A WrinklE In Times Square
One of my favorite places in New York is the Paramount Plaza Pit. You know the one. The open-air bomb shelter conveniently sandwiched between the theater soon to be haunted by Stephen Colbert, Ellen’s Stardust Diner’s line of rabid tweens, and Jeff Bezos’s most obnoxious block-long billboard.
The Pit, at first glance an oasis from the rest of Times Square’s hellfire, is unfortunately a mere mirage: the nonsensical strip mall waiting in its depths is almost worse. Wicked, Din Tai Fung, a “destination” Tesla charger, and an Equinox? Who is going to that Equinox? Stephen Colbert and Ellen Stardust?
This open-face dungeon may have evolved into the final booby trap on the way to 50th St station, a solemn checkpoint for those who’ve resisted the clutches of Humongous Forever 21, $60/Hour Ping Pong Place, and Applebee’s Dollarita. But as a hardened soul of the 20th Century (1999), I recall a time when the Pit was home to a scam with a bit more pizzazz: Mars 2112.
If you were a tri-state area child at any point between the apocalypses (Y2K and 2012), you 100% certainly attended a cursed character breakfast in a setting NO ONE CAN PROVE was not actual Mars, and you may be entitled to compensation from NASA. Mars 2112 was not a tourist trap—it was specifically a commuter trap. A place that easily-dazzled suburban children would beg to brave Port Authority for, and a bargaining chip for tortured parents desperate to see Mamma Mia across the street.
So we’d board the bus with three bucks, two bags, a LeapFrog, and a Libby Lu blowout, barreling past the pathetic pinnacles of Earthly cuisine and culture, rushing to catch a connection from the only space-port with a gift shop. To the loser children headed for Ruby Tuesday’s or Quizno’s above, we’d shout the taunt since plagiarized by Chappell Roan: “we’re leaving the planet, and you can’t come.”
Mars 2112 was more than a cheesy themed restaurant: it was an afternoon. The kind of place where you’d emerge and your eyes would need 15 minutes to adjust to the Sun. Because you were now 49 million miles closer to it.
Its primary appeal was the rocket simulator, a contraption whose professional astronaut equivalent is often referred to as the “vomit comet,” and which was designed with convincingly accurate sights and smells. The four-minute ride transported families from the arcade lobby to the main cavern via chairs that would shake until they concussed you and impressive visuals from the world’s first DVD.
I was a really cool kid who would vomit out of fear before the ride even started, so I got to walk in through the super exclusive regular door. Due to jealousy from my haters, this was considered social suicide, but after watching a YouTube video just now, I stand by my choice. Y’all were choosing to be locked in a pitch dark, claustrophobic, submarine-ass pod with 31 sweaty New Jerseyans in horrendous Bush-era outfits? To watch an acid-trip depiction of the inside of a wormhole crafted in Windows Movie Maker? And emerge with a migraine if not a fractured skull (I’m pretty sure real astronauts get seatbelts)? Yeah, I’ll still pass. A moment of silence for the thousands of high 16-year-olds whom I’m sure still have nightmares about that shit.
When we landed on Mars, the journey wasn’t over. It was lowkey a very long walk through the 35,000 square-foot cave to your table, over bridges and through tunnels designed by the creator of “indoor line for rollercoaster.” (Love his work. Spooky lighting, crumbly rocks, out-of-place normal metal handrail, and vague ominous music regardless of rollercoaster theme. Incredible.) Mars 2112 did offer one unique touch: fountains of blue lava, which I just found out they hired Dow Chemical to make edible in case any dumbass kids tried to drink it. Hello?? You mean the makers of napalm and Styrofoam? Also, I’m no expert, but crazy pitch: food coloring??
If you made it to your table without being hospitalized, you were greeted by one of three Martians, each played by an NYU student abducted from their shift at Ellen’s across the street. There was Captain Orion (who was forced to dance, alone, in a McDonald’s Play Place-style bubble protruding above the tables), QTπ (a mindblowing pun at age 7), and Empress Gloriana (the only one without a mascot-style costume—she was just a woman in purple makeup who spoke English??). Whichever musty alien/human woman you were assigned would hand you a copy of Mars Today (because everyone totally knows that when you travel and it’s 2004, you gotta get a physical copy of the local newspaper) and a menu with range eclipsing Mariah Carey’s.
Everything I’ve described about this (very real) place might reek of America, but for its leader to be a freaky U.S. billionaire or Disney traitor would simply make too much sense. That’s why it was founded by Irish meat mogul Paschal Phelan. Growing up on a middle-of-nowhere farm, the eldest of 18 children, at a time when Ireland housed more than twice as many cows as people (and people had 18 kids, so holy cows), Paschal got his hands dirty before becoming a banker and traveling the world. He returned to the Emerald Isle with a Shark Tank pitch the government couldn’t refuse: “start selling packaged meat instead of entire dead cows.” Immediately rich as hell, he got the zoomies for side quests, which conveniently coincided with the 90s’ movement to transform Times Square from a seedy red light district into a place where you could take your kids to see The Lion King. Paschal was like “MARS!!!” and Mars appeared.
So it should come as no surprise that the place’s insane menu, described as “universal fusion,” was packed to the brim with meat of all sorts—including a $22.95 half duck, Mars 2112’s very own diner lobster. There were burgers, pizzas, Thai beef salads, calamari, risottos, Cajun wings, nachos, steak-frites, and an unreal amount of alcohol. At 8, I failed to notice the section of the menu labeled with threatening ellipses, “SHOTS…SHOTS…SHOTS…”, beside a cocktail list whose options each included at least four types of booze. And you know what? For $7.95, I would absolutely order a cup of vodka, gin, rum, tequila, triple sec, melon liqueur, and orange juice. And I would not even be ashamed to call it a “Martian Probe.”
This menacing menu chapter was actually more than just a reward for parents who’d just watched their kid guzzle Dow Chemical blue lava. In fact, Mars 2112 was marketed as “for adults too,” and as they plummeted towards bankruptcy post-9/11, they even started to open by night as a club. I am not making this up. 50 Cent performed at Mars 2112. There are photos of Bill Clinton on the dance floor with Captain Orion. NSYNC posed for Teen Beat outside. Shaq was refused at the door for breaking dress code. They said “no Shaq, you are not dressed fancy enough to get concussed on our rocket simulator and then slam a neon green Long Island Iced Tea with Bill Clinton. QTπ and this still-alive duck will be offended.”
Much like anxiety-puking at the thought of being in the dark for four minutes, kicking Shaq out was social suicide. What’s more, Paramount Plaza had mounting beef with the beef man, who was not only behind on rent, but had also promised to pitch in a million dollar AC system for the Pit and never followed through (because that would be psychotic, it’s -225 degrees on Mars). Mars 2112 was put in time out: no more cool parties featuring SHOTS… with Justin Timberlake, which Paramount claimed were sullying their reputation (yeah, their reputation as narcs—it’s giving E.T. hazmat suit guys). Only company-approved bar mitzvahs and birthdays were allowed, which, as one might imagine, were way less profitable than “Laser Blaster” and “Terrestrial Terror”-fueled raves.
The rocket simulator’s death-trap seats “stopped working” (the same way mercury “stopped working” as a laxative or smoking “stopped working” as a hobby), forcing the nightmare pod to become a theater showing an optional educational video (even worse). The arcade games were older than God, the costumes growing more dank with every dancing Orion who wore them, and the tanking food, if not reportedly “raw” or “of questionable origin,” was “slathered with cheese wiz.”
Said my favorite reviewer, “I found a mouse fecie on the ground near a game reported it and they said it was supposed to be apart of the effect how is a mouse dropping supposed to be part of an effect we played some games because they gave us free coins for the poop dropping.”
Said a runner up, “One other odd, offputting fact: the women's bathroom had a candy vending machine in it! I don't know if the same can be said for the men's room...didn't notice one, but there could be one in there too.” The mere thought keeps me up at night.
In 2007, Maddox Jolie-Pitt and his pops Brad Pitt were papped in the Pit, but even that brief buzz was no help. Much like the birds out back waiting to be sacrificed, Mars 2112 was now a lame duck: bleeding money from blue lava-laced veins, and yet literally too expensive to take apart. (The cast and crew of my high school’s production of Pirates of Penzance could’ve stricken that shit in an hour, btw.)
By January 2012, the restaurant hired a liquidation specialist to put itself out of its misery. They boarded up the Pit, claiming they were “remodeling,” and then totally unsuspiciously auctioned off every object inside. The decrepit arcade games were immediately repossessed, but the rest of the furniture and memorabilia found its way to the homes of nostalgic tri-state area adults, including the whole ass rocket simulator (if you see that shit at someone’s house, call 911, or honestly the FBI tip line). The Pit was repaved in the hopes that an Apple store would materialize, but Tim Cook knew better than to challenge the Dollarita. Stephen and Ellen’s personal Equinox quietly claimed a corner, but the rest of the planet sat abandoned until Din Tai Fung had the balls to take over in 2024.
“Our whole mission is to convince people they are on Mars,” brogued Paschal in 1999, wiggling eyebrows “bushy” enough to become his sole descriptor in the New York Times. And in a way, convince us they did. I don’t quite remember if my dork ass was stupid enough to trust that I was stepping helmetless through a side door to another planet. But everyone’s disbelief was at the very least suspended. If not for method acting, I’m not sure those aliens could’ve mustered the mental fortitude to break it down inside a plastic prison, brunch after brunch. (Of the hours of Youtube home video footage I’ve scoured, 99% features a jailed kid in rancid spandex, doing the sprinkler or macarena at gunpoint.) And if not for buying into the magic, I’m not sure a single chaperone would willingly return to this place described as “memorably horrible in so many ways,” “not fun,” and “thought I was going to die.”
So why did they? Because going to literal real space was worth the hassle. Sure, the Apollo 13 guys “thought they were going to die,” but then they got a badass anecdote to never shut up about forever.
In a Time Out man-on-the-street clip, a guy lurks like a reverse bridge troll outside the Pit, eager to invite passersby to recall their own child NASA recruit days (or grownup nights slurping “Orgasmic Comet”s (how did that make the menu)). And he doesn’t even have to ask: people clock the logo on the poster he’s holding and throw themselves into the shot, raving that “there were Martians” and “it was a whole vibe.” Even online commenters volunteer stories, one reminiscing, “my cousin Kimi was terrified of the bathrooms. 8.5 stars.” Sounds like a real space mission to me—certainly worth coughing up the $2 rocket fare to a mad scientist host described as “confusing and pompous.”
Riddle me this: if the Pit is “not a portal to Area 51,” why is it on 51st? And why did the completely impractical high-school-sized basement restaurant sit empty for 12 years, if not so the Feds could seal the wormhole and quarantine the ducks? All I’m saying is, it was rare, we were there, and it’s suspiciously recommended in a 2002 blog post by Neil deGrasse Tyson. We’re not alone in the Universe, and to New Yorkers oft-swallowed and forgotten by the Humongous Forever 21 stampede, that’s an oddly comforting thought. When NASA finally nuts up and allows us to return, there’ll be Quasar Quesadillas and Mars’tinis to greet us. And in that case, take me to your leader—me and Empress Gloriana have a lot to catch up on.
