
The MINT 400 crowd grows every year, and the party at Hogs & Heifers grows with it! Festivities for the 2019 Great American Off-Road Race take place from March 6th-10th. Downtown Las Vegas and Hogs & Heifers will continue to be the place to get your party on while the Mint takes over Fremont Street and the rest of downtown.
For the 10th fuckin year in a row, Flippobuilt is throwing a MINT pre-party at Hogs! Doors open at noon this Wednesday, March 6th… Flippo party officially starts at 8pm!!!
HOGS & HEIFER SALOON PROUDLY ENTERED THE RACE THIS YEAR!
Check out some words from our owner Michelle Dell, and partner Liam O’Donnell below. Our new ride will be parked out front during the kickoff event!!
“When your friends are bad asses, they always want to do bad ass shit…and when you are a bad ass who owns a bad ass bar…well, you end up doing a lot of bad ass shit with a whole bunch of bad ass people!
So when Liam O’Donnell hit me up just before Christmas last year… “Damon and I are putting together another MINT 400 effort for 2019, can I sweet talk ya into it?” I thought about it for 30 seconds and said “HELL YEAH!”
Who are Liam and Damon?
That would be Lee O’Donnell, the legendary bad ass who in 2018 became the first and only driver ever in history to successfully FRONT FLIP a Monster truck, with over 30 years of racing under his belt including short course, stadium and desert off road racing.
Damon Bradshaw …YES folks, the one and only Motocross & Supercross legend, The BEAST from the EAST! @DamonBradshaw45
In 2016, Liam and Damon, along with me and Tiffany Bennett as their co-drivers, ran our first MINT 400 race as team Hogs & Heifers, coming in 2nd (class 3000) and 52 overall!
This time we decided to go for broke and have officially launched HOGS & HEIFERS SALOON RACING.”
Michelle Dell
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“When one door gets slammed in your face what do you do? You team up with Michelle Dell and Andrew Ramsey of Hogs & Heifers Saloon in #downtownlasvegas to build an #offroad #raceteam and kick the shit out of the next door in front of you. It started with a simple text asking Michelle if she wanted to race the #mint400 again, her response?…”Hell ya!” So a quick trip to Vegas and #hogsandheifersracing was born. The Mint400, #vegastoreno #koh #ultra4racing #dirtriot will be on our schedule this year with our partners 212 Performance @hookerharness Armor Kote @mud_muncher Sedona Tire & Wheel @racingplusinc #sxs #bitd #speedsxs #utvunderground #textronoffroad#hogslife“
Liam O’Donnell
THE HISTORY OF 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, 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!
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