2021 Hog Wild for Kids Charity Ride

We are excited to announce that Hog Wild for Kids is BACK!

Hog Wild for Kids benefits the Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation and their annual Camp Cartwheel. Camp Cartwheel is designed to enable children receiving care and treatment for life threatening illnesses, along with their siblings, to have a week away from it all and take part in a variety of fun activities.

Our 16th Annual Hog Wild for Kids will kick off with rider registrations taking place at Hogs & Heifers from 8am – 10am with kickstands up at 10:30am. The ride location is TBD but we will be sure to keep you posted as soon as we have it nailed down. In addition to the funds raised by rider registrations, we will be holding raffles and a live auction back at Hogs & Heifers after our ride. In 2019, Hogs & Heifers raised enough to send 105 kids to Camp Cartwheel!!

To learn more about Camp Cartwheel go to: https://nvccf.org/camp-cartwheel/.

Stay tuned for more information and pre-registration information.

Hogs & Heifers Saloon

2019 Ride

A few weeks back, we had to postpone our annual Hog Wild for Kids Charity Ride due to high winds. Since Hog Wild is one of our most cherished events, this was a hard decision for us to make. How would the turnout be if we held this event two weeks later than originally planned? Simple, our patrons and fans still came out in full force, and we had one of our best Hog Wild rides ever!

Below are the numbers from Sunday’s event passed along from our owner Michelle!

We raised just shy of $30,000 for NCCF’s Camp Cartwheel. We will round up the difference to give donate a total of $30,000, which pays for 120 kids to go camp! Each week session has 125 kids, so we’ve essentially raised enough to pay for a full week of camp registrations. There are two, one week sessions of Camp Cartwheel. Camp does not start until mid July, so we have decided to keep passing the buckets in the bar thru the month of June.

We started June 2nd with $7348 that we had raised in May by passing the buckets around the bar. And $2583 Raised on-line on our donate page… this was our first time using an online platform for donations, $2500 for raised on-line is amazing, THANK YOU. This gives us a total of $9931 at the start of May 2nd.

Breakdown of How the Money was Raised:

$7348 Collection Buckets

$2583 Donation Page On-Line

$4190 Ride Registration and Raffle Ticket Sales

$7800 Live Auction

$625 Silent Auction

$500 Cash Donation for 2 kids ($250 from 2 different people)

$6850 4 individual checks from 4 different people

Total $29,896.00

We sold $3000 raffle tickets. Tix were $1 each or 50 tickets for $40

Incredible day!!!!

– Michelle Dell

What can we say? Our patrons are some of the best people around. We can’t thank y’all enough for taking part in this annual event, hundreds of kids are going to be happy campers this July! With $30,000 in donations raised for Hog Wild, and $10,000 raised for the Love Hope Strength Foundation during our Punk Rock Hoedown, that’s over 40k donated to charity in the last two weeks… that’s fuckin’ amazing!

THANK YOU HOGS FAMILY!

Hogs & Heifers Saloon_Hog Wild for Kids_YouTube

PHOTOGRAPHY PROVIDED BY SHAUN BRUSCHER WITH NOREMAC STUDIOS

THANK YOU RUSS BROWN MOTORCYCLE ATTORNEYS FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT OF OUR CHARITY EVENTS!

Hogs & Heifers Saloon

DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS

21+ w/ID | NO COVER

DIVE BAR

BIKER BAR

HONKY TONK BAR

ROCK & ROLL BAR

PUNK ROCK BAR

MOTORCROSS BAR

WORLD FAMOUS BAR

YOUR FAVORITE BAR…

GIRLS ALWAYS ON THE BAR

THE HISTORY OF MICHELLE AND HOGS & HEIFERS SALOON

The idea for opening a bar and calling it Hogs & Heifers was conceived in, of all places, a bar. Allan Dell was a self-proclaimed functioning alcoholic and figured he spent enough time sitting at a bar and that he might as well make some money while he sat there. Allan’s two friends and drinking buddies were a Master Carpenter and a Graphic Design Artist and he talked them into helping him build a bar. They would all drink for free and get laid regularly and for three broke guys in their early to mid twenties, who could ask for anything more. Allan’s father agreed to finance his project if he could find an experienced bar owner to “father” him in the business. Enter Tom McNeil, legend in the Dive Bar business. McNeil owned the Village Idiot in Manhattan’s East Side, which was the Boys’ favorite watering hole, where they could sit for hours drinking ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon for a $1.75 a can. Allan knew that he wanted to open a bar that had to do with motorcycles and women and the original logo did, in fact, include an illustration of a chopper. The Boys were trying to come up with a name, while sitting in the Village Idiot one afternoon…”Hogs & something”. On the wall above the bar was a sign for a Heifer Auction, and a heifer being a cow that has not yet been bred, is essentially a virgin cow. The name Hogs & Heifers was born. The fact that the bar ended up being in a real meat market was simply due to the affordable rent at the time, but it was a perfect match and had a great deal to do with the success of the business.

Hogs & Heifers Saloon was to be an all American classic country and southern rock-n-roll dive bar. Allan knew he wanted it to have the look and feel of a gin mill and that he wanted to hang “stuff” all over the walls. Other than that, there was little else that he had thought about. He had a lot of friends who liked to drink and planned on throwing a party for them every night. Allan may never have imagined that it would turn into the famous bar it is today, but it was absolutely his pride and joy and he considered it his greatest achievement and reveled in its quick success.

Having entered the picture prior to its opening, Michelle Dell was the first bartender to be hired. The routine performed and style of dress worn by the bartenders behind the bar, which has made Hogs & Heifers famous, was born from Michelle’s heart. Hogs & Heifers opened in November of 1992 during an unseasonably cold winter. There was literally no heat source of any kind in the bar and it was so cold you could often see your own breath. Both Allan and Michelle believed in the notion of less is more when it came to dressing behind the bar and it was always freezing; did we mention the bar had no heat? Finally, Allan bought these little space heaters that did next to nothing to provide heat and with Necessity being the Mother of all Invention, Michelle began dancing on the bar–in the empty bar–as a means to keep warm. She would throw a few dollars in the jukebox and just get up on the bar and dance. Little did she know it would become the trademark theme of Hogs & Heifers and lead to countless celebrities dancing on the bar and donating their bras. The Julia Roberts photo was seen around the world and her bra still hangs there today, albeit hidden beneath some 18,000 bras! Michelle’s famous routine has inspired a Major Motion Picture and a league of copy cat Bars.

Essentially, Allan and Michelle, and their friends, were just a bunch of kids with nothing to lose and they threw a party that they enjoyed. They were fortunate and blessed that so many others would love to come to their party and would do so repeatedly. The two were married in Reno, Nevada, on November 16th, 1993. Allan Dell passed away on June 7, 1997. Hogs & Heifers continues to be run by Michelle Dell who was the sole proprietor of the New York City location. She now lives in Las Vegas, close to her favorite saloon!

Click here for a virtual tour of our original New York City Location!

MORE ON OUR OWNER MICHELLE:

A third generation New Yorker, Michelle grew up in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in the early 70’s, and was raised by her ever determined mother Susan, and her brother Greg. Divorcing shortly after Michelle’s birth, her mother went against the grain of the time choosing to raise her children as a single mother. She waitreSsed to pay the bills, and in 1976 she and one of her co-workers, opened a restaurant called Sabor. Thus, began Michelle’s education in the service industry.

Susan wasted no time in putting her children to work, both as a means to keep them by her side and to provide them with the tools of consciousness and appreciation for the value of a hard earned dollar, and earn it they did, from setting the tables, to washing the dishes. Michelle would prove that even as a child, she was as capable (and in most cases more so) than most adults. At the age of nine, Michelle could be seen riding her blue bicycle with mini ape hangers and a banana seat through the streets of Manhattan with, unknown to any onlookers, thousands of dollars in Amex chits in her pockets, furiously pedaling her way to the bank to cash them in.

Over the years, Susan would go on to open several more successful restaurants in Manhattan and she would later spend 13 years working for Martha Stewarts Living magazine where she became a VP and Food Editor. Today she is a respected and sought after food stylist, working with magazines such as Oprah, Bon Appetit, Essence & Domino to name a few.

Michelle attended public schools in New York City, and was accepted into the High School of Performing Arts where she spent her teenage years as a student in the Drama Department. She went on to attend SUNY Purchase, where she spent her first year of College before transferring to Bennington College in Bennington Vermont, on scholarship where she double majored in Literature and Psychology. Bartending and waiting tables throughout her college years, Michelle managed to finance her education and make ends meet, but she left Bennington in her senior year, before completing her thesis, due to a family tragedy.

Intending to finish her thesis in absentia, Michelle quickly set about finding work in Manhattan in order to pay her rent often holding several jobs waiting tables and bartending. Making ends meet, quickly became Michelle’s priority and completing her thesis fell to the wayside…

Michelle returned back to New York to stay. In early November 1992, Michelle walked into what would soon become Hogs & Heifers Saloon while the bar was still under construction. Wearing blue jeans, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a cropped denim jacket and a long white duster, Michelle met Allan Dell, who upon meeting her said “You’re pretty and you’ve got the look I want and if you steal from me, I will throw you in the fucking river”. He hired her on the spot. Laughing about it both then and now, Michelle says it was love at first site!

Allan moved in with Michelle that December, they were engaged to be married within six months and foregoing a huge wedding, they eloped in Reno Nevada and were married on November 16th, 1993 on a cliff overlooking Lake Tahoe by the esteemed Nevada Reverend, Dr. Love.

Hogs & Heifers Saloon opened for business on the day after Thanksgiving in November 1992 with Michelle behind the bar. The early days were tough, mostly because there were no customers, and therefore no money. That being said, there was also no heat and Michelle would come to work wearing tiny little leather halter tops in the dead of winter, and with the always wet floor (rubber floor mats were not in the budget yet) Michelle’s motorcycle boot clad feet were cold, wet and covered in cement! Alone in the bar and freezing, Michelle started dancing on the bar as a means to keep warm. She says that her clogging on the bar was inspired by a scene from the movie A Coal Miner’s Daughter, starring Sissy Spacek. Michelle had a love for country music and immediately felt at home at Hogs & Heifers. She would walk to work in the morning from her West Village apartment, through the Gansevoort Meat Market and invite all of the meat packers and construction workers to come visit her at the bar, and they did! Hogs & Heifers had a bustling day business, long before the night time business caught on. On any given day you could walk into Hogs & Heifers before 6PM and find a bar full of meat packers, iron workers, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, operating engineers, dock workers, city workers and so on.

Following Allan’s death in 1997, Michelle continued on as the sole proprietor of the New York City location until it tragically closed August 23rd, 2015.

In 2003 the city of Las Vegas came knocking at our front door looking for a diamond in the rough to help launch its’ Downtown revitalization project. Loving the odds, Michelle rolled the dice, opening H&H in Vegas in 2005, and she continues to be the heart and soul behind the daily mayhem, madness, and the sheer magic that is Hogs & Heifers Saloon.

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