Main Street bar says 'goodbye'

Newark lost a keystone of its local music scene March 1 when the owner of East End Café, Steve MacAllister, announced at noon that that night would be the bar's very last.

Greg Fain, guitarist and manager of The Scatologists, a reggae-ska band from New Castle and surrounding areas, said he was shocked when he received the news. He was in the middle of a rehearsal for a reunion show his band was planning to have at East End Café this Friday, March 12.

The band, upon hearing the news, immediately picked up and "moved the rehearsal down to the bar" to perform one last time on the closing night. It wasn't the exact time-slot during which the band had expected to play, but it was a special night.

"Everybody was emotional," Fain says.

Patrons that Fain and The Scatologists hadn't seen at East End since the ‘90s were there, toasting the bar's 23-year run at 270 East Main Street.

Drew Keane, a university sophomore, whose band Josten Swingline had performed at East End, only made it through 20 minutes of the farewell celebration before the cops showed up.

"East End went out East End style," Keane says. 

The emotions of the night heightened into a fight in which quite a few bottles were broken, Keane said.

Fain and the other five Scatologists got together in 1994, broke up in 2000, and got back together in 2008. They first played at East End Café in ‘94, and considered it a home away from home for the better part of the decade.

Rich "Richie" Katz, the owner of the bar from 1987 to 2002, was just "a great guy" Fain said. Katz promoted all sorts of local music, ranging from heavy metal to pop. The Scatologists were performing at the bar at least once a month while they were still together.

"[He] treated the bands really well, which is something worth noting," Fain said. "They paid us and fed us, and let us do basically what we wanted to do and create our own scene. It wasn't the same kind of music every night, and it was still a friendly place to hang out where we knew people."

Bob Pierce, who considers himself a minority owner of the bar since 2002, gives a brief history of the vibrant music spot in an e-mail message.

In 1987, Rich Katz and Gary Ingese founded the bar and ran it until 2002. From 2000 to 2002, the identity of the bar began to move to a dive/punk scene. In 2002, a group led by Frank O'Brien and Steve MacAllister bought East End Café. Pierce was the minority owner in this group from 2006 to 2008, and MacAllister managed and ran the business from the spring of 2008 until 2010.

"[I ], along with a couple of others, tried to bring East End back to its roots — great live music, unpretentious bar and great food," said Pierce, a university alumnus.

Pierce says Newark bars have been faced with numerous closings in recent years.

"For the last 35 years or so […] I have been familiar with UD and the Newark area. The closing of the East End is just one more note in the changing landscape of the UD bar scene over the past several decades. It started with the Down Under, then the ‘Old' Deer Park, the Stone Balloon and now EEC," Pierce says.

He emphasizes East End's closing as a part of the changing Newark bar scene.
Keane and his band, Josten Swingline, comprised of three current university students, performed at East End 20 times since 2005. Keane was shocked to hear the news about the closing, as was nearly everyone that had ever considered the bar a local hangout.

"I called it my home," Keane said. "I was obviously devastated."

MacAllister could not be reached for comment.

The bars regulars are mourning the loss of the bar, as a heavy blow to the local music scene.

"There is no music scene in Newark; it's all cover bands. East End was the last place [in Newark] you could hear original music," Keane said.

What people seemed to love most about the local watering hole was its friendly atmosphere and its we-serve-all-kinds mentality, he said.

"They didn't care what kind of music was popular; you walked in and you felt welcome,"

Keane says. "That was East End's thing — they were not judgmental at all. They remembered you, even if you walked in once."

Fain remembers celebrating his wedding reception at East End, and how The Scatologists would perform there on Christmas night.

"We used to pack the place when we were tired of being with our families," he says.

"[East End] was the last of a dying breed. It was more bohemian and underground [than other bars in Newark]. Hopefully they'll reopen," Fain says. "East End was a great place that featured local music and that's rare."