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This venue is closed.

The view of the Chelsea boys parading down Eighth Avenue through this bar's floor-to-ceiling front windows is enough for the place to live up to its name. But to get a gander at the bar's actual namesake, venture further in, to the wall of windows in the back, beyond which a New York City skyline rendered in ultraviolet-sensitive paint on the far wall of a narrow courtyard glows beautifully (if not all that realistically). The theme is also carried out, subtly, in the small, elevated sitting area nearby (the better to notice who's hanging out there and thus cruise them), as well as less subtly in the nine flat-screen televisions mounted throughout the bar. And yet, in spite of its ambiguous concept (or perhaps because of it), View Bar, though certainly a Chelsea standby, has virtually no individual identity. That said, it's still worth a stop if you're bar-crawling your way down the strip. — Sean Kennedy