Max's Kansas City

11. Max's was for the artists of the 60s and 70s what Cedar Tavern was to testosterone-driven Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline; to "cooked" poets John Ashbery, as opposed to the "raw" of Allen Ginsberg's coterie; and to the feuding critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. As Watson puts it, the evolution of New York artist hangouts of the period could be broken down into this equation:

Polly's = bohemian ideology
The San Remo = hipster nonconformist lifestyle
The Cedar Tavern = macho artist buddy hangout
Max's Kansas City = sixties aristocracy + hipster/hippie bohemian ideology + downtown visibility + fashion + art + music