Remove the Notification Center icon from the Menu Bar

Solution 1:

So you can easily disable it with

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist; killall NotificationCenter

You can remove the icon with

sudo rm /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/menuitemNormal.pdf 

but the blank space will remain. There is an app called Bartender I've seen a few people promoting to fix this issue.

Solution 2:

To follow on @walshie4's answer above: The second command will not execute with El Capitan due to System Integrity Protection.

You must first boot into recovery mode, start a terminal and execute the following:

csrutil disable; reboot

Also note that after deleting the menuItemNormal.pdf file, the area is still a blank clickable space.