Everyone who has been there can tell you about his or her first time visiting The Village Idiot. My first time there was four years ago one Friday after work. Country music blared and two female bartenders slung drinks while wearing very little. The bar was filled with a motley assortment of office workers, college students, bikers, laborers, and shady characters. The floor was a scramble of spilled beer and spent peanut shells. The back room had space at the tables and we settled in to drink cheap cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and eat free peanuts. A very tall transvestite in a short skirt played pool with a gaggle of frat guys.

The Village Idiot, on 14th Street near 9th Avenue, has been one of New York's quintessential dive bars for over a decade. The Idiot could be counted on as the perfect antithesis of the ever-increasing numbers of sleek and trendy bars that have encroached on Greenwich Village and the gritty meatpacking district. The décor is a patchwork of alcohol signs and broken furniture. To use the bathroom is to engage in an experiment of human toleration of germs and bad odor. Its owner is known for being able to bite through beer cans.

One time a co-worker of mine objected to going to the Village Idiot. She said the bartenders were topless. This was not the case. The bartenders are always fully clothed. One bartender wore either a mesh shirt or round price stickers like one would find on loaves of bread, instead of a traditional shirt.

The Village Idiot was also famous for its somewhat rowdy clientele. Most people can tell you about a fight they witnessed there or were involved in. My one confrontation at the Village Idiot involved a meat-headed sailor I had to put in his place. He was offended that I had taken his hat off the head of a slutty sea hag who was wearing it. It was fleet week and I soon found myself buying drinks and expressing my profound patriotic gratitude to a lonely female sailor who wandered in. She eyed me nervously as I loudly and drunkenly extolled the virtue of places like the Village Idiot and praised her service to our nation and her good taste.

But New York is unforgiving. Like many of New York's better establishments, a greedy landlord is pricing it out of existence. It is scheduled to close its doors soon. One can argue the economic factors. Wouldn't you do the same thing, a friend asked me, if I were a landlord? I'd like to think not. It's not like the bar wasn't paying rent. It is kicked out for pure greed. The bar's landlord can squeeze a few more dollars from a newer tenant, but the neighborhood will suffer immeasurably, and New York's drinking life will be the lesser for it.

I went back to the Village Idiot for one last visit. It was a sleepy Sunday and when I arrived about half a dozen men sat at the bar drinking beer and ogling Michelle, the buxom blonde bartender who was wearing a cowboy hat. Several of the beer taps were out. There was no running water in the toilets. Tiny flies swarmed and scurried about the warped wood of the bar.

Over the bar was posted a large sign notifying its patrons about the bar's upcoming closing. The sign read in part: WE THANK YOU FOR YEARS OF GREAT TIMES -- ESPECIALLY THE ONES WE (AND YOU) ACTUALLY REMEMBER!!

As per usual country music blared from its totally countrified jukebox. "You know what's really scary," a large-breasted redhead who sat next to me at the bar said, "I know line dances to every one of these songs." She knew the words to a lot of the songs too. "I'm kicking myself for not coming here more often," she said, becoming only mildly disgusted as she shook a large cockroach off of her arm. I fed some dollars into the jukebox and played some Johnny Cash and David Allen Coe.

Also sitting next to me at the bar was Bill McCormick, a retired Wall Street trader who lives in Brooklyn and has been a regular at the Village Idiot for several years. Many of the bartenders who work at the Village Idiot will find work at the Patriot, a bar farther downtown that is owned by the same owner. Bill won't go to the Patriot though, after more than 30 years on Wall Street, he's done drinking with Wall Street types. He likes a more diverse and down-to-earth crowd. He'll go to Rocky Sullivan's instead.

And so another great New York institution prepares to close. There are many imitators, other bars that offer country music on the jukebox and cheap beer, but the Village Idiot had a rare character that will never be duplicated. There are sure to be other good bars that may be in danger of being priced out of existence by greedy landlords. Support these endangered places of good character: drink heavily more often.