Customers, caught in Port Authority's piss-scented shadow, chugged pre-hipster Pabst. They ogled Duff's dizzying horror memorabilia (including a coffin, natch, and a hearse "Reserved for Bin Laden"). Drinkers clapped for retired postal worker Dancin' Dominick, a septuagenarian who boogied to Danzig "like your grandfather on crack," according to Duff.
The gritty halcyon era had a president's shelf life. Dominick died in 2002, around the time the nabe started whitewashing its needles-and-hookers image. A couple years later, Duff, a New Jersey native and former strip-club bouncer known to sport collarbone-length facial hair, was fried: "When every weekend's the fourth of July for five years, it can be a bit much."
Duff split Bellevue last year, taking his coffin and collection of disembodied doll heads. Westmoreland and the bar remained, but stripped of decor it became a nude-brick cave with misplaced turpitude. A recent Friday night witnessed a sad Village Idiot revival: A glossy-eyed punk rockette, tape covering her ta-tas, and a midriff-baring patron performed bar-top gyrations like catatonic, nursing-home escapees.
Let's leave that image behind and jump to Williamsburg. In 2004, a former check-cashing store became an electronic music outpost known as, duh, Check Cashing. It sat on a construction-thick corner of near-waterfront property, but the noise police still ended the party. Enter Jimmy Duff. Disgusted by downtown Manhattan's lack of downtown-ness ("It's all yuppie bars and lounges," he grumbles), he gazed across the river to East Village, part deux.
"I call Kent Avenue, Avenue E," he says.
After a swift signature, the shuttered Check Cashing (already built out with bar and bathroom) became a heavy-metal bacchanal in a spot barely bigger than a studio apartment. He dubbed it, duh, Duff's, and it could drive a claustrophobe cuckoo.
Duff's corners, crannies, walls and ceiling are covered with wall-to-wall B-movie schlock. Fang-baring masks share space with Jesus junk, Elvis clocks and a sign reading: "Street Girls Bringing in Sailors Must Pay for Rooms in Advance."
If things look familiar, they should. "Bellevue was 100 percent my vision, so why should I start out fresh again?" Duff says. While the coffin stays in storage (Duff nixed plans to suspend it from the ceiling) and the Bin Laden hearse is no more (replaced by a gold-and-white casket carrier fitted with a disco ball), Hell's Kitchen's ghosts still loom. "Best of Citysearch" awards and Bellevue memorabilia, such as a fundraising drive for Panama's afro (a nod to the old Kentucky Gentleman–loving barkeep) devour wall space. Hungry for entertainment? Some nights you can watch ancient videos of Dancin' Dominick performing his craft. Other evenings, worship his glass-encased satin jacket. It hangs above a dorm-sized Dominick poster—all hook nose and British teeth—abutting Jack Nicholson's Shining mug.
"He's our icon," Duff says, keying in on the reason behind continuing success: well-earned nostalgia.
While bar owners in Billyburg's teeming market (a new saloon for every week in 2005!) might have trouble attracting clients on low-traffic Kent, Jimmy Duff has little problem. Why? Pre-fabricated clientele. Bellevue's die-hard, all-borough patrons (and New Jerseyites on the weekends) now L it to Duff's.
Thanks to a generous occupancy inspector, 58 Metrocard-lean barflies can cram inside, downing one-dollar PBRs nightly until 9 p.m. Cow-print stools are in short order, so punk rockers, hipsters and old-school metalheads jostle for legroom. It's a potentially bubbling cauldron kept on low-danger simmer. Even when Duff breaks out Bellevue's infamous fog machine.
"It's chaotic. You can't even see your hand in front of your face," Duff says with a demonic laugh.
Come springtime, you can avoid fog by stepping onto the gritty patio. Smoking and drinking are permitted, as is grilling. Duff plans to distribute free hot dogs and hamburgers, completing the apocalyptic picnic tapestry.
It will be one of a kind. But two of a kind? Duff owns enough flea-market memorabilia to fill another bar, which is a distinct option. A second (or, really, third) dive, however, is not a harbinger for a Coyote Ugly–like Duff's chain (though black "I'm Back Ya Bastids!!!" tees featuring Jimmy Duff's face are available for the low price of $12).
"That would be so fucking lame," he says, shushing the chain-dive concept. Anyway, he doesn't have time for such schemes. There's still unfinished business at Duff's: "I still need to find a way to get the coffin into the mix."
—Joshua M. Bernstein
28 N. 3rd St. (Kent Ave.), Williamsburg, 718-302-0411.
