across the circuit: Run-DMC, A Tribe Called Quest, Ultramagnetic MCs, 3rd Bass, Big Daddy Kane, and the Jungle Brothers all performed or appeared. Regulars called Mars 'the last true melting pot nightclub in New York,' a room where a queer dancefloor, a hip-hop crowd, and a reggae floor shared a building the same night. Piper's active stewardship extended through roughly 1990; Watanabe moved to Thailand to program Mars Bangkok from around 1990–91 before returning to New York. The club ran until 1992. Rudolf Piper — co-founder of Danceteria (where Madonna staged her earliest New York shows), designer of the Tunnel, and former director of the Palladium — served as Mars's co-owner and handled Saturday and Sunday programming. His own account of the club's distinction was direct: 'that was the first legally established place to really play some kick-ass hip hop.' Skateboarders were given a dedicated basement entrance, a deliberate accommodation that Yuki Watanabe later identified as central to the emerging convergence of downtown skate culture and hip-hop; Watanabe appears as an interview subject in Jeremy Elkin's 2021 documentary 'All the Streets Are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987–1997)' and, by his own account, contributed a substantial share of its archival footage. International Chrysis — the transgender entertainer and Salvador Dalí protégé, known for revues including 'The Last Temptation of Chrysis' — performed at Mars on an Easter Sunday night, filmed by Nelson Sullivan, the videographer who lived at 5 Ninth Avenue in the Meatpacking District and whose archive (donated to NYU Fales Library in 2012) is among the most extensive moving-image documentation of the neighborhood's pre-gentrification years; Chrysis died in March 1990. Mars closed in 1992; Piper cited the frequency of shootings and stabbings as his reason for ending his involvement. The Meatpacking District that made Mars possible — cheap warehouse rent, minimal residential neighbors to complain about noise, active meat operations into the 1990s — no longer exists at the corner of Tenth Avenue and 14th Street. The site sits within blocks of the High Line's southern terminus at Gansevoort Street (Section 1 opened June 9, 2009) and the Whitney Museum's Renzo Piano building at 99 Gansevoort (opened May 1, 2015); the block's warehouse fabric has been reused as luxury retail and commercial space, and no plaque or interpretive marker identifies 28–30 Tenth Avenue as the site of the club. Nelson Sullivan, who filmed International Chrysis at Mars and much of the pre-gentrification block, died on July 4, 1989; his surviving Meatpacking-era video is held with the Downtown Collection at NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections, alongside the '5 Ninth Avenue Project' online archive maintained by former neighbors. The convergence of hip-hop and skateboarding Watanabe helped stage in the Mars basement — the subject of Elkin's 2021 'All the Streets Are Silent' — remains one of the few dimensions of the club's programming that has been given sustained scholarly attention.