MIDTOWN — A bar-goer claimed his friend was attacked by a bouncer hurling racial slurs at a popular country-themed spot, police said — while the venue's manager said the soused patron's buddy sprayed one of the workers with pepper spray.
A 24-year-old Manhattan man told police he went to Johnny Utah’s at 25 W. 51st St., between Fifth and Sixth avenues, around midnight on Aug. 13 and paid a $10 cover fee.
After he and a friend asked the bar’s bouncer for a receipt, the bouncer refused and asked them to leave, the NYPD said.
As the man and his friend were exiting, the bouncer came up the stairs leading to the sidewalk and began pushing the man and attacking his friend while using racial slurs, police said.
But a man identifying himself as a manager at the bar heard a different story about what happened, claiming the alleged victim and his friend were “already somewhat intoxicated” and refused to pay the cover fee.
The manager, who declined to provide his name and noted he wasn't there the night of the incident, said the man eventually paid the cover but demanded a receipt from the bouncer, who told him the bar didn’t give receipts for those charges.
“The gentleman got really upset — he was arguing with [the bouncer], threatening to fight the bouncer,” the manager said.
A woman who was with man left the bar but came back with pepper spray and sprayed one of the bouncers in the face, he added. It wasn't clear if she was the friend who the man said was attacked by the bouncer.
“[The bouncer] did get one direct hit in the eye, so he ran downstairs and flushed his eye out, but he’s OK now,” the manager said.
One of the bouncers called the police, who arrived at the bar and escorted the woman away in a police car, he said.
The man reported his version of the incident to police around 1:51 a.m. that night, the NYPD said. The Midtown North Precinct didn’t have a records of anyone being arrested at the scene as of Monday morning.
The manager said incidents of this sort aren’t uncommon at Johnny Utah’s, which claims to be home to the city’s “one and only mechanical bull.”
“They would not let [the patron] in, [he and his friend] were drunk and belligerent, and that was it,” he said. “We get a lot of that sometimes, unfortunately.”
