09:27 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 21, 2005

In all the noisy, plaster-dusted rush to create a new downtown Providence amid the old, one question hangs over the makeover:

Journal photo / Bob Thayer

Durango, a 9-foot-long albino python, moves out of its home at The Safari Lounge, a bar on Eddy Street in Providence that closed its doors for good this week. Holding the lounge mascot is Cathy Ilarraza, who owns the bar with her husband, Jimmy Ilarraza.

Whither Durango?

Durango's a snake, people tell me.

OK, I guess if you try to get close to him you know that. But he's also the only low-level, beady-eyed bottom feeder who made it clear right from the start that, given the chance, he'd put the squeeze on you.

Durango was out the door Monday. He was all wrapped up with Cathy Ilarraza, who sees things in him others might not.

The opportunity to order a beer and "whatever Durango is having" is gone.

For three years, Durango hung out at The Safari Lounge, the bar on Eddy Street that has been on the endangered list of dark backstreet attractions for a long time.

But two days ago, he was out on the street, flicking his tongue in that way of his that seems to say "Are you lookin' at me?"

The Safari, long the skunk at the lawn party of downtown revival, is gone.

The last band to play The Safari in its concussive music series was Mind Flayer. That was on Sept. 11. A flier produced for the occasion showed two planes flying into the building.

The Safari was, proudly and without apology, a dive. It was a place to disappear, into the darkness or into the music when it pounded the walls at the end of the week. It was home to people who often moved to their own private rhythms.

Once, Jimmy and Cathy Ilarraza tried to break out of their well worn digs and move to the sunny side of the street. They applied to transfer their liquor license to Union Street with plans to open a place called The Blue Panther -- pool tables, sandwiches, cocktails -- and draw on the student population of the downtown campus of the University of Rhode Island. They would take their wall mural, the one featuring the snake, the tiger and the cocktail waitress, with them.

The city licensing board approved the move. That drove downtown visionaries to their Maalox bottles as they saw in the Blue Panther a garish intruder on their dream of a downtown done in muted everything.

The Blue Panther never happened. Jimmy Ilarraza introduced a "Bad Element" cocktail at The Safari in mocking response. Bad Element was what his clientele was called by those who didn't want the unfettered spirit of The Safari spilling across Westminster Street.

That was 10 years ago. The Safari has remained on the hospitality industry's list of places never recommended to visiting conventioneers.

It has also remained a business without a lease for several years, and now a dispute over unpaid rent is being used as a way to give it the heave.

And Durango led the way. In a bar with a heavy jungle theme -- from that mural to Jimmy Ilarraza's tattoos to an overall sense of entering the unknown when opening the door -- Durango seemed the perfect standard-bearer to lead The Safari out of business.

He is a 9-foot albino python. A lot of people found a different drinking experience with him providing a silent, slinking presence in the glass case at the side of the bar.

"He was quiet," said one of The Safari's last customers. "He was real quiet."

Some people wanted to pet him. They were told not to.

Now, drinks with Durango are another downtown attraction lost forever to what some call progress.

Other snakes will move in to take up their downtown places. But none will slither like Durango.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr [at] projo.com