vip in the city

Girls Gone Wild

Final Saturday!

JD’s bachelorette party tonight. I was unsure what to expect of the evening: based on my last encounter with the Kiwi club, alcohol-induced blackouts were a distinct possibility; the email exchanges among the participants in the days leading up to the event strongly suggested that other mischievous activity would be in the works.

The ladies’ night began with several hours of tequila-fueled revelry. Around 10pm, I was instructed to meet the group at Duvet for Part Two of JD’s “last fling before the ring.”

Below: The nearby Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, all prettily lit for the holidays. It was the tallest building in the world for four years, eventually ceding the title to the Woolworth Building in 1913.

I stepped inside the crowded lounge, and easily picked out our woman of the hour, who was outfitted in rather distinctive headgear and massive bling. The group had commandeered a table (not a mattress) which, by the time I arrived, was littered with wineglasses and other classy — and apparently very popular! — bachelorette party accoutrements.

The back of JD’s shirt was emblazoned with a lengthy and daunting checklist of tasks which she was to complete that evening, setting the agenda for the reminder of the long night. After quickly dispatching with a couple of the tamer items at Duvet, it was time to get down and dirty.

Red Rock West Saloon opened under the abandoned train trestles of the High Line in the Spring of 1996. In its former incarnation, the corner was a blues bar called East Boondocks. Over the past decade, the bar’s neighbors have gotten progressively more upscale, while the bar itself has remained unabashedly trashy and gloriously rambunctious. Equal parts beer ‘n’ whiskey roadhouse and country dance saloon — any doubt why we were the third bachelorette party to descend there that night?

The easiest comparison to Red Rock West is the similarly themed Coyote Ugly — before it went from beloved East Village dive to GQ feature story to awful movie to national (soon to be international) franchise. The smell of sweat and booze permeates the bumper-stickered walls; wagon wheels suspend from the paint-peeled ceiling as monster rock and honky tonk blare from the speakers. One half expects to see a mechanical bull bucking in the back room. The main attraction: scantily clad, well-endowed female bartenders who mount the long bar for impromptu hoedowns. They are a talented group — though suspiciously… er, “professional” in manner and dress — gleeful in their raunchy stomping, thrilling the crowds with (literally) flashy bar tricks: taking a lighter to plumes of alcohol sprayed from their mouths, and in a grand finale, setting the bar ablaze with whiskey to dance like demons among the flames.

The staff is remarkably generous in their sharing of the well-worn bartop, regularly inviting (only female) patrons aboard, and at one point: all three future brides.

Step inside, walk this way
You and me babe — hey, hey!