Steak & Ammo on the West Side

Deep in the heart of Chelsea thrives an organization and an activity so foreign, so shocking, so taboo that participation involves both the signing of legal documents and the taking of oaths. Next it's the better part of an hour perfecting your grip on the thick, hard rod in your right hand while wiping anxious sweat off a burning cheek with the left. Presently you become aware of a strong, distinct, pungent smell smoldering inside the nostrils, and moreover, that you like it. Your heart races in spite of every civilized effort to the contrary, followed at once by exhaustion, feelings of guilt and a vague sense of malaise. It's enough to leave the most openminded of citizens wondering if this time even New York City has taken things too far.

Then again, men will be men, and boys, apparently, just wanna shoot guns.

Site59.com is a Web operation that caters to those young Manhattanites still possessing disposable income by supplying last-minute weekend vacations at two-martini-lunch-on-Friday notice. Still, the company's most popular getaway, "Beef & Guns," is only a metaphorical one. It begins at 20 W. 20th St. That's not where you catch the train upstate. It's the site of Westside Rifle Range, the last stronghold of red-blooded, all-American "masculinity" and one of less than a handful of public firing ranges in town.

For my companion and me, it started pleasantly enough?filling out some paperwork wherein the phrases "waive my right" and "not liable" were nowhere to be found. Yet slowly the "Bernie Goetz for Mayor" flier and a Chuck Heston poster with several rainbow coalition kids pondering the eternal question, "Register to vote, or register your guns?" came into focus.

It was the overweight, acne-prone twentysomething dressed entirely in camouflage (down to his socks), and the definitively blank stare on that man's face that had even my cohort, who has stood on the hood of a police car in downtown Manhattan miming urination (and has the Polaroid to prove it), second-guessing things. During the safety seminar, which seemed, happily, to last a significant amount of time, we learned how to hold a gun: barrel up. (Though Blank Stare liked to prop his devil-may-care against his knees?perhaps because he didn't appear to be taking much in, as if his mind was quite elsewhere altogether...) We were also told how to load our magazines, aim and, of course, fire.

We (the beginners group) then had our choice of targets. The "hostage scenario," centering around a frightened little girl and, if I recall correctly, featuring a babydoll dress, was the most unsettling?and popular. Next, our heavily supervised unit, once it was ruled none of us appeared "even slightly under the influence of alcohol," was let loose on the range. Our party was mixed: three guys and two women, though the rest of the patrons, including the individual in a "Crime Inc." t-shirt, were most decidedly men. After firing a few rounds, during which my gun jammed several times leaving a bullet sticking awkwardly out of the clip, I was given another "piece." Two more misfired shots ensued, and I retired to what I will generously refer to as "the lounge."

Here I was able to eavesdrop on some office gossip, and only just able to make out the phrases "real character," "too panicky," "all over the place" and "I mean he seemed okay to me."

Crime Inc. was loading a nasty bit of work called a Ruger SS, whose bullets were markedly larger than those of my own "rifle." ("Now, people may say these are sissy, and that they can't do any real harm," our instructor had informed us while doling out handfuls of inch-long lead. "But that's just not true. You get hit with one of these, and it's gonna hurt.")

What could feel more natural at this point than to snap a group picture of our new friends? When we tried to include Crime Inc. in the festivities, however, he jumped back faster than James Brown at a domestic violence summons. As we slowly placed the disposable Kodak on the counter and walked away with our hands in the air, he informed us, almost as an afterthought, that "You just don't go around taking a guy's picture like that, man."

Soon all that was left were the memories. A gentleman in his late 30s wearing linen pants, a polo shirt and a Hamptons tan put his revolver into a black Prada bag (whose only contents had been an NYC transit map). Crime Inc. got out a ziplock baggie filled with new $100 bills and settled his tab, and we headed off toward the river and the second half of our adventure: Frank's.

It was strange to enter an empty restaurant (our package began at 3 p.m., and dinner was at 6 on the nose) and be received with little ceremony and some malice as "the Site59 people" (gratuity is included in the package price). Yet one was used to existing between two worlds by this time, and much like the Clampetts, one became totally unsinkable. Coincidentally, or perhaps consequentially, the help warmed to us, and we to them, and before long the 89-year-old upscale steakhouse was filling up nicely. After dessert and coffee we made our way down the street to Red Rock West, an establishment where no one fits in, but everyone is drunk, and as such content. When Cops came on the bar tv, we didn't turn away. But we did think twice about it.