Parting Shots

"THE LAST TIME there I saw, in the span of one minute, a guy in a suit with his pants around his ankles, an old man beating off in a stall and someone shoving his hand up a girl's skirt," says Kevin Fitzpatrick, editor of website NYCBP.com (New York City Bartenders & Patrons). "There's no place like the Village Idiot."

And, come August 1, there will be no more Village Idiot. The bar's lease is up and the white-trash 'tonk has been priced out. Why? As the New York Times sublimely observed, the Meatpacking District is hot! Sex and the City trumps cleavers and innards, and rental prices match those $500 Manolos.

"If I was gonna start charging $7.50 for a shot of Wild Turkey, I could stay open, but I refuse to do that," owner Tom McNeil (and founder of shot-and-beer halls Yogi's and the Patriot Saloon), has said. "This is a bar for regular people."

And the regular people have just lost the city's most storied hellhole. Again.

The original East Village Idiot closed in '93, but reopened in '94 in the then-carcass-heavy Meatpacking District. For 10 years, the Idiot anchored 9th Ave. and 14th St., dispensing near-illegal quantities of PBR, boobs and country music.

Its secret? According to writer Eddie Goldman, the Village Idiot is a cash bar—lots of Johnny, and no credit cards accepted. Implicit is McNeil's founding principle: Guys like getting shit-faced for cheap, ogling breasts and singing "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" like it's a mating call.

Here, suits mingle with electricians, frat boys with hipsters, and everyone shoots three-dollar Wild Turkey shots chased by foamy, six-dollar Coors pitchers. The hypercharged stew is kept boiling by buxom women whose finest assets are not making martinis.

At the Idiot, an ever-rotating troupe of navel-baring, sass-mouthed bartenders (no men, natch) serves canned beer beneath dirty bras, lovingly tacked to the wall. They break into spontaneous, bar-top two-steps—then shower patrons with suds and worse. They coyly banter about the Yankees, then Fuck you for not tipping, motherfucker. It is a sadistic charm; masochism means matching patrons, shot for shot.

"I try not to count how many I drink in a shift," says six-year veteran Jennifer.

Idiot 'tending is a demanding job, and the gruff clientele makes tenures fruit-fly brief. Jennifer, a brunette with a butterfly tattoo, has the solution.

"Act as crazy as you want and people will leave you alone. The guys can be rough," Jennifer says, especially during days, when Bukowski-like lifers and construction workers drink lunch. "But I'm from the Bronx—I can handle it."

But can anyone handle the stench? As Maxim editor Keith Blanchard observed when he learned of the closing: "The odor alone should have given the Idiot protected New York landmark status."

The bar's perfume is a retch-inducing cocktail of stale urine, puke, sweat, liquor, old smoke and testosterone.

"The smell hits you in the face like a baseball bat," Fitzpatrick says.

"I'm going to miss the scent," says Jennifer.

Well, I'm going to miss my refuge. When I moved here four years ago—a broke, apple-cheeked Ohioan—my savior was the Idiot. Thrifty pitchers sated my post-collegiate party palate, while heavy-handed 101-proof shots blunted big-city growing pains. The bar was my top-shelf dive.

When I didn't fear death.

Of my life's three near-fights, one brewed when I mistakenly cut the Idiot's bathroom line. The other time, owner McNeil—an unruly man prone to biting pint glasses—tried convincing a girlfriend to bartend, and my protest earned a threat of orifice-stretching harm. Yet the dive's biggest threat is its ability to engineer brain-cooking hangovers, of which I have lost count—and much memory.

Interestingly, most regulars don't know that come Aug. 1, memories will be the bar's only remnants. Closing has been kept under loose wraps.

"Most people come in here and are like, 'I heard this rumor…'" Jennifer says. "It's been mainly word-of-mouth whispers. And I have to break the news."

It's not particularly well-received news.

"Give us a little freedom; we need one or two classic dives left," says Jack Murphy, a nearly four-year regular.

"There's nowhere else around here to go in this swanky neighborhood," says David Salerno, an Idiot frequenter since 2000.

But it's not the end for the shot-slinging ladies. Most will relocate to McNeil's Tribeca haunt, the Patriot. Before that, the saloon's closing party—basically, a weekend-long debauch—promises epic bacchanalia. When the first Idiot closed in '93, rumor goes, McNeil declared all-you-can-drink on remaining liquor.

So if black-out inebriation is the bar's epitaph, Prince Marshall is the embodiment. Marshall, a 10-year regular, offers a tale that's part cautionary, part prideful—and all Idiot:

"The night started simply: I came to get a drink and play pool. There I am, drinking and winning, drinking and winning. I guess I drank and won a lot.

"The last thing I remember is the hot dogs. I hadn't eaten, and someone bet me how many hot dogs I could eat." (The Idiot, like Rudy's, once served free dogs.)

Marshall is unsure of the total dogs downed, but he is certain their stay in his stomach was brief.

"My buddy found me in the bathroom, but he couldn't open the door because I was passed out against the stall. He reached in and pushed me out of the way. So there I was—pants around my ankles, on the Idiot floor. A regular made sure no one fucked with me."

Then the bartenders, Natasha and Francesca, came in.

"I was naked. They didn't know what to do, so they called up Tom [McNeil]. Tom said to drag me outside and leave me inside the bus shelter. 'If he's not here, he's not our responsibility.'"

The Village Idiot will close its doors on, Sun., August 1. Come drink a final PBR and enjoy one last gag from the smell.