A few months ago, I met a Russian lawyer in New York who I asked for suggestions about what I should do during my semester in Moscow. Rather than giving me the usual guidebook trash about the Kremlin and the Tretyakov Gallery, he instead told me, in the imperative tone of a Russian speaking English, "You will go to the Hungry Duck Bar, you will drink and meet girls, you will dance on the bar, you will have a good time."

This lawyer was not the only person I met in America who knew about this strange watering hole. College kids, desperate middle-aged men, and The New York Times all practically commanded me to check out the Duck. "That's where I would have spent all my time if I hadn't been engaged," Keith Gessen '98 told me of his time in Moscow.

About three months later, I found myself in the thick of Ladies' Night at the Hungry Duck. In theory, I should not have seen this part of the evening--Ladies' Night means that women get in and drink free until 9 p.m. while men are not even allowed in the bar. At nine, the bar opens its doors to a limited number of salivating males. As patron Eliot Hodge `02 explains, "Ladies' night at the Duck is basically a form of free prostitution."

By a strange twist of fate and connections, however, I got in about an hour before the rest of the men, just in time to see the male strip-show. As the stripper stood on the bar and disrobed a willing teenage girl, the bartender suggestively sprayed the crowd with soda water. The sounds of moans and screams issued from the speakers, and hundreds of drunken women screamed for more, and I realized that I was not at the Grille anymore.

"One time the stripper had a girl stripped fully naked up on the bar," said manager Melissa Brooks of a particularly raucous Ladies' Night. "He asked for a condom, and someone from the crowd tossed one up to him. He was all ready to go when one of the bartenders stopped him."

A live sex show on the bar involving one of the patrons may be too much even for the Hungry Duck, but not by much. On a typical night, so many people dance on the bar it is hard to see the bartenders. Stripteases occur spontaneously, leaving women in various states of undress. The male patrons, many of them foreign businessmen and American servicemen, shuffle along the beer-soaked floor, ogling and groping the women, waiting for one to respond favorably, or to tumble off the bar and into their arms. At the Duck, the hormones flow as freely as the alcohol. "If you can't score here," owner Douglas Steele told me, "you might as well give up all hope."

This crazy scene, one of Moscow's landmarks, was at its most surreal one Friday night a few weekends ago when Steele celebrated his birthday with the staff and patrons. As the kitchen rolled out a huge birthday cake, a 70-year-old babushka dressed scantily in tight green leather and swinging a green leather purse danced in the center of the bar. She was not part of the planned birthday festivities, however: a Russian film-maker was shooting a scene in which the Methuselan sex kitten was the main attraction. The people at the bar loved it and the babushka started to get into it. "The guy shooting the film warned the bartenders not to give her too much to drink," Melissa said, "because she would want to take her clothes off, too." (Apparently, this old Russian grandmother is a famous film star in Amsterdam.)

But the threat of the spectacle of an old woman humiliating herself is not the most severe danger confronting patrons of the Duck. While I was waiting to meet Melissa, a group of men in sunglasses and leather jackets brusquely walked into the bar. I later found out that they had been in a vicious barfight with the bouncers a few weekends before, and were now meeting to see what would be done about it.

The meeting that was about to take place was not with Steele, but rather with his high-level mafia protection. They were supposed to find out who these people were--namely, what kind of connections they had--and that would determine the consequences of the fight. "They probably want money," said Melissa, "but they're probably nobodies, so they'll probably get nothing."

Every bar and club (and most businesses) in Moscow have mafia and security connections called a "krysha," or "roof." The high-level people, usually well established in the Russian Mafia world, are paid to look out for the establishment's interests. In a city where media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky runs his business out of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's office, mafiosi sit in the Duma--Russia's national legislature--and the sale of pirated videos is a quasi-legitimate business, the line between legal and illegal procedure is hopelessly fuzzy.

Hungry Duck owner Steele recently told Russia Review magazine that he spends about $500,000 a year on his "roof," from paying off the local police precinct to buying the higher-up connections in the militia and the FSB (the main successor organization to the KGB). Since he has to spend another $500,000 a year to protect his other bar, the quieter Chesterfield's, Steele loses 10 to 20 percent of his annual profits just to the "interests."

For Steele, however, it's all part of the cost of running one of the most unique joints in Moscow. Sitting in his office, Steele switches through the video-security channels, revelling in his wild creation. He flips to a picture of the front door and watches the crowd trying to push their way in. He flips to the bar camera and sees a drunken woman teetering on the bar. "Watch her," he says with evident glee. "She's about to fall off."

Rumors constantly circulate that the Duck will be shut down. A recent advertisement, though, stresses that the rumors are not true: "NO the Duck is NOT closing!!! It lives and continues to be just plain crazy, stupid bar!!!" The tone of the ad matches the place itself: reminiscent of a simpler age when women were simply paid for in goats and dragged off by their hair. If the ad is to be believed, The Hungry Duck will be serving up its uniquely orgiastic take on glasnost for years to come.

Marshall Lewy is the heal of FM's Moscow Bureau.