All Bets Are On
Las Vegas is borrowing New York City's boozing. The manicure-happy Beauty Bar now offers a Vegas outpost. The New York?New York hotel features a Pabst-happy Coyote Ugly. Heck, even CBGB's is pondering a transfer to Sin City, where it would nicely snuggle into the proposed East Village entertainment complex.
Such blatant borrowing begs the question: Can the desert city create, not steal and imitate, a decent drunken experience? The answer is found in the Double Down Saloon, which, for more than a decade, has been Vegas' self-annointed "clubhouse for the lunatic fringe." Here, rockers, hookers and ne'er do wells gamble, listen to midget-fronted bands and chug Ass Juice like it's life-giving nectar (more on that later).
I visited the DD once, and it received my dive stamp of approval. With beer-stained wood floors and gutter-punk jukebox, the always-open bar was a porcupine keeping the Strip's family-sanitized neon at bay. Whenever a friend visited Vegas, I opened their doors to the Double Down world. And now the Double Down has opened its doors to New York.
"We cleaned up the old dirt and prepared it for our own grime," says Don Frazer, the manager of NYC's Double Down. That was about all he and the construction crew could accomplish, actually; they took just five hectic days to re-brand Avenue A's Julep as a Vegas dive. (Julep relocated across the street to the former Boysroom.)
Architecture-wise, the room is identical to Julep: massive picture windows lead to a long room loaded with tables and red-backed benches. There's the same elbow-worn wooden bar, and the bathrooms remain derelict. What sets the DD apart are its skull-, dice- and boob-centric murals and unfortunate drink selection.
First, there's the bacon martini ($7). It's more repellant than it sounds: Lightly cooked bacon is infused in vodka, then served Arctic-cold in a martini glass. An oily sheen coats the surface like an Exxon spill, while undercooked bacon flakes swirl around. It's the first drink designed to destroy arteries and your liver. On a recent evening, I sip the martini-just once. It's pure meaty evil, like drinking marinated pig's blood.
"Girls seem to like them more than guys," blond bartender Jaimie Foley offers rather enigmatically. "And the bacon-vodka bloody Mary is awesome. Want to try one?"
I politely decline and order another drink I shouldn't have: the Ass Juice. It's a viscous, brown-green mixture of a dozen liquors, none of which Foley will reveal. "We have our secrets," she says, also motioning to the TV offering blood-splattered B-movie fare. "We won't tell anyone what's on TV, either." (One night I catch a flick's title: Sadism.)
I can tell you that the Ass Juice is, peculiarly, palatable. It's smooth, with a mule kick of alcohol. At five bucks apiece, the drink's almost a bargain. Buy two for $11, like the advertisements surrounding the bar suggest, and you're a moron.
"Maybe people can't do math, so they think they're getting a deal," Foley says.
Other drinks, however, aren't a deal. Pints of Spaten and Boddington's run $6, while Coors Light costs five. The saving grace is the four-buck Double Down lager, which tastes like Killian's Red's white-trash cousin. Better yet, until 7 p.m. nightly, drinks are buy-one, get-one free. It's not quite hitting the jackpot, but it's as close as drinkers will come at this Double Down. Instead of video-poker machines (found in the Vegas version), money-wasters are relegated to the buck-fifty pool table, as well as a jukebox reminding you that punk isn't dead: Pennywise, Dead Boys, Adolescents and, my 16-year-old favorite, Screeching Weasel, piercingly blare. It's a fine soundtrack to drown your brain while drinking with the tattooed set.
Friday and Saturday nights (like anywhere Downtown, truthfully) see the bar slam-dunk packed. When the weather warms up, the crowd can pour into the backyard and grub on BBQ. It'll be a nice addition to the East Village, much like the Double Down itself. Sure, the drink prices aren't Bowery-bum cheap, but then again, Bowery bums are nearly as extinct as passenger pigeons.
But here's the rub: I believe this grog shop will grow into a cesspool of inequity, if only to make its older brother proud and, like all outsiders, prove it belongs in New York. It'll take months of graffiti, vomit and assorted unfortunate fluids, but I sense deliciously evil times in the future, with or without that goddamn bacon martini.
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