Good old dive bars get to stay open (or in this case reopen) instead of being replaced by cheaply and unimaginatively constructed pseudo-luxury apartment buildings.

For decades, the Holland Bar, on Ninth Avenue between 39th and 40th Streets in Hell’s Kitchen, made a name for itself serving cheap beer to loyal drinkers who did not mind squeezing into a tiny, crusty room barely wide enough to fit the bar and the stools in front of it. [snip]  Then last summer the Holland became one of those typical New York institutions: the beloved local haunt forced to shut down. According to Mr. Kelly, who has owned the bar since 1998, the landlord refused to renew the lease in the hopes that he could make more money converting the building for residential use or selling it off. But such plans apparently did not work out, and the landlord offered Mr. Kelly his old space back starting Jan. 1, albeit at a 20 percent increase in the rent. Now the Holland is scheduled to reopen its taps as soon as Wednesday.

It’s not all good news, though:

Since the Holland closed its doors, the bar had been destroyed, the plumbing had been removed, the floor had been ripped out. And much of the physical record of the bar’s history that had been pasted to its walls - the photographs of customers who had died years before, the posters for shows at the dear, departed CBGB - is gone, too. Mr. Kelly sent many framed pictures home with regulars as farewell gifts, other memorabilia went into storage. One of the relics of the Holland’s lore - an urn containing the ashes of Charlie O’Connor, a former bartender - had gone missing.

It would have been so much easier if they’d just left it alone in the first place.  Someone needs to create some kind of of landmark status for dive bars…no, that would turn them into artificial representations of themselves.  How about we just agree not to tear anything down for a while?  Just ten years and see what happens.