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Will You Miss Bourbon Street's Barkers When They're Gone?
Barkers are a fixture in just about every nightlife district in the world, pacing the sidewalks in front of bars, restaurants, and strip clubs in an attempt to bring in customers. Usually they're harmless, but the more aggressive touts can be downright obnoxious, putting their arms around pedestrians and doing everything in their power short of kidnapping to get them into their establishments. Some officials in New Orleans believe that their fair city has far too many aggressive barkers, and they're looking to get rid of them. As the AP points out, an ordinance was passed 25 years ago that explicitly outlaws barkers, but it has been only rarely enforced until today.
Tags: Drinking Travel / Drunk Travel / Bars / Prohibition / Drinking / Booze / Beer / → All Tags
Buy a Beer from the World's Oldest Bartender Before He Retires
All good things must come to an end, and such is the case with the bartending career of Angelo Cammarata. At 95 years young, he's the world's oldest bartender, but he plans to finally throw in the bar towel some time in the next couple of weeks. As an interesting AP story points out, Cammarata served his first drink - a bottle of Fort Pitt beer - at his father's grocery store just moments after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. He's been slinging the sauce ever since and only rarely indulges in alcohol himself, one of those secrets to a long life that we'd rather not hear on a Saturday.
Tags: Drinking at Museums / Museums / Drinking Travel / Bars / → All Tags
Sip Martinis With a View From On Top of the Met
As we mentioned last week, there's just something about drinking in a museum that feels so wrong but oh, so right. So while there’s still some summer sunshine to go around, we figured we’d take a look at a few of our favorite in-museum watering holes.
Unquestionably near the top of the list is the martini bar at the Museum of Metropolitan Art’s roof garden. To get to this artsy drinkers’ oasis, enter through the main museum entrance, but of course don’t pay the tourist-only “suggested admission” of $20 – they’ll let you in for as little as a penny (OK well, don’t be that much of a cheapskate—a few dollars maybe?) Then head up to the fifth floor, where the martini bar opens everyday at 5:30 p.m.
While this has to be called a “martini bar” for sophistication's sake, they actually serve all types of drinks, including frozen margaritas, piña coladas, and strawberry daiquiris. The real draw, of course, is watching the sunset over Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.
Related Stories:
· Martini Bar at the Met [Official Site]
· New York Museum Adds Pop-Up Wine Bar With Central Park Views [Jaunted]
· Prohibition Comes With A Free Drink At New York's City Museumr [Jaunted]
[Photo: valkyrieh116]
Tags: Television Travel / Television Premiere Travel / Mad Men / Bars / → All Tags
Make It an Old-Fashioned, Neat: Boston Bar Hosting 'Mad Men' Premiere Party
AMC’s Emmy-winning drama Mad Men is returning for a third season on August 16, after the show’s first two seasons drew lots of acclaim but not nearly as many viewers. But it looks like plenty of viewers have been catching up on the DVDs during the show’s hiatus, because Mad Men is starting to cross that threshold from just another cable show everyone says you should be watching to a genuine cultural zeitgest.
Case-in-point: hip Boston watering hole Noir Bar will be greeting the new season with a Mad Men series premier party.
Tags: Cocktails / Drinking Travel / Drinking / Bars / Drunk Travel / Read-Headed Sluts / Cocktail Lounges / Best Bars / Bar Crawls / → All Tags
R.I.P. Red-Headed Slut: NYT Goes On a Bender
The latest issue of the New York Times's fancy T magazine is out this weekend, with trend-spotting stories on such destinations as Palm Springs and London, but I couldn't get past what it bills as the World's Biggest Bar Crawl. The story originates in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the annual Tales of the Cocktail convention had just ended with its traditional jazz funeral. In this case, the deceased wasn't a person, but a cocktail whose demise was to be celebrated in New Orleans fashion with a jazz band and revelers twirling parasols. After the Red-Headed Slut (Jaegermeister, peach-flavored schnapps and cranberry juice) was laid to rest, the author provided a very helpful list of bars around the world where you're unlikely to ever see her resurrection, or that of her cloying contemporary, the Apple Martini.
Tags: Drinking Travel / Rooftop Bars / Bars / W Hotel / Washington DC / → All Tags
DC’s Best View is Back, Complete With "Juicing Station"
While most Washingtonians have been pretty happy with the buzz the Obama administration has brought their town over the last six months, they’ve also been quietly mourning the loss of the city’s most awe-inspiring drinking spot: the rooftop bar at the top of the legendary Hotel Washington.
Across the street from the White House, the hotel’s terrace was indisputably the best spot to wow out-of-towners with a stiff martini and a view stretching miles around. So we’re happy to report the bar is now officially back—and officially a lot cooler in its new incarnation.
The hotel reopened this week as DC’s first W Hotel, and the rooftop space has been reconceived as POV, a sleek cocktail lounge helmed by Sasha Petraske of NYC’s Milk & Honey, which means you won’t see many guests going for that stiff martini anymore. Instead, there’s a fruit-and-vegetable juicing station inside the bar, so you can spike your cocktail with some freshly-made strawberry lemonade. The views, thankfully, are exactly the same.
Related Stories:
· POV [Official Site]
· While Kobe Hits the Beach, LeBron Does DC [Jaunted]
· The 'Congress of Cool' Will Convene at W Washington DC Tomorrow [HotelChatter]
[Photo: Starwood Hotels]
Tags: Dive Bars / Bars / Drinking Travel / Beer / Beer Travel / → All Tags
New NYC Drinking Spot Takes Dive Bars to the Next Level
Remember back in the boom years, when you went out to drink and could spend good money on things like bottle service, private entertainment, and cover charges?
Well new NYC watering hole Superdive is the antithesis of all that—an over-the-top party spot for the recession era. The East Village tavern replaces bottle service with keg service—place an order in advance for a high-end beer like Chimay, or just ask them to roll a standard kegerator up to the table when you get there. If that’s not your style, you can jump behind the bar and mix up your own cocktails.
Everything else is pretty much DIY at this no-frills East Village bar—you can hook your own iPod up to the DJ station, or get a live show going by sitting down at the piano or grabbing any of the instruments just lying around, and while there are no private lounges, for ladies who don’t want to be bothered by pick-up artists, there is a secluded row tactfully named “the “f*ck off” seats.”
Related Stories:
· Superdive [Official Site]
· Dive Bar Travel: Boozing with Bourdain in NYC [Jaunted]
· San Fracisco Shuffleboard Bar [Jaunted]
[Photo: Superdive]
Tags: Bars / Recession Travel / Beer / Spain Travel / → All Tags
Abuse the Barman, Get Free Beer
Economic crisis time has brought us plenty, really: cheap airline tickets or staycations, just to name a couple. A surprising bonus out of the global recession is the fact that you can now abuse bar staff in a pub in Spain and get a free beer out of it.
The Casa Pocho bar in Cullera, near Valencia, offers free drinks for "original or hilarious abuse". The owner Bernard Mariusz figured that in these difficult times, people need an outlet for their frustrations and his bar was as good a place as any for it.
Mariusz also says that the Spanish language is full of fantastic abusive phrases, so the challenge to come up with drink-worthy slander shouldn't be too hard. Our limited Spanish doesn't yet extend to too much abuse, but for a free drink, we'll learn anything.
Related Stories:
· Gimme A Beer, Imbecile [Reuters]
· Beer Travel Guide [Jaunted]
[Photo: IanKershaw]
Tags: Beer Travel / Beer / Bars / Beer Festivals / → All Tags
Trips We Love: The Year in Beer
Now this is our kind of gap year! A California couple spent the entirety of 2008 traveling the globe with their itinerary fully dictated by one thing: Beer.
Chris Nelson and Merideth Canham-Nelson, the sudsy minds behind thebeergeek.com, declared 2008 "The Year in Beer," and spent $30,000 exploring beer festivals and local craft brewers from Anchorage to Erlangen. Their entire trip is documented with photos and videos on their website, now a comprehensive resource for where to find the best brews in just about every beer-centric locale throughout North America and Europe.
The duo also shared their best bets with the Silicon Valley Mercury News. For a domestic trip, they recommend the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland (coming up July 23-26). Abroad, they were taken with Cologne's Kölsch bars, where guests are served in 7-ounce glasses that are constantly refilled until you signal you're done by placing a beer mat over the glass. Sounds like a dangerous system to us, but we'd certainly be willing to try.
Well we're thirsty now! And most definitely ready for a Year in Beer of our own, if we only had an extra $30,000 lying around (hint, hint to any potential sponsors).
Related Stories:
· The beer tourists [Mercury News ]
· Best bets for beer travel [Mercury News]
· Brits Complete 24-Year Pub Crawl [Jaunted]
[Photo: balajijegan]
Tags: Bars / Mary Kay Letourneau / Seattle Travel / → All Tags
Something to Do in Seattle: Mary Kay Letourneau's 'Hot for Teacher Night'
Mary Kay Letourneau shocked America when she had a sexual relationship with her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. But the naughty teacher antics didn't stop there. She served jail time twice for hooking up with Vili while he was still underage and also gave birth to two of his kids. But you know what? That was sooooo 1999. Mary Kay and Vili, now married, just wanna have some fun this weekend!
Which is why they are hosting Hot Teacher Night at the Seattle bar, Fuel Sports Eats and Beats.
"It's turned into sort of a love story," Fuel owner Mike Morris tells the Associated Press. "I realize it had a sick twist at the beginning, but they're both adults now. They're both married by the state of Washington."
Fuel is located in Seattle's Pioneer Square near the Klondike Gold Rush park and just north of the Qwest football stadium and Safeco field. It gets rave reviews as a sports bar on Yelp but Saturday night should be a different scene entirely.
There's a $10 cover to attend and Vili is actually the headlining DJ. If you do end up going to this, we really want you to send us back a detailed report. Otherwise, we say skip it and catch a Seattle Mariners game that night instead (They're playing the SF Giants.)
Related Stories:
· Mary Kay Letourneau to Host 'Hot Teacher Night' [People]
· Seattle Field Trip [Jaunted]
Tags: Drunk Travel / Chavs / Drinking / Bars / Photography / → All Tags
Cardiff at Night Photos Capture the Ugly Side of Partying
I love a good night out on the town, quaffing pints in pubs and swapping stories with friends, but I try to pack it in before things get ugly. I'd rather not be around when the drunken hordes spill into the streets, shouting at each other, getting in punch-ups, and vomiting at bus stops. Maybe that's why a series of photos by Maciej Dakowicz is so chilling. The Polish photographer created an unlikely viral hit with his Cardiff at Night series, capturing the dark side of partying with decidedly unglamorous scenes of blood, trash, and extreme inebriation on the lanes of downtown Cardiff, Wales over a series of Friday and Saturday nights.
Tags: Beer Travel / Bars / Biergartens / Queens / Brooklyn / → All Tags
NYC's Exploding Biergarten Scene
Home to what must be the world's highest concentration of dark, tiny drinking dens, New York's nightlife scene has never been known for roomy outdoor drinking space. But that could be starting to change: NYC is slowly but surely becoming the biergarten capital of the country, with hip drinkers trading in their martini glasses and secret door passwords for picnic tables, ale-filled boots, and lederhosen (Well, we haven't seen any lederhosen yet – but we can hope!)
For many years, NYC had just one truly great biergarten, the legendary Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens. This century-old mega-garden is a long-time hangout for Eastern European ex-pats, although the 20-something set clearly got word about the cheap-cheap Czech beers in recent years and the place has become a bit of a zoo lately.
But that's OK, because imitators eager to suck up that overflow crowd have been popping up all over the five boroughs. We've got the hipster take on beer gardens, Radegast Hall, in Williamsburg, and the hard-party version, Loreley, on the Lower East Side.
