Motor City Bar
127 Ludlow St
(between Delancey St & Rivington St)
New York, NY 10002 (212) 358-1595
- Nearest Transit:
Delancey-Essex Sts (F, J, M, Z)
2nd Ave-Houston St (F, V)
Grand St (B, D)
- Price Range: $
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: No
- Music: DJ
- Happy Hour: Yes
- Alcohol: Full Bar
- Smoking: No
- Coat Check: No
46 Reviews for Motor City Bar
Pretty cheap beer - 5 bucks a pint - 6 beers on tap - cool bartender babe with tats - good music - Patsy Cline to Motorhead to Sinatra to The Ramones - the obligatory skanky bathroom. It looks right, sounds right and feels right but in reality it's a bit of a theme bar - an LES take on the 'Dive Bar' if you will. Surprisingly though it's actually pretty good at being a dive bar. The only problem is the LES hipsters that drop in to get their dive on. If it were a real dive bar they'd soil their little hipster hats after 5 minutes and run back to Mommy before finishing their first Stella.
Wheelchair access: Very good. Easy in. The bathroom is small and surprisingly accessible (at least it was for me.) Sure it was a bit skanky but not CBGB skanky so F it.
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as much as i want to *love* this bar, the ever increasing douche-y patrons make me shy away more often than not. granted, this is not motor city's fault as most of the LES is becoming gentrified by an encroaching mass of commonality and herd-like mentality, I still am put off by sitting next to douchers and foreigners... and doucher foreigners.
that being said, i love the decor of the bar being that i'm a gear head and especially into muscle cars and hot rods. they have a bunch of emblems from classic cars all along the bar but alas, mine was not there. (1970 buick skylark) guess the skylark was the soccer mom car of the muscle car era... now, the GSX... THATS another story.
anyway, 3 stars for the cool, detroit car-themed interior design and really good bartenders and DJ's. minus two stars for the fact that i gag whenever i enter and set eyes on the clientele.
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Yesssss. Thank you to my friend who hooked up with some random dude who showed us this cool place at 4 in the am. I likey. No. I lovey.
Man, way to take one for the team.
So the first time I came here, I was a bit under the weather .. ahem. It was 4am, and we had already been to the Spin Mag party at the Boat Basin (kinda lame) and the MissBehave mag party on the LES. (Very cool.) I was um ... er ... tired.
But I remember loving it. I had to come back.
So my lovely Frenchies and I came to check it out for the second time. It was even better than I remembered. Dark and grimy on the inside, and hard to find on the outside. The bouncer, Erik (He's more of a really nice, can I check your id please kind of bouncer) was super cool. We chatted about his hometown of Chi-town and my hometown of Austin, which he had spent some time in. Buy Erik drinks, he's cool.
We decided to visit the bar for a third time late last night, and it did not let us down. In celebrations for the 4th of July, they hired a dancer to shake her bon bon on the table in an American flag bikini. Don't you just love Independence Day?
I know they take credit cards, but they like cash better. So bring yo dollas for cheap Heinis and vodka. Play pinball or take a seat at the crowded bar.
I agree with Amanda i. though. I did see quite a bit more hipsters the third time around. Gosh!
See you at 4am!
i went here for the first time last night. i avoided this place for awhile because i thought it was some stupid hipster joint, and i saw that their website had emo stars all over it, so it was somewhere i never thought i'd be caught dead or alive in. but i had a good time here despite my preconceived opinions.
but then again i was in a fabulous mood to begin with, and i was also pretty sloshed by the time i got there, so i might have had fun anywhere.
actually no, i know i wouldn't have. i have a solid belief that if the music is good, i'll have fun wherever i am. the dj last night spun a variety of indie rock with some lesser known new wave and post punk, perfection in my book.
anywhere i can hear 'i might like you better if we slept togeter' mixed into 'everywhere that i'm not' is fine by me. it was mainly indie rock but some lesser known new wave as well.
the whole 'garage' and 'rock' motif of scenery is pretty ok, too, and not as cheesy as it sounds. there was a ton of good looking people here and by good looking i mean sleazy and trashy looking.
it's a rarity i stay out til 4 a.m. on work nights these days, but i stayed here drinking red stripe until we were kicked out. good times.
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I like this bar, been quite a few times. Music is good, drinks fairly priced. Great bartenders with real attitude, some times a little too much, but love em anyway. There always seems to be a fight or hissy squabble brewing between 2-3 am though the last couple visits I made. Great shows and very entertaining, they were!.
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Brits seem to like Motor City. The first two times I went there, I was brought by a band from Liverpool and a guy from London. In exchange, I've taken a friend from Osaka and a fling from Paris.
Only one time was it a bit too crowded for comfort with some people who seemed a bit out-of-place, but even then I managed to enjoy myself.
Cheap drinks, good music, decent people, and a giant Ford sign. I could have sworn I saw the guy from The Raveonettes here.
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Just what you would expect from an NYC dive bar. Maybe it was the night, and the moon, and my friends, but the DJ was right on (though I guess you can't go wrong in segueing from Black Sabbath's 'Sweet Leaf' to Ministry's 'Jesus Built My Hotrod'), the decor was entertaining (I want to hang a bottle opener from the ceiling on a long rope in my kitchen now), and the crowd was minding its own business. The music is really loud, but what do you expect at a metal bar? The bathroom doesn't have a toilet seat or lock on the door. Rock on!
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Pinball! The Twilight Zone pinball machine takes me back to a Pizza Hut from my youth... Except Motor City has better music and I can consume alcoholic beverages now. Fantastic dive, not overly crowded, nice mix of friendly people who just want to talk amongst themselves and have a good time.
Classic dive bar. They play good music and sometimes you can catch the dancer girl when she is on, swaying in the window. truly a site to see. Don't take your friends here who are high maintenance the place is what it is and people like that just ruin it. and usually the b and t populationi is low here.
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Cool decor in this place, but the music was WAY too loud! Am I getting old that I now think almost every bar I go to plays their music too loud? That's a sad thought...In any case, only stayed here for one beer, as the vibe wasn't what our group was really looking for and the crowd was kinda iffy.
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I'm so proper and prissy that at first I was like, " Um. Okay. I hope I don't cut myself on all the raw metal...Is that rust?" Just Kidding.
What a wonderful time we had! (I wish my name was on the board.) The girls and I were boy watching all night and many looked quite tasty. Yum Yum.
I'll pick you for kickball over Max Fish anyday.
They should call this place GRUNGE City. I used to live on Ludlow St. and we stumbled in here one night looking for a fun time. It was filled with grungy, motorcycle types. There was a stripper dancing up on a stage that ran the length of the windows. We had an alright time. They had a good selection of beers I remember. The bathrooms were pretty disgusting and I think I saw at least one drug deal go down during the 30 minutes we were in there.
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Motor City is a great bar to pretend you are a rock star. I have a friend that dj's here sometimes and I like to go and rock out with him and his gang.
You have to be cool in the eyes of the bartender to get any attention but the drinks are well poured. The door guy is super duper sweet and if you go on certain nights there are go-go dancers.
The decor matches the name even going so far to have car seats.
Beware, one of the bathrooms has no lock so you'll have to be on guard while you pee. There are lots of cute boys in there so you never know what can happen.
I like the chalkboard with drinks bought and owed to people. When is someone gonna buy me a drink on that thing?
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What happened to this place.
I used to come here years ago.
It was very New York. Now its jsut very filled with out of towners.
Bartenders are still awesome though!
Until the very moment that I sat down to write a review of the joint, I had not realized that every time I visit Motor City, what I'm visiting isn't the bar itself - frankly, the service is slow (though admittedly frequently overloaded), the drinks are average, and the prices are only good if you drink cheap (which is, well, always) -what I'm digging is the concept.
Even on off-nights when the patrons sing a different tune, this place reeks of dirty rocking-out grease-monkeys - in stark contrast to the lovable yet admittedly douchebaggish LES. Classic muscle car and street signage adorn the bad-ass-low-red-lit walls, drinks are poured from ceiling-hung compressor hoses, the music - even when spawned far from - carries a note or two of Detroit, and all hints of illegitimacy are erased by the ultra-boss Twilight Zone pinball machine.
Downers: usually crowded to obnoxiousness due to the limited space, sometimes expectations can prove unquenchably high, and every now and again the crowd gets a little too Ludlow, if you catch the meaning.
Uppers: I've seen go-go dancers, interesting crowds, and many a Twilight Zone high score within the walls, and the vibe is certainly worth digging for a stint.
Hint: The bathroom line is usually daunting, but for the keen eye there is a secret bathroom whose wait is never more than a person or two...
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Why I end up in this place as often as I do is beyond me... I always thought of myself as the cool hippity hoppity ghetto hipster... oh no that's someone else
Whenever I want to get away from the crazy untucked striped shirts and rumpled khaki's I end up here. Good beer, cool music.
When you least expect it all of a sudden this cute young thing starts SHAKIN it in the window..now that's what I call interesting.
Just don't go to the Bathroom.
All in all good dirty stinky alcoholic fun.
I had a great time here, I just dont remember it all to well. I remember being with friends and having a few drinks, but the main thing that sticks in my mind is the 20 minute line to take a piss! Come on man..... That sucks! The drinks werent very expensive, and you cant beat the location. The music was also pretty sweet! All in all i liked this place, but nothing really made it special.
Cheap drinks, good music and cute boys. Who could ask for anything else? Yes, the bathrooms smell, but one of them is quite spacious, which compensates for the aroma.
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My favorite bar when I visit Manhattan (look out I'm coming at the end of the month, suckas!). Cheap beer, garage rock blaring, Ms. Pacman, and punk-rock veteran vibe.
Also, semi-thanks to the bartender who broke the rules and played me some Bouncing Souls when I last visited. He'd better, his band is on their label, I hear. Only semi-thanks because he didn't give me a break on the shirt and that's lame.
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Most definitely going back here again. Went with Eric S. after closing up the bar early, we got there at a good hour but probably half an hour later it would have been packed beyond comfort. However, this place was nasty good. The PBR option was 3, so we took a chance on that one. The old Detroit theme was awesome, love the neon Ford sign, and the car-seat seats. the crowd was fantastic until a few yuppies started to file in, lots of cute mid twenties hipster girls (although NYU season is done for a week or two until the holy hell that is summer NYU session, where kids from the far reaches of this great nation descend upon New York like premature ejaculation), and dudes you'd be proud to say "hey buddy". It's dark, it's not really dank, it's kind of if you took hipster, put a little more rock in it, and mixed it up with a wacky diverse music selection, but no filler, you got this bar.
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This place is alright. I was nervous about going out to a bar in Manhattan with my New York friends on my recent visit from Boston. I mentioned that I wasn't interested in taking out a second mortgage just to have a few beers. I went ahead and brought a flask just in case, but they had 3 dollar cans of Pabst (which is still a dollar too many, but whatever) which were most affordable. The music was pretty good, some Clash, some Clutch, some Misfits, the usuals. I also had no problem ordering cokes as the night wore on and going into the batchroom to add my own personal whiskey, which was nice (the bathroom is unisex, single occupancy, and the door locks). Reminds me of a few bars in Philly who have better beer prices and let you play Ice Cube on the juke box, but as they say, when in Manhattan take what you can get and then get the hell out of town.
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The ever so popular Motor City. If you have ever considered yourself, or someone has considered you, one of the following: a Rocker, a Punk, a Greaser, a Head Banger(aka:Grit, Thrasher, Metal-head), a Hipster, A Goth, A Hardcore Kid, a Gear-head, or any culmination of those....You will more then likely feel right at home at Motor City. The music one would expect to hear on any given night would appeal to at least one of the groups prior mentioned. The drinks are fairly priced and the decor is a gritty auto mechanic's wet dream. On the weekends this place can become absolutely retarded, but it's Ludlow Street for Christ's sake.
i heard there was a metal bar in the neighborhood, so of course i went to check it out. turns out, people here think industrial is the same as metal. not so. not a terrible place, just not for me..i definitely wanted to down my beer as fast as i could and move on to someplace where, when you walk up to an empty bar, you still get served right away even though you're not wearing eyeliner.
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I've been thrown out twice but that won't stop me from going back. I really like this place.. cheap beer and a nice crowd (and a big bouncer).
This place is cool. Lots of the patrons look like professional drinkers. Rock n roll music. The kind of place where you can feel free to belt out Piece of My Heart and shaking your hair Janis-style while it plays on the juke.
You can buy someone a drink and they'll keep track of it on the blackboard behind the bar. The person can then claim the drink at a later time. How cool is that? That's probably the best gift certificate one can get for an alcoholic.
Ms Pacman? Super cool.
GO GO dancer? Even better. I like to sit at the table close to the window by the go go dancer and give away my dollar bills.
And by go go dancer, I mean "back in the day" dancing like Uma Thurman at Jack Rabbit Slim's in Pulp Fiction, not chicks you find dancing in platform Steve Maddens in trashy bars in Hoboken.
Note to self: get change of dollar bills before next trip to Motor City!
Note to yuppies planning a night out on the LES: please change out of your popped collar button downs and into some rock n roll gear and pretend you're a mechanic or vagrant.. the patrons of Motor City would hate for this place's gritty charm to be ruined.
risk: gets crowded on the weekends
reward: go go fun
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this is the kind of place that makes people remember what the lower east side is supposed to be about. EDGE. this is one of my favorite dive bars in the city...mostly because of the deejay here. it's great music to dance to and though it's shocking to say....the midwest never felt so good, except in the lower east side...
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What this place lacks in class, it makes up for it in the form of attractive girls and pinball. The few times that I have frequented this spot, I usually ended up confused from how much money I spent and what that lingering smell was that took me at least 2 showers to get rid of.
They are a cash bar which kind of blows, but you can always use some of those extra one spots floating around your pocket for the go-go dancer shakin it in the window. If you find yourself down and out because of the long restroom line, scan your surroundings and you may find the super secret throne room of the porcelain gods tucked away in the corner right next to the bar.
The Detroit theme is something to be appreciated. Along with the decor, the music rumbles and rocks you in the way the muscle cars of yesteryear did so well.
If you feel like rocking it out, head to Motor City. Or just steal your brothers 78 Trans Am,pop in that Skynryd, pop open that PBR, and let the good times roll.
A decent bar although I'll say I was a bit disappointed considering its vitals: dark rock n' roll bar in the Lower East Side. I'm no local but I figure if you've got good music, cheap drinks, and a lack of pretense on your mind in that area, you could come up with better. All in all, though, a good time was had by all. If I decide to move out there I will find my Hemlock Tavern--mark my words.
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one of the few places left on the LES that isn't completely overrun by random douche bags on the weekends. some folks here just need to take it easy on the eyeliner.
I had a good time here. It was fun. The whole theme behind the bar is Detroit and there's even car seats to sit on, bathrooms open with a steering wheel rather than handle, etc. It was cute but quite a gimmick. The pin-ball machine they had, which also makes you think back to a time when bars and places had pinball machines - probably back when Detroit was still livable, was the Twilight Zone. I appreciate getting drunk staring into Rod Sterling's soul. On the more negative side, the bar is in a very cramped position and easily crowded.
Trouble was never so much fun. This place is what dive bars are all about. I used to live in Detroit and it made me feel at home. For those of you who've hung out in D-town, it's a lot like Gusoline Alley in Royal Oak. The music always seems to be the perfect soundtrack for gettin' drunk. It hasn't been too taken over by the trying-to-hard-to-be-cool LES crowd, but some nights it can feel that way.
Whatever, it'll always be home to me! Now pass me Jack.
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I hadn;t graced this bar in over a year, but I stopped by last weekend, maybe I'm older, maybe it's not my thing anymore, maybe it was because it was a weekend, but the crowd was mostly coked out and from out of town and the bartender was rude, there's also a go go dancer, also coked out. I'd check it out on a weeknight, on a weekend it seems like trouble.
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Ms. Pac-Man, pinball and an automotive theme. Good happy hour, and a fun, hard-drinking kind of crowd. There's a good chance that Jack Daniels is a best seller here. Plus, you can buy someone a drink who isn't there -- they keep track of it on a board behind the bar, and the person can come in later to claim their drink.
The bartender was a spicy, energetic minx who sang classic rock to me as she poured my beer. When the transaction was completed, the cost of my two beers was conveyed to me as "7 dollah.... make you HOLLAH!"
I rarely blush when drinking Guinness, but there are exceptions to every rule.
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I can't say I remember much from my time here, but I do recall us asking a couple on the street about where to go around the neighborhood, and they said to follow them.
I suppose the hour at which we went would warrant this, but the bar was filled with a Mos Eisley-esque crowd of professional drunks and the people who love them.
The beer was cheap and the bartenders friendly, plus pinball (and was that tabletop Ms. Pacman I glimpsed?) , well it's hard to find too much fault with that!
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An edgier crowd drinking in a dank and dingy bar. For those with SF experience it's closest relative is probably Zeitgeist in the Mission. I did enjoy the pinball machine for a few mintues before friends dragged me out mid-game.
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if zeitgeist was a chain, we'd hate it
but if zeitgeist weren't a chain, but had a really cool cousin in new york without the patio but with enough funk to make you love it, it'd be MCB
Motor City is fantastic. The crowd is a sweet mix of people with a strong alternative, "I wish I worked in a motorcycle shop" kind of vibe. Everyone's really friendly and it's about as un-pretentious a bar as you'll ever find. The drinks are reasonably priced, the bartenders attentive and friendly and some of the chairs are car seats! YES! You can finally get dizzy-wasted in a car seat and not get arrested or feel like a big wierdo (sitting by yourself, wasted in a car). Sweet.
The place gets uncomfortably packed late at night on the weekend and the toilets seem to overflow frequently. Regardless, these inconveniences are wholey surpassed by the awsomeness. Enjoy.
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I get into the best kind of trouble every time I go to this place. Great tunes, dirty fabulous crowd. I once made out with a real cowboy there, another time I got a ride on a sweet motorcycle, and the last time I was invited to a party in a motor home parked somewhere in the lower east side...that my friend makes for a fun bar.
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Once upon a time, there was a princess named Three who loved to troll the streets of NYC til the wee hours, usually carousing with a pack of musicians in town on tour and looking to get into trouble. This pack of miscreants, should you need to find them, could usually be located at Motor City. At least the princess lived happily ever after...
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reasonable drinks, great mix of interesting people when ive been there. good tunes and an overall relaxed atmosphere. professional drinking establishment.
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