Hogs & Heifers is hanging up its bra for good.
The iconic honky-tonk outpost in the heart of the Meatpacking District will serve its last $3 can of PBR on Aug. 23.
“I’m heartbroken,” co-founder and owner Michelle Dell told the Daily News. “I’ve raised this business by hand for 23 years. At the end of the day, it’s like a losing a child.”
Like many a New York City institution, Hogs & Heifers is falling victim to a real-estate market that is even hotter than the bikini-clad bartenders who dance atop the bar.
Thor Equities purchased the building on the corner of Washington and W. 13th Sts. in 2013 for about $100 million, and when Hogs’ lease expired last year, the proposed rent jumped to $60,000 a month, from $14,000.
Dell said the bar could afford to pay $40,000 a month, just barely, by cutting staff and eliminating Christmas bonuses, but $60,000 is untenable. To illustrate her point, she jokingly estimated that she’d have to raise the price of a can of Pabst from $3 to $17.
“They don’t give a s—,” Dell said of Thor Equities and its boss, Joe Sitt. “At the end of the day Thor is a company that deals with chain brands. They make a big display of how honored they are to be in a historic neighborhood, but then they decimate everything that made it historic. What are you going to put in, another Le Pain Quotidien?”
When Hogs opened in 1992, the rent was $3,000 a month. The Meatpacking District was still a sketchy area with fetish clubs and prostitutes. But butchers were eventually supplanted by chic clothing stores and restaurants, a transformation that culminated with the High Line’s opening in 2009 and the neighborhood’s arrival as a major tourist destination.
The tourists loved Hogs & Heifers, too.
“I’ve seen people walk in here and say this place is disgusting, then have a shot and beer and are dancing on the bar,” says longtime bartender Ashley Phillips.
That’s the spirit of Hogs & Heifers, where women are encouraged to get up on the bar for a dance with a bartender – as well as encouraged to remove their bras and hang them on the wall.
Phillips estimated that 16,000 bras have been removed from the walls since the bar opened.
It’s the kind of place where the bartender is in a bikini top and cowboy boots screaming “Born to be Wild” into a bullhorn. And that was just Wednesday night.
Over the years, Paul McCartney, Julia Roberts and a host of other celebrities have dropped by.
“This is a tragedy,” said Jim Blanchard, 49, from Queens, who has been drinking at Hogs for 20 years. “The Meatpacking District is not place I would hang out otherwise. I’m not paying $18 for a beer.”
Thor Equities did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Yet industry vets say the $60,000 a month in rent for the 1,250-square-foot Hogs space is not astronomical by current standards.
“Retailers will pay that all day long in that neighborhood,” said real-estate maven Faith Hope Consolo of Douglas Elliman. “In an area as in vogue as this one, they’ll pay $1,000 a foot for the best spaces.”
The Las Vegas branch of Hogs, which opened in 2005, will remain open, and the New York staff is carefully cataloguing all the taxidermy and bras in case another Manhattan location is found soon. But Dell isn’t optimistic.
“There is no room for the small, independent business in New York,” says Dell. “This is a city that is throwing its history to the curb.”
With Katherine Clarke
SIDEBAR: The 5 greatest moments at Hogs & Heifers
A Juggs magazine model picking up a chair with her breasts.
A snowball fight between Hogs staff and Brass Monkey bar staff.
James Gandolfini asking staff to keep his presence quiet because he wasn’t supposed to be drinking.
Bartenders handing out free pizza and drinks to 9/11 responders.
Julia Roberts dancing on the bar in 1996 and leaving her bra behind.
