Coyote Ugly Saloon

Outside the Coyote Ugly Saloon in New York.

The Coyote Ugly Saloon first opened on January 27, 1993 in New York City, after New York University alumna Liliana Lovell eschewed a life on Wall Street for a life in bartending. Having held several bartending jobs during college where Lovell perfected her unique routine of dancing on the bar, singing, and challenging customers to drinking contests, she applied her business model of "beautiful girls + booze = money" to Coyote Ugly. She began hiring girls and training them in the wild routine, which included such antics as chugging alcohol, setting light to it then breathing fire. While some girls were good at singing, others good at dancing, and others good at yelling, Lovell found that not all the girls were talented in each of the three aspects, so she often paired girls with complementary abilities.

The bar was propelled into the national spotlight in 1997 when former bartender Elizabeth Gilbert wrote of her experiences in a story for Gentlemen's Quarterly magazine, called "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon." A movie based on the bar soon followed, and the film Coyote Ugly opened in August 2000 with Maria Bello in the role of Lil and Piper Perabo as an aspiring songwriter in New York City who becomes the newest "Coyote." It grossed over $100 million worldwide.

Soon after, in 2001, the second Coyote Ugly Saloon opened in Las Vegas at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino. In 2002, a third franchise opened in New Orleans' French Quarter. Additional bars continued to open across the United States in the years to come, with Coyote Ugly Saloons now located in Atlanta, Dallas, Tampa, Philadelphia, Chicago, Charlotte, Panama City, Austin, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., Denver, and Nashville.

Per corporate website (verified June 17, 2006) "Atlanta, Boston, and Philadelphia bars have closed".
Washington, D.C. bar has also closed (verified Sept. 15, 2006)

As of July 20th, 2003, Liliana Lovell had relocated from the New York area to New Orleans, and was primarily involved in the day-to-day operation of the Coyote Ugly bar in the French quarter of that city. This was not widely known at the time, and some still contacted the New York location looking for her.

In 2006, "The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search" became a reality TV show on CMT. The premise of the show is that Lovell is auditioning girls to become the next "coyote". With the help from a few of her "coyote mentors", Lil trains girls to become bartenders, dancers, and all around entertainers, and one will prevail to become a regular coyote and win $25,000.

Trivia

• The phrase "coyote ugly" comes from an urban slang term for a situation that results in waking up next to an ugly bedmate after a night of drinking; in such a situation one might prefer to chew off one's own arm, like a coyote with its paw in a trap, rather than wake up the bedmate.

• The scottish presenter of the The Late Late Show (CBS TV series), Craig Ferguson, once worked there as a bouncer.

References

• Coyote Ugly Saloon (official site)

See also

• Bartop dancing

External links

• Coyote Ugly Las Vegas (Virtual Tours of interiors)