Tracking Eugene Hutz, Elusive Mustachioed Ukrainian Punk-Rock Model-Poet-Hipster

This is what I'm thinking about as I wait for Eugene Hutz to arrive at his weekly Thursday night DJ gig at the Russian club Neva, in the West Village. DJ, model, poet, humorist and Ukrainian punk god of Gogol Bordello, a band inspired by Gypsy wedding music, Hutz became?back in 1999 during the neotenic days of the handlebar mustache?the poster boy for what was being called "sub-nasal carpeting."

It probably started with Interview's fashion editor Karl Plewka, who announced: "Eugene Hutz...[is] proof that mustaches are making as big a follicle frisson today as designer stubble did back in the 80s." The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal found a trend to manufacture. "Mr. Hutz's handlebar managed to be what tattoos and body piercings no longer can be?genuinely shocking," claimed the former. The mustache had "become the inevitable men's accessory for 2000," the Journal wrote.

Young Eugene's face soon showed up everywhere, from L'Uomo Vogue to Bomb to the Marc Jacobs show, just after they exhumed Burt Reynolds for the debut of Boogie Nights.

It was a devastating blow to the hardworking barristas at the Lower East Side's Lotus Club, who'd been experimenting with variations on the "Sabatoge" look for years in the hopes that Paper would come calling, but Hutz wouldn't cooperate. He reported, via his DNA Models agent Karen Long, that he would not do any "facial-hair interviews," preferring to concentrate on his work with the East Village Ukrainian arts collective Yara. And as the exigencies of the media go?no interview, no dice?we saw less and less of him.

But, though beleaguered and wobbly, he managed?with a Joe's Pub gig here, a full-page color fashion spread there?to remain standing, like one of Dante's tree-people confined to the lesser rungs of hell.

I'd been informed by the Ukrainian inner circle that he'd be deejaying that night. Neva's bartenders verified that he'd be present.

10 p.m. Alone at the bar, I'm charged gringo rates?eight dollars?for a vodka tonic. Eugene still hasn't shown up. Wait until 11, I'm told. The bartenders make pointed comments about a "devoshka," and?informed by my high school Russian and my extensive knowledge of A Clockwork Orange's glossary?I can tell they're talking about me.

11 p.m. My friend Lara shows up to provide relief. Wait until midnight, I'm told. The Ukrainians drink and mingle. No Eugene, but a gaggle of hipsters. Where's Eugene? we wonder.

12 a.m. Second vodka tonic?18 dollars, including tip, and Eugene should be showing up any minute. Lara and I go upstairs to wait. A Dali-inspired mural hangs over the bar. A beautiful Russian woman clad in black leather complains to a friend, "It's so fucking empty in here." She dances, and some other women gyrate against the high-backed chairs to Euro-techno broadcast over the speakers.

12:30 a.m. Lara goes home.

12:44 a.m. I approach a table of fashionistas. Is Eugene coming? I ask. I'm mostly ignored.

"He's not going to show up," someone declares.

"We're going somewhere else," says another.

"Talk to Christie. Christie knows him. Christie, you know him."

"Well, I don't know him. I did a photo shoot with him."

A violinist named Katy asks me if I'd ever seen him perform at "that other place," on Broadway and Canal.

"It was the kind of place where people didn't dance, but when he started playing people threw?literally threw?their tables aside."

Before I could get to the mustache, the table got up.

"Let's go," someone said. Katy looks at me. "You know, Eugene's kind of a diva. He's?he's got a skewed sense of the world."

They leave as the Ukrainians dance and wait for Eugene to arrive.