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Outside the Coyote Ugly Saloon in New York.

The Coyote Ugly Saloon first opened on January 27, 1993 in New York City, after New York University alumna Liliana Lovell eschewed a life on Wall Street for a life in bartending. Having held several bartending jobs during college where Lovell perfected her unique routine of dancing on the bar, singing, and challenging customers to drinking contests, she applied her business model, learned from her former boss, legendary and notorious New York City bar owner, Tom McNeill, for whom she worked at the West Village saloon, The Village Idiot, prior to opening Coyote Ugly, of "beautiful girls + booze = money" to Coyote Ugly. She began hiring girls and training them in the wild routine, which included such antics as chugging alcohol, setting light to it then breathing fire. While some girls were good at singing, others good at dancing, and others good at yelling, Lovell found that not all the girls were talented in each of the three aspects, so she often paired girls with complementary abilities.

The bar was propelled into the national spotlight in 1997 when former bartender Elizabeth Gilbert wrote of her experiences in a story for GQ magazine, called "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon." ^[1] A movie based on the bar, Coyote Ugly, opened in August 2000 with Maria Bello in the role of Lil and Piper Perabo as an aspiring songwriter in New York City who becomes the newest "Coyote." It grossed over $100 million worldwide.

Soon after, in 2001, the second Coyote Ugly Saloon opened in Las Vegas at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino, as a franchise operation. In 2002, a new company-owned bar opened in New Orleans' French Quarter. Additional bars continued to open across the United States in the years to come; eventually 19 bars were in operation for a few years. However, the company has since shut six locations since 2003. The first closed in Philadelphia, followed by Boston, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Dallas and Miami. Today there are 13 bars in the chain. ^[2]

Late night television talk show host Craig Ferguson, once worked there as a bouncer.^{[citation needed]}

In July 20, 2003, Lovell relocated from New York City to New Orleans, and was primarily involved in the day-to-day operation of the Coyote Ugly bar in the French Quarter.^{[citation needed]}

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• The phrase "coyote ugly" comes from an urban slang term for a situation that results in waking up next to an ugly bedmate after a night of drinking; in such a situation one might prefer to chew off one's own arm, like a coyote with its paw in a trap, rather than wake up the bedmate. The follow on to the phrase "coyote ugly" is "double coyote ugly". After you've chewed your arm off to escape the ugly bedmate, you chew the other arm off so it will never happen again.

1. ^ http://nycbp.com/bartenders/bar3/gilbert01.htm
2. ^ http://www.coyoteuglysaloon.com/404.html

• Bartop dancing

• Coyote Ugly Saloon (official site)
• New York Coyote history (article on creation)
• Coyote Ugly Las Vegas (Virtual Tours of interiors)