The Hungry Duck

The Hungry Duck was a legendary Moscow bar of the 1990s. At the peak of its popularity, "the Duck", as it was known, was an icon of Moscow hedonism, an unbridled, sexual, and sometimes violent venue. The Duck's "Ladies Night" was exceptionally popular, bringing in as many as 920 women in a single night. The patrons of the Duck were uninhibited, free to dance upon the bar and remove their clothing. The Duck was founded and owned by Canadian Doug Steele, (of Moosehead fame) and "business partners" from the Republic of Georgia.

Doug remarked on how the Duck's environment came to be:

A lot of the things that became Hungry Duck trademarks started out as simple adjustments to the small space the club gave people to dance in. The whole dancing-on-the-bartop thing began at a Pepsi Foods corporate party shortly after we opened. They'd been drinking and wanted to dance. That's what's so great about Russians: they're not as self-conscious and inhibited as Westerners. My philosophy was just to let them do what they want, see where it went, because it was clear that the customers knew exactly how to enjoy themselves if only given the chance. My only job was to market it. After word got out that customers not only got away with dancing on the furniture but were actually encouraged, others started doing it too. From there, it just snowballed.

In 1999, the Duck was targeted by influential members of the Russian government, after a tour of the establishment scandalized authorities who witnessed young drunken Russian women voluntarily performing simulated sex acts on a Nigerian male stripper named "Dillon" while the bar played the Soviet National Anthem. The Duck was subsequently a target of Russian media and denounced over thirty times on the floor of the Duma. In the following months the Hungry Duck was inordinately struck by police raids, Health Inspectors, Fire Marshals, Narcotics Agents, and other local authorities. in 2000, Steele was forced out of the business by his Georgian "partners" The club continued to operate in the same location (adjacent the Kuznetsky Most metro station), but as Moscow's citizenry grew in prosperity, the public hedonism that made the establishment (in)famous became less commonplace. Finally in 2008 the establishment lost its liquor license and eventually closed its doors in the spring of 2009.

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