Road Trips: A Drinker's Guide to Omaha, part one

"THERE'S A PLACE CALLED OMAHA NEBRASKA," Groucho Marx sang once, before misplacing the town on the map: "In the foothills of Tennessee." Singers don't seem to know just where Omaha is, come to think of it. All the Counting Crows knew was that the town was "somewhere in Middle America," while Bob Seeger placed himself "on a long and lonely highway, east of Omaha," which could be just about anywhere that's not west of Omaha. Way to be specific, gents.

Well, we at the Bottle Gang have been to Omaha. And not just in a passing-through-on-the-way-to-somewhere-else sort of way. We've been to parties with The Faint and Conner Oberst (and a lesser-known act from Omaha, Mulberry Lane, who once sent us a postcard from Japan). We've crashed three of Alexander Payne's shindigs, once wishing him a happy birthday when it wasn't his birthday at all, and made many calls to the Academy Award-winning writer/director, several times by accident, which he did not appreciate. We drunkenly strolled through the halls of the Joslyn Museum with Omaha's former mayor, Hal Daub, after dining with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, who has a yearly theater festival in Omaha. We made friends with an enormous, bearded astrologer and blues guitarist who is reported to have once bitten off a man's ear. Also, we've been to a lot of Omaha strip clubs, although, on the whole, we prefer those in Council Bluffs.

So trust us when we say that Omaha is a great place to drink. We've drunk our share there. The alcohol is plentiful and it's cheap -- three cocktails made with middle-shelf liquor will cost you the same as one cocktail in Minneapolis's North Loop. But be warned: Omaha bars generally are not very well stocked when it come to liquors, generally carrying a small and generic selection, and Omaha bartenders, for the most part, are only capable of making a half-dozen of the most common drinks, and will look confused if you ask for anything fancy. What Omaha lacks in cocktail sophistication, however, it makes up for in character. Sometimes the city seems like a glacier flowed over it in 1964 and just recently melted, leaving the architecture of the period perfectly preserved, and so here we have a town filled with oversized Steak Houses and gaudy signage, an eye-popping, kitschy delight.

Drinkers, should you find yourself in Omaha, here is a travelogue of our favorite watering holes.

We begin, as we always do, on Saddle Creek at the Homey Inn. This small neighborhood bar has gotten quite busy recently, since Esquire named it one of the best bars in America; it used to be quite desolate, except on weekends, when all Omaha bars spring to life.

The Homey Inn seems constructed out of the fallen remains of previous bars, some in Omaha, some elsewhere in the Midwest. The walls are hung with fading newspapers and decorated with ancient menus, beer cans from long forgotten brands, and old novelty items from liquor distributors, such as Nude Beer, upon which photos of women in Eighties hairstyles wear brassieres that can be scratched off to reveal ample bosoms. Some have been scratched.

They also have champagne on tap, both sweet and dry. Of course, it's not real champagne, but rather a fruity and inexpensive sparkling wine, but who cares, really? They don't know how to make a champagne cocktail with the stuff, but they will gamely try, tossing in a few drops of bitters and a packet of sugar. You wouldn't serve it to Humphrey Bogart, but it's passable.

Additionally, the Homey Inn serves peanuts. In dog bowls. And you can order food from across the street, from a Beatles-themed pasta restaurant called Sgt. Peffers, presumably out off fear that if they called themselves Sgt. Peppers, Apple Records would sue. Interestingly, the Homey Inn has a wider selection of Irish beers than many Eire-styled pubs. We couldn't tell you why this is. And we don't care to ask. We're happy enough sipping our sweet sparkling wine, eating our peanuts, waiting for the delivery man to bring us a plate of spaghetti, and scratching the bra off a woman on an old beer label.

Next, it's onward to The Lynx Lounge, just a few blocks away on NW Radial Hwy. The bar is rather unassuming to look at from the outside, nestled in a strip mall between an assortment of low-rent businesses that have, in the past, included an off-brand makeup store and an erotic lingerie dealer. Inside, however, the bar is pure Seventies, including a fire pit and a recessed and mirrored alcove where couples can pair off for a more intimate drinking experience. The bar is kept dark, and the alcove may be the darkest spot on earth -- it is pitch black until a bartender lights a candle, and then the only thing visible in the alcove is the candle.

The bar is mostly patronized by African-American drinkers, who have, in the past, been so surprised to see the Bottle Gang sidle up to the bar that they have greeted us warmly and bought us drinks. Omaha is a disquietingly segregated town, with most of its black community living north of the city, and white Omahans can be unaccountably nervous around their black neighbors. Actually, this isn't just true of white Omahans -- we once brought a young girl of Korean extraction to the Lynx Lounge, and, upon leaving, she asked a surprising question: "Did you notice that we were the only white people in the bar?" We briefly considered reminding her that, as an Asian, she wasn't precisely white, but then we decided the whole discussion was crass and politely let it drop.

Anyway, we've been patronizing the Lynx Lounge for years, for their good selection of brandies, their swanky ambiance, and their terrific jukebox upon which you can find a marvelous selection of soul and R&B songs. We may be too light-skinned to pretend to be Billy Dee Williams, but that doesn't mean we won't drink at a place where he would seem perfectly at home. (SPARBER)

Read part two here.

Nick Mancini, founder of Mancini's, dies at 80

We over at The Bottle Gang extend our hearfelt condolences to Mr. Mancini's family. Mancini's is a special, special bar, so hopefully we can get over there in the near future and write up a proper review. In the meantime, here's the obituary from the Star Tribune.

Cocktailphernalia: Bottoms Up Tumbler

THIS YELLOW PLASTIC TUMBLER, manufactured in the 50s or 60s, starts with the toast "bottoms up!" before rotating to reveal, first, two enormously round protrusions with legs emerging from beneath them, and finally a woman, doubled over, looking startled. We cannot imagine what sort of devil-may-care bachelor once owned this, as it seems exactly the sort of drinking cup that might discourage amorous liaisons with the fair sex. But perhaps we underestimate the fair sex, and their bawdy sense of humor. Next time we offer highballs at a Bottle Gang gathering, we shall have to serve them in cups such as these, and see whether we are met with smirks or slaps. (SPARBER)

Bar Review: BANK Restaurant

IT IS THURSDAY NIGHT at the Westin Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and it is pretty quiet at the BANK restaurant -- the bar is crowded, but it is a big room, and is, at most, sixty percent full. The Bottle Gang feels sure this will change soon, and, being fond of bars when they aren't crowded, we are glad to be here when the restaurant is still relatively mellow. It won't be for long.

We won't speculate on the dining experience at BANK, because that's not what we do, but we can tell you this as drinkers: It's a good bar. Nix that -- it may be a great bar. It benefits from a gorgeous location, for starters. The BANK Restaurant is located in the lobby of the old Farmers and Mechanics Bank Building, a structure with a quotidian name but an art deco sensibility. Built in 1941, the building is less a small-town bank than a monument to industry, with vaulting, 34-foot high walls decorated with the sort of neo-classical bas-relief images that capitalism used to celebrate itself during the war years -- busts that could have been designed in antiquity, but surrounded with text in Roman Capitals reading things like "agriculture." The ceiling is hung with enormous, palm tree-like chandeliers, so stylized in an absurdly tropical way that they resemble a bronze version of the hat Carmen Miranda wore.

Looking inside, you can imagine the wide open floor, with red velvet ropes leading people to tellers. But the ropes are gone, and the tellers are replaced by a dining bar, where patrons can sit and order up food without waiting to be seated, with chefs handing them food in exactly the way bankers once handed bags of money. The center of the restaurant is taken up by a large oval bar, and seats radiate out from it -- tables for four, and then tables for two, and then little sitting areas, sofalike, where drinkers can lounge. On the far end of the bank, where once there were banker's offices, there are now private dining rooms, each given a precious metal theme -- there is a gold room, for example, in which everything is gilded, and there is a platinum room, in which the decorations are appropriately cold and silvern. When you head away from the bar to the restrooms, there is another clever design choice: The bank's main vault has been converted into a wine cellar, with the vault still revealing it's massive metal door, and it's complex locking system that promises to be dynamite proof.

But it is easy to get lost in decorations, especially when they are so dazzling. You can't drink decoration, however, and so it is on to the drink menu. BANK offers a self-named signature cocktail, a bright red mixture of Cointreau, pomegranate juice, fresh lime juice, a float of peach wine, and, as a smart touch, decorated with gold leaf, so you are literally drinking gold. It's a gimmicky, if uncomfortably indulgent, touch: one drinker commented that he felt like he was pissing on the poor. It's a tasty cocktail, but hardly classic.

Fortunately, they do serve classic cocktails, such as the Mai Tai and the Ritz Sidecar, which we ordered and were superb. They are somewhat pricey at $10, but you always pay a bit more at a hotel cocktail lounge, and it's worth paying for a drink that's well made. The bar also offers a rarity: The Vesper, James Bond's original drink, invented by Ian Flemming himself. It's a mix of gin, vodka, and Lillet, and you will be hard-pressed to find another local bar that makes it, because nobody has Lillet. It's famously a bitter drink, but Lillet was recently reissued, and the current version is much subtler. The resulting cocktail tastes quite a bit like a martini, but not quite. The gin flavor isn't quite as pronounced, despite BANK using Tanqueray, and the Lillet bitterness gives it a pleasurable kick. It's a terrific cocktail, and BANK makes it well.

Their bar menu is suitably upscale, including sea scallops, poached lobster, and five spice rubbed duck breast; frankly, we expect that this menu will get a little more declassé as the bar becomes more popular, as sometimes you just want french fries with your drink, and their french fries looked superb, but were not listed on the bar menu. We ordered a cheese flight: three cheeses, chef's choice, for $6.

We ended up with two cheeses, but with one prepared two different ways. The chef chose a hard Wisconsin cheese called Pleasant Ridge, which was rather similar to Beaufort, and a soft cheese from Colorado called Colorouge. The cheeses were garnished quite carefully with nuts, sliced grapes, and olives. The garnish choices were excellent -- significantly adding to the flavor of the cheese, rather than distracting from it.

The cocktail menu had some surprisingly low rent options, including several frou-frou faux martinis and a drink made with Red Bull. The Bottle Gang disapproves of these sorts of things, and suspects the sorts of people who will drink them are just going to head over a few blocks to the trendy but sophomoric bars in the North Loop to get their classless drunk on. Still, the first drinks offered on BANK's menu are the classics, and they are made with care. It's rare enough for a drinker to find a bartender who can make these drinks well, it's even rarer to enjoy the cocktails in so grand an environment. (SPARBER)

Sailor Martin's Bar Jokes What Make Me Laugh 05.16.07: Pirates

SAILOR MARTIN tells of a sailor with a hook for a hand and an encounter with pirates. (SAILOR MARTIN)

Road Trips: The Crow Bar in Tomah, Wisconsin

THERE'S A TOM WAITS SONG, "Gin-Soaked Boy," where the gravel-voiced singer name checks one of America's great cheap bourbons, telling a tale of staggering home loaded on the stuff and finding his woman missing, presumably in the arms of a gin fan. It's a great, mean song from Waits, a propulsive blues number backed by a menacing electric guitar riff by Little Feat guitarist Fred Tackett, and we will have to write about the song someday, because it is that good.

But today we're going to talk about the bourbon, and a bar. First, the bourbon: when bars have Old Crow, you tend to see it on the bottom shelf, because it's cheap, and that's a shame. Old Crow is a venerable bourbon. It was the first sour mash bourbon created, and was Ulysses S. Grant's favorite drink. It was a top selling American brand for years, but then went belly up and was bought by its competitor, Jim Beam, in 1987. The Old Crow distillery was closed, and so the contents of current bottles of Old Crow are, presumably, essentially the same as Jim Beam White Label. I have a bottle of the current stock of Old Crow, and it's good enough for mixed drinks -- it makes a perfectly satisfactory bourbon sour, for example.

The original Old Crow had quite a following, and fans still pine for the original stuff, but it should be noted that the current version, despite its reputation as a "cats and dogs" mix, in which Jim Beam pours whiskey that they wouldn't package under their own name, nonetheless consistently does well in blind taste tests, and got a 91 rating from the Beverage Testing Institute in the 1990s.

And Old Crow has one more thing going for it -- a terrific mascot, featuring a top-hatted and red-waistcoat-wearing crow, resplendent in string tie, spats, and gold-tipped cane. The mascot never seems to have made it onto the logo for Old Crow, which features a woodcut of a raven clutching a sprig of wheat, but was used extensively in advertising the bourbon at least as far back at the '50s. The mascot doesn't seem to be in much use anymore, but you can still find plastic statuettes of the fellow in antique stores and in older bars.

There's a rather large one in the corner of the Crow Bar in Tomah, Wisconsin, and the Old Crow mascot also emblazons the front of the building, although the bar itself doesn't feature the bourbon. "We had a bottle for years," the bartender explains, shrugging. "Nobody ordered it." They do, however, have Maker's Mark, stashed away on the bottom shelf, for some reason.

The Crow Bar can be compared to Old Crow, mixaphorically speaking, in that both are older specimens of drinking culture that have seen better days. The Crow Bar dates back to 1939, and there's a photo of the bar from that era on one wall, partially obscured by a video gambling machine. It was a fairly plain bar back then, with a sign hung on one wall reading, in all caps, KEEP 'EM FLYING. Above that there was what appears to have been an actual stuffed crow, posed in flight. The photograph is a blow up of a promotional postcard that somebody found, and the back of it features a laboriously hand-lettered note reading, in part, "Regular half-way stop for more and more regular travelers. There's a reason - stop in - learn why."

We would wager that weary travelers don't stop in much anymore. At least, we don't meet many people who pass through Tomah on the way from someplace to someplace else. It's a bit of a drive off the highway although, like television host Craig Ferguson, we at the Bottle Gang make a habit of going off the highway for a few miles when we travel. We knew of Tomah already -- local writer and editor Mark Baumgarten hails from there, as did Gasoline Alley creator Frank King, who worked at the Minneapolis Times in 1901. The main street of Tomah has one of the largest accumulations of bars we have ever seen on an American street -- perhaps one in every three or four businesses is a bar of one sort or another, mostly undistinguished sports bars or grills, none of which seem particularly busy. There's only two customers besides us in The Crow Bar just now, both older, one chatting amiably about a friend she has in common with the bartender. "Is she getting ready for menopause?" the bartender asks.

The bar has suffered from years of decorating and redecorating. There are still kitschy -- yet surprisingly elegant -- deco-styled wooden tables for patrons to sit at, probably installed sometime during the late '40s. The stuffed bird above the bar is gone, replaced by a painting of several crows worrying an owl. The floor is the sort of industrial carpet that you find in cheap businesses, and there is a picture of Tony Montana from Scarface on one of the back walls and a picture of Muhammad Ali near the door. It's the sort of generalized crap bars accumulate over time, and it rests awkwardly on the walls next to assorted crap from earlier times, such as wooden posts with quotes from Omar Khayyam, or my favorite, a promotional triptych from Michelob that must have been given to the bar about 1975. In the center is the Michelob logo, in a faux gold frame, surrounded on either side by mock elegant electric gaslamps. On either side of the lamps are headshots of women, likewise framed in faux gold, each holding frothy glasses of beer. The women are very much the type that ads featured in the 70s, with mile high hairdos and white pantsuits, and they look absolutely ridiculous now.

But there is something about this accumulation of bric a brac that's comforting. We've written about how Irish-American bars will fill their shelves with junk from Ireland, to give the pub a more authentic quality. Well, here is an American bar that has legitimately filled up with American junk, representing decades of operation. And it's a good, comfortable neighborhood bar, with a nice selection of beer on tap, including Hacker-Pschorr and Guinness. The bar might have faded from its glory as a popular travelers' watering hole, but it's still worth peeking your head in, if you're in Tomah. Again, a little like Old Crow whiskey: It may not be what it once was, but it's still not too bad. (SPARBER)

Bar Tales: Blessing the maibock at the Town Hall Brewery

THE TWIN CITIES are a beer loving pair of towns, and us cocktail drinkers just have to get used to it. Perhaps it's the lingering influence of Minneapolis's once enormous German population, as Germans are famously a beer loving people. Perhaps it is the fact that so many bars are just one step above a dive, serving bottom shelf liquor and aging, stale mixers, and you just can't get a good cocktail in that sort of environment, but if the taps are clean and the kegs are recent, it's hard to go wrong with beer. Perhaps it's that Twin Citians are thrifty, or stingy, and won't pay a half-sawbuck for giggle juice when they can pay a buck for a brewski.

Whatever the case, when locals turn alcohol snobby, they turn to beer first. We at The Bottle Gang love beer, but we're drinkers, god damn it, and view beer as little more than an adult soft drink, a refresher on a hot summer day, a chaser for a real cocktail. But we respect the skilled brewmaster, and respect a well-made beer, and appreciate the fact that so many Minnesotans have a taste for a good beer. It tells you a lot about the Twin Cities' relationship with beer that, when the Town Hall Brewery introduces their maibock, they bring in a Episcopalian vicar in a red and blue dalmatic and red sneakers to bless the stuff.

The Town Hall Brewery is relatively spacious -- it is a former comedy theater, although the current owners have taken great pains to antique it, covering the walls in old photographs of enormous beer casks, with proud brewers posing alongside and atop them. But today, Saturday, the pub is crowded beyond capacity, drinkers standing behind each other at the bar, two and three deep. A group has pushed several tables together, and they all wear t-shirts identifying themselves as Hash House Harriers, who make a regular habit of running together, then stopping off in bars and drinking together. As is their tendency, they drink, and then drink some more, and then rise to their feet, raise their cups, and sing songs about drinking.

In the meanwhile, the staff is desperately trying to get maibock into everybody's hands before the ceremony begins, which will be soon, if the vicar wandering around swinging a incense censer is any indication. The maibock is foamy and dark and nutty and bitter. It's also free, which may help explain the throng of people that even now continues to pack the bar; one exceptionally small and stout man begs a young woman to give up her chair, so he can stand on it, because he can't see.

The vicar takes his place under a photograph of an oversized cask, again with proud brewers scampering atop it, and launches into his ceremonial duties, which include reading from classic literature and a call and response section, where he beseeches heaven to prevent us from such untoward behavior as thinking ourselves clever after a few drinks, when, in fact, we actually are starting to sound like idiots. With each of his entreaties, the multitude chant back, tunelessly, that they too would like heaven to save us from this, particularly when the vicar's pleas include protection from having cars towed or spending the night in jail. At the end of the blessing, all the assembled raise their glasses in toast, as the vicar reminds us that Jesus himself did not avoid the drinker, despite the possibility that he might be considered a drunkard himself. (SPARBER)

Bar Review: Topolobampo

A SPECIAL BOTTLE GANG ABROAD REPORT FROM CHICAGO

WE'RE USED TO GOING INTO bars and getting static over wanting things like Campari, Red Breast whiskey and other exotic things, but the waiter's reply at Chicago's Rick Bayless-owned Topolobampo to a request for a gin and soda?

"We don't have gin."

That's because what Topolobampo has is over a hundred different kinds of tequila and a special rotating drink menu. Why would you want anything as humdrum as a gin and soda when you can try something exotic?

The Trago Bravo is a couple ounces of 100% Blue Agave Silver tequila (Tres Mujers) served beside another couple ounces of spicy sangrita with a serrano chile split and jammed on the side. The chaser is rimmed with salt, and the idea here is to sip the tequila, bite the chile, and drink the chaser. The tequila has a decidedly buttery aroma and a woody smooth flavor and personally, we don't think you need to cut it with a chaser, but it turns out the chaser is delicious as well. Sangrita is the Mexican version of a Bloody Mary and not-- as it turns out-- a Margarita crossed with sangria. The chile? Well, that's a spicy meatball. Definitely bite it, but watch out for the seeds-- they'll mess you up. When everything is combined in the approved order, the effect is a broad swath of spice, from the smooth heat of the tequila to the sharper tang of the chile and finally the savory spice of the sangrita.

One of the seasonal Margaritas was a Blood Orange Margarita, prepared with reposado tequila, Hornitos, Cointreau, organic lime and fresh blood orange juice. Quite a good margarita, but not as exciting as it should have been, was the general consensus. Because you know what? Blood oranges are really just red oranges.

The Mezcal Maragarita was an entirely different affair. Made with Del Maguey Single Village artisanal mescal from Oaxaca, Don Pedro brandy, Peychaud bitters and lime juice, the waiter recommended it as his favorite, and it was pretty damn special. Appropriately for something from Oaxaca, it had a smokiness you rarely find in a drink-- a really unique flavor for a margarita. The waiter was right; this drink kicks ass.

For the second round, we started with a Chamochela, a Mexican beer cocktail composed of spicy-fruity chamoy salsa, fresh lime and Tecate in a salt-rimmed glass over ice. As we'd come to expect by now, this was an interesting combo-- not sweet, which is what the presentation would lead you to believe, but not spicy or bitter or anything else, really. Kind of flat in flavor but fizzy in texture. As a companion drink for a meal (which is how we were enjoying it), it's not the best, but a pitcher of these on a hot summer day on a porch? Dial it up.

We also sampled a more involved take on the sangrita, the Vampiro Fronterizo. Made with Bayless' Maraca Bloody Mary mix, Oro Azul Silver tequila, fresh lime juice and a hint of smoky chipotle seasoning, the Vampiro is another smoky wonder. The ingredients have a tendency to separate out a bit, so you need to keep stirring it to get the full effect, but provided you can keep your stir on, it's a delicious and spicy take on the Bloody Mary.

All in all, we barely missed having access to a full bar, and these specialty drinks certainly paired up excellently well with our food. As a bonus, they weren't terribly expensive for a fine dining experience, topping at $11 for the Blood Orange Margarita, and the adventurous Trago Bravo and Vampiro Fronterizo were $8, which is around what you'd pay for a run-of-the-mill mojito at Bar Abilene.

It can be tough to get a table at Topolobampo, but if you're down Chicago way, consider hitting up the bar and sampling some exotic takes on traditional Mexican drinks. (McPHERSON)

The Gibson: It's the little things that count.

THINK WE'VE COVERED ALL THERE is to cover about the martini? Think again. Aside from the time we spend making crazy cocktails from books, we also spend some time messing around trying to make new drinks. Most of the time it ends in disaster, a small amount of the time in success and this one time? Well, the less said about that the better. Let's just say the monkey's doing much better now. We should probably take a tip from Charles Dana Gibson and keep it simple, sippers.

Or rather, we could follow his lead and dare our friends to make great drinks better. The most likely origin story for this martini variation is that Gibson challenged Charley Connolly, who was the bartender at the Players' Club in New York, to improve the martini. Did Connolly substitute vodka for gin and add a bunch of fruity garbage to it? Hell no! He garnished it with a pearl onion instead of an olive. Genius.

Of course, it's just possible that the story's total bunk. Like most good legends, there are other versions. One involves an American diplomat named Gibson, a teetotaler, who, when attending swanky parties abroad, had the bartender fill his cocktail glass with ice cold water and an onion, so he could tell it apart from all the olive-garnished martinis. We, as a rule, try not to pick up other people's drinks in the first place, but maybe drink swapping was all the rage back then and hey, Europe. What are you going to do?

There are other variations on this, inevitably involving someone trying not to get drunk by drinking cold water with an onion in it, but seriously: That's gotta taste just horrible. Nowadays it's far more common to reverse the ruse: substitute gin (we recommend Plymouth English gin-- believe the hype) for the water, and everyone will think you're just pretending to be drunk.

Fascinated by the possibilities, we hit Sharrett's liquor store and picked up a bottle of Santa Barbara Olive Company martini onions, which are marinating in vermouth and vinegar. Also, we've come to the realization that just one ingredient that isn't the very best reduces the quality of a martini by about half, so forget about Martini and Rossi Dry Vermouth. Get some Noilly Prat. Here's the business:

2.5 shots of Plymouth English gin
1/2 shot of Noilly Prat dry vermouth
2 to 3 martini onions

Chill a cocktail glass, put the ingredients except for the onions in a shaker with ice and shake gently. Don't be doing the conga with that thing. You should kind of swirl it in the shaker. Pour into cocktail glass, garnish with onions. Welcome to the Gibson.

The onion adds a nice dimemnsion, what with the vinegar and salt combo. Straight up, these bad boys taste a little like a salt and vinegar potato chip, if potato chips were soft and round and marble-sized. A martini with a lemon twist is refreshing, a martini with an olive is savory and complex. With an onion, it's a cleaner savory taste.

While we're on the topic, I'd like to introduce the newest member of The Bottle Gang, named for the very drink we're discussing: Dr. Cornelius Gibson, or Gibson for short.



Dr. Gibson is a 9-week-old Shiba Inu, which we're pretty sure makes him almost one year old in human years, which we're pretty sure is legal drinking age for a dog. This photo was taken shortly after we drank him under the table. (McPHERSON)

Sailor Martin's Bar Jokes What Make Me Laugh 05.16.07

THE FIRST in a series of saloon witticisms and drinking stories by The Bottle Gang's own Sailor Martin, a tattooed and pierced Sailor Puppet. (SAILOR MARTIN)

Three Bar Tricks Involving Napkins

MAGIC TRICKS GENERALLY COME IN KITS, must be specially designed for specific illusions, and are often expensive. Bar tricks — a much more specific genre of trickery — simply involve objects on hand at any local saloon. As an example, complimentary bar matches weren’t originally designed to assist wagering drinkers. In these examples, the humble napkin proves to be useful beyond mopping the sweat from a tall cool one.

Matches, napkins, and other everyday objects are generally discarded without a second thought. At The Bottle Gang, we see greater possibilities in these overlooked objects — we see their potential to do the seemingly impossible, which gives them an edge of store-bought magic tricks. Such pre-fab examples of sleight-of-hand encourage immediate suspicion. Upon seeing a magician link and unlink three metal rings, audiences immediately start suspecting trickery. For this reason, we find the bar trick infinitely more impressive. It seems, for a moment, that something impossible has happened. Magic has been produced with everyday objects — plucked not from a hidden jacket pocket, but right from the bar where anyone could have found them.

Bar tricks have the potential of reaping certain rewards if done well: cash; a phone number; free alcohol. Before sipping a hard-won drink, though, dedicate a toast to the simplicity of the bar trick.


BERNOULLI’S BOTTLE

Materials: 1 empty beer bottle, and a small piece of a paper napkin.

The trick: Try to get someone to blow a napkin ball into an empty beer bottle.

How to do it: This trick is based on scientist Daniel Bernoulli’s principle stating that flowing air has less pressure than inert air.

Be sure the neck of the empty beer bottle is dry before attempting this trick. Tear off a small piece of napkin and crumple it into a ball. This ball should be smaller than the bottle opening. Holding the bottle horizontally, place the napkin ball inside so that it rests on the lip of the bottle. Keeping the bottle horizontal, hold the opening up to someone and bet that they cannot blow the napkin into the bottle.

Because of Bernoulli’s principle, the ball will be met with resistance from the air inside the bottle. This will cause the ball to blow back out into the participant’s face every time.


CAPTURE THE BULLS-EYE

Materials: Dry paper napkin, pencil or pen

The trick: Mark a dot in the middle of a napkin and, without lifting the pencil or pen, draw a circle around the dot. There should be no lines connecting the dot and the circle.

How to do it: Begin by folding in a corner of the napkin to the center of the square. Draw a dot at the napkin’s center, ending with the pen on the tip of the folded corner. Keep the pen on this corner while slowing easing the corner of the napkin away from the dot. At any distance away from the dot, draw a circle. At no point did the pen have to leave the surface of the napkin.


THE BIG SNEEZE

Materials: Linen napkin, utensil such as a fork or spoon

The trick: Blow your nose with such force that it causes a napkin to fly upward in a comical fashion.

How to do it: This is less a bar bet than a bar amusement, but it always seems to get a laugh, so we shall include it. To achieve this stunt, sneeze. Grab a napkin and unfold it to blow your nose. Secret the utensil inside the napkin before bringing the napkin to your nose. At this point, the utensil should be hidden under the napkin. When the napkin is to your nose, you should place the utensil in your mouth in such a way that when you bite, it will cause the utensil to rise upward until it is perpendicular to your face. The napkin will rise as if by a forceful blow. Feel free to make exaggerated blowing noises. Enjoy the surprised expressions of your drinking mates. (MAULT)

Mother's Day cocktail: The Dorothy Mantooth is a Saint

TOMORROW IS MOTHER'S DAY, and, like all American Mother's Days in the past, it is an opportunity for pacifists and suffragettes to protest the American Civil War.

Why are you giving me such an odd look? Surely you remember that Mother's Day was introduced in the United States by Julia Ward Howe, the author of "The Battle Hymn of The Republic," herself an activist in the joint causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. And you must remember that her intention in starting the holiday was to unite women to protest the unspeakable carnage of the War Between the States, as expressed in her "Mother's Day Proclamation," mustn't you?

No? Well, no matter. Even if your mother is neither a pacifist or a suffragette -- if she spends her weekends, say, writing hawkish letters to government demanding more and better war, but, in the meanwhile, steadfastly refusing to vote, she's still your mother. On this day you owe her a card, and a phone call. And, we daresay, a cocktail.

This is why we have invented one to celebrate the event. We wanted a drink that was potent, yet feminine. We wanted a drink that would satisfy firebrands and homebodies alike. And, more than anything, we wanted to create a cocktail that would involve chamomile tea. And so we give you our invention, which, after the film Anchorman, we have dubbed the Dorothy Mantooth is a Saint. Mix your mother up a glass tomorrow, kiss her on the forehead, and, when she slips into slumber, pull the biography of Carrie Chapman Catt out of her hands, put away her collected photos of Mathew Brady, and let her sleep, for God's sake -- she's your mother!

The Dorothy Mantooth is a Saint

2 parts peppermint schnapps
1 part chamomile tea, iced
ice cubes

Mix together the peppermint schnapps and the iced tea and serve over ice in a highball glass. (SPARBER)

In honor of the Geek Prom: The nerdiest cocktail ever

FOR THOSE OF YOU who went to college on a football scholarship, or whose daddy gave you a Mustang for your sweet 16, or who experienced your first kiss at age 18 or younger, or have never seen a 20-sided dice, or don't know what COBAL and FORTRAN is, or dislike Pee Wee Herman, or are shocked by the idea of dressing as cartoon animals prior to -- and during -- lovemaking, there is a Twin Cities event that you might wish to steer clear of.

I speak, of course, of the annual Geek Prom, now in its fifth year, occurring, inevitably, at the Science Museum of Minnesota tomorrow night, Saturday, May 11.

Of course, we at Bottle Gang do not consider ourselves geeks, but, rather, debauched sophisticates and rootless cosmopolitans, but we cannot resist a party, and this looks to be a very good one. Further: It looks inspired. From the choice of music, an Electric Light Orchestra cover band called E.L.nO., to a dance contest where prizes are awarded for the most spasmodic terpsichore, there looks to be much fun to be had. And, as we suffer an agonizing addiction to novelty, and silliness, and fun, we shall be there, on the dance floor, drunk as always and dancing as badly as possible.

But in preparation for the Geek Prom, we would like to offer a new cocktail, which we have decided to dub The Nerd, although, if you prefer, you can spell it N3rd, or you can call it OMG Imz drinak teh N3rdz, if you like. We won't mind.

The Nerd

Vodka
A selection of soft drinks, mixed together at random; alternately, just use OK Soda
Pop rocks

Mix a random selection of soft drinks together, preferably in a large plastic tumbler that looks like Darth Vader, creating the drink long known to children as the "suicide" or the "kamikaze." If possible, include Mountain Dew. Alternately, if you have old cans of OK Soda, just use that. Fill tumbler three quarters of the way with this concoction, top off with vodka, and stir. Rim tumbler with pop rocks the way you would rim a margarita with salt. (SPARBER)

Drinking With Drinking With Ian's Ian

SO CITY PAGES BEAT US TO THE PUNCH, and it's our own damn fault. We've been sitting on a story about Ian Rans for about nine months, ever since we first conceived of The Bottle Gang, and just never got around to writing it.

In all fairness, we had a perfectly reasonable excuse. We had decided the best way to get to know the boozy public access television show host was to go out drinking with him, and we spent the greater part of the evening hopping from one bar to another in Northeast Minneapolis. When we woke the next morning, the scant notes we had taken from the previous night were soaked in a sticky mixture of amaretto and Peychaud's Bitters, and flecked with vomit (a drink I like to call the Siamese Pick Me Up). Ordinarily, this would not be an issue, as, like Truman Capote, we have trained our brains to retain hours of conversation at a time. Unfortunately, we were just beginning the process of training our livers to hold a gallon of rum. Just as you cannot easily be a rich man and a moral man, you cannot be a drunkard and a mnemonicist.

And so Peter Scholtes, a good fellow, a former coworker, and, obviously, a sober man, has written a cover story about Ian, scooping us. We don't blame him, although next time we see him we shall be forced to strike his face with a doily, or whatever it is gentlemen do when they are planning to duel. Actually, Scholte's story is something of a relief. He has admirably introduced Mr. Rans to the general public, whose knowledge of public access television is certainly limited enough that they must believe it to be a Somali television station that Minneapolis receives through some quirk of physics. And so we are relieved of the onus of remembering details like Ian's place of birth, or what he does for a living, or how his show got started, or whether he is a man, as he seems, or an extremely crafty drag king.

Instead, we can write what we do remember. Specifically, we can write about what it is actually like to drink with Drinking With Ian's Ian. And, if our memory fails us, we will simply make up clever anecdotes, or steal them from history. And so we can begin our story by telling you that Ian Rans is not simply a television host famous for drinking on air, but also designs album covers for comedian Louis Black, and we believe this to be true. We also recall him mentioning that he is the notorious woman in black, who puts a single rose on the grave of the tragic film star Rudolph Valentino every year on the anniversary of his death. This may not be true, but, if it is, it calls into question Scholtes assertion that Rans is male, and lends some credibility to the drag king hypothesis.

As those of you who have seen Drinking With Ian know, Ian Rans is a dapper, lean faced fellow with a shock of reddish-blond hair that rather resembles a pompadour that has collapsed in a sudden fit of weeping. Ian knows the bars of Northeast Minneapolis with the practiced expertise of a drinking man. He knows, for example, precisely what a Dago is at Dusty's Bar -- it's a burger made from Italian sausage -- and he recommends it. He also knows the young white man who dresses in vintage suits and plays superlative blues guitar; they chat for a moment, and then Ian cocks his thumb at the man. "He was on my show," he explains.

Ian likes working class bars, and knows what you're talking about when you mention places like Gilligan's on Lake Street, which seems to have recently closed and been renamed Merlins. "I've been there!" he declares. "There was a blackout, and we went into the place, and it was pitch black! I still don't know what it looks like with the lights on."

Ian knows working class bars as far away as Rochester, and can quote you the price of a pitcher of beer, which is ridiculously low, and so we choose to remember that it was eight cents, although it almost certainly wasn't. He knows which Northeast bars look away when he smoke cigarettes, which he does often, and asks that we not mention the name of the bar. We couldn't if we wanted to, as we have forgotten it, so we will simply invent a bar name. Ian smoked a cigarette at The Sheep-Eating Dog Head Pub while he was eating roast lamb and an English dessert called spotted dick, which he wasn't.

Ian is an amiable fellow with a quick wit, except when two acoustic guitarists are working their way through the catalog of Pink Floyd, as is the case at one particular Northeast bar. This odd cover band drives Ian into a visible rage, his face reddening, his adam's apple working its way up and down his throat. "I swear to God, if they play 'Money,'" he begins, and then chokes on his own threat as the acoustic duo play the opening riff to "Money." We leave this bar immediately.

Ian is not a fancy drinker, as you probably already know if you watch his show, which is sponsored, in part, by a bottom-shelf liquor. While we fuss with our drink orders, demanding multi-layered concoctions that must certainly have been invented by Medieval alchemists (and are despised by bartenders), Ian orders a variety of straightforward beers. He proudly discusses the shots offered every week by his show's bartender, a large man with a shaved head who looks more like a bouncer than a barkeep. He is not a bartender, Ian tells us, and that explains why the shots he introduces every week, usually made with their sponsor's products, cause the show's live audience to turn various colors, flap their hands in the air, and roll their eyes like a cartoon character. But Ian's show is not meant for the effete sophisticate who insists his vodka be distilled through a 365 foot-high volcanic mountain and then passed through a South American lynx before it is to be drunk. Ian's show is for the common man, the common drinker, the sort who drinks in the sort of a bar that Nick in "It's a Wonderful Life" describes thusly: "We serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast. And we don't need any characters around to give the joint atmosphere."

The show is also, it must be said, darn funny, the interview format frequently interrupted by interstitial short films made by Ian's wealth of friends, and all have a sort of frenzied, knockabout wit. Despite Nick's admonition, Ian, and his friends, are characters -- one repeatedly spouts haikus, for example, and one cannot imagine that Nick would approve of that. Ian himself is a character, in vintage clothes and exploded vintage hairstyle, holding court among Northeast Minneapolis's assorted working class hipsters, all of whom he seems to know, except for the acoustic Pink Floyd cover band, who he hates. Also, at one point in the evening, Ian finishes a beer with an unusual flourish, eating the bottle whole and explaining that he learned to do it from a fakir. He studied with the man for many years, but the fakir was a serious man, and wanted Ian to study the writings of Harrm Bin Hian, and also wanted Ian to give up liquor, which is forbidden in Islam. This was too much to ask of Ian, and so the two went their own separate ways, but before they parted, the fakir taught Ian the secret of eating glass, and also how to summon a djinn at times of great need, although the djinn would require an offering of qamhiyyi. This story, of course, is not true.

As the evening ends, we gather our notes out of the massive urinal at Stasiu's, where they have unaccountably fallen, and we walk Ian to his car and bid him a good night. He is, we realize, a terrific drinking partner -- eager to talk about alcohol, filled with entertaining anecdotes, and easy to invent tales about. And so we cheerily say goodbye to him, and he asks when we will write our story about him.

"Very soon," we tell him, lying. (SPARBER)

Appalling drinking customs from the past: Skull cups

Excerpted from Cups and their Customs (1863), by H. Porter, available as a free ebook at Scribd, where you can also download an MP3 of the book read by what sounds like a robot with a rather sexy English accent:

There is no lack, in old chronicles, of examples illustrative of that most barbarous practice of converting the skull of an enemy into a drinking cup. Warnefrid, in his work "De Gestis Longobard.," says, "Albin slew Cuminum, and having carried away his head, converted it into a drinking-vessel, which kind of cup with us is called Schala." The same thing is said of the Boii by Livy, of the Scythians by Herodotus, of the Scordisci by Rufus Festus, of the Gauls by Diodorus Siculus, and of the Celts by Silius Italicus. Hence it is that Ragnar Lodbrog, in his deathsong, consoles himself with the reflection,"I shall soon drink beer from hollow cups made of skulls". (SPARBER)

The Martini: Whose Child Is This?

AT THE BOTTLE GANG we've learned more about religion by researching alcohol than from reading about monks, which we sometimes do. Granted, we only pick up books about those guys when they're fermenting grapes. But there's a different type of religious experience that interests us. In The Martini, author Barnaby Conrad III describes the many holy experiences had by figures of state and housewives alike. These ecstatic experiences are the result of drinking frigid glasses of gin and vermouth. Like any good religion, the history of the martini is filled with rituals, true believers, misfits, heretics, and, just go with us here, crime fighting.

Conrad's book -- which reads like a martini encyclopedia -- includes an excerpt from My Last Sigh by filmmaker Luis Buňuel, who explicitly links the drink to religion: "Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At certain periods in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin's hymen 'like a ray of sunlight through a window -- leaving it unbroken.'"

The martini may be an American invention, but this drink's true paternity is hard to pin down. Like any rags-to-riches orphan -- and the martini is just that -- there will be someone out to claim him as their very own. As one example, Conrad mentions "a zealous group" in the town of Martinez, California in 1992 that "installed a brass plaque on the corner of Alhambra and Masonic" naming Martinez as the birthplace of the martini. This is the result of the following story: "Citizens of Martinez, California, claimed that around 1870 a miner from San Francisco stopped his horse at Julio Richelieu's saloon on Ferry Street in Martinez for a bottle of whiskey. Richelieu was a young Frenchman who had come up to Contra Costa County from New Orleans. The miner plunked a tobacco sack of gold nuggets on the bar near the weigh-scales and handed Richelieu a bottle. The bartender filled the container with whiskey from a large barrel, but the traveler said he wasn't quite satisfied. To make up the difference, Richelieu picked up a glass, mixed him a small drink, and dropped an olive in it. 'What is it?' asked the miner. 'That,' replied Richelieu, 'is a Martinez cocktail.'" Conrad clearly finds this particular story suspect and provides other stories, as well as his own theories to the origins of the martini. His book is something of an omnium gatherum of martini lore, filled with smart jokes, interesting historical tidbits, short stories, dazzling quotes, and boozy philosophizing.

"Martini Culture is not about getting stinking drunk and slipping under the table with a burp and a curse," writes Conrad. "It's about grace under pleasure. The idea is to make the rest of the evening more pleasant -- not to obliterate it. Richard 'Mr. Rick' Fishman, founder of San Francisco's floating party known as 'Mr. Rick's Martini Club,' says, 'A martini is like a woman's breasts: one is not enough and three are too many.'"

Conrad writes of famous martini drinkers. In the evenings, he tells us, W.C. Fields "would perform a trick of balancing a full Martini glass on his head." If the glass moved while he stood for a count, he would know that he had had enough for the day. However, "his skill and self-command were such that the glass rarely shook, and he then rewarded himself by emptying the contents." This a man who, estimated by biographer Robert Lewis Taylor, drank roughly two quarts of gin daily.

Conrad also discusses the various techniques for making a cocktail. He describes special techniques designed to pour an especially dry martini, such as "in and out," in which the mixer simply coats the shaker with vermouth and pours out the rest. And, on the subject of ice, Conrad quotes an excerpt from For the Wayward and Beguiled, in which author Bernard DeVoto writes, "Sound practice begins with ice. There must be a lot of it, much more than the catechumen dreams, so much that the gin smokes when you pour it in ... Fill the pitcher with ice, whirl it till dew forms on the glass, pour out the melt, put in another handful of ice. Then as swiftly as possible pour in the gin and vermouth, at once bring the mixture as close to freezing point of alcohol as can be reached outside the laboratory and pour out the martinis."

And, as if the martini were trying to break its own cool record, in 1965 it actually became a spy. Conrad includes an excerpt from Patricia Holt's The Bug in the Martini Olive: "The glass held a facsimile of an olive, which could hold a tiny transmitter, the pimento inside the olive, in which we embedded the microphone, and a toothpick, which could house a copper wire as an antenna. No gin was used -- that could cause a short.
"Our point was that a host could wander through his own party, having drunk his own martini, and pick up the conversations that were directed at him, or leave his glass near a conversation he could then monitor in secret. We wanted to show the vast proliferation of this equipment, and the bug in the marini olive was once a very fashionable example of many ... I felt I had introduced a new toy, like a play-chew for a dog. [the reporters and photographers] couldn't stop gnawing at it."

Yet another excerpt from The Martini, this time from J.A. Maxtone Graham, demonstrates the pleasing effect of the drink. "A party of thirty-six ladies from Stockton, California, were at the peak of their Martini happiness when two armed burglars broke in and announced at gun point that they would take away all the ladies' jewelry and money. There was no correct response from the party-makers, who merely asked the intruders to join them for a drink. Baffled by the whole affair, the burglars left empty-handed, and the party continued unabated."

We have our own theories as to why these gun-wielding scofflaws left such a party. Perhaps the burglars left because they didn't agree with how the ladies were mixing their martinis -- not enough ice, perhaps? Or perhaps the women were shaking the martini, and the burglars preferred theirs stirred. Perhaps that party's hosts were committing the monstrous act of passing off a vodka drink as a martini, and the burglars simply could not endure this. If they were smart burglars, though, they'd have come back with some decent gin, a mountain of ice, and more damn olives. (MAULT)

Bottle Gang Media Taster

TAKE A LOOK TO THE RIGHT. You see that tall, narrow flashing thing that rather looks like an MP3 player? Well, it rather behaves like an MP3 player as well -- it's the Bottle Gang media taster, brought to you by the folks at Intelligent Media Platform. They have created similar players for Bust, City Pages, and the Austin Chronicle, and one would think they would have better sense to associate with a disreputable lot of drunks, but apparently they don't. And we thank them for it.

With great regularity, we at The Bottle Gang will be updating our Media Player with the latest and greatest drinking songs, some from IMPs already vast collection of music, some from the distant past, and some brand new and unique to the The Bottle Gang. By the way, if you have a drinking song to contribute to our Media Player, send us an email at max [at] thebottlegang.com; we're always looking to add a new soundtrack to our revelries.

New York Times weighs in on martinis

New York Times story on martinis from May 2, 2007

We haven't gotten to read it yet, but we already like the sound of 4 people and 80 martinis. Sounds like Thursday night.

Post-reading:

Our favorite martini gin, Plymouth English Gin, could not have been more stylish and graceful. Plymouth has the classic juniper-based gin profile, yet it is uncommonly subtle and smooth. Still, it is assertive, its complexity emerging slowly but distinctly, the proverbial fist in a velvet glove.

Plymouth English gin, eh? Consider us interested, and out of Bombay Sapphire.

The Drinking Song: "The Pub With No Beer"

THERE IS A RECURRING JOKE in James Garner’s amiable 1969 western Support Your Local Sheriff! In the film, Garner plays Jason McCullough, a laconic if irritable gunslinger who ends up in Colorado in the midst of the Gold Rush. Even as he gets roped into acting as the town’s lawman, he has his sights set on the real frontier, where things are really wild. “I’m only here to get a stake,” he’ll tell anyone who will listen. “For Australia.”

We can thank a country singer named Slim Dusty for some of this sense of Australia’s wildness. Dusty, born David Gordon Kirkpatrick in New South Wales in 1927, was the first Australian performer to enjoy success on the American pop charts — with a drinking song, no less! In 1957, Dusty released a song titled “The Pub With No Beer” as the b-side to a song titled “Saddle Boy.” But it was “Pub With No Beer” that caught on, because the first Australian song to chart in American and earning Dusty the first Gold Record issued to an Australian.

The song was originally written by outback poet Dan Sheahan in 1943, telling of American soldiers that had emptied the Day Dawn Hotel of suds after one evening of carousing. A songwriter named Gordon Parsons eventually added a melody to the song, a rollicking folk melody borrowed from Stephen Foster’s“Beautiful Dreamer.”

The song tells, with a combination of wry humor and impenetrable Australian dialect, of the disappointment of a bar’s locals when they discover their watering hole has run dry. “Then the swaggy comes in smothered in dust and flies,” Dusty sings cheerfully above a plainly strummed guitar, and he’s talking about a swagman, approximately the Australian equivalent of the American hobo, who is nonplussed to discover that he cannot get a drink. “I’ve trudged 50 flamin’ miles to a town with no beer,” he complains.

The song is an inventory of outback characters, none of whom are prepared for a beerless night, There’s a blacksmith who greets his wife sober for the first time and burst into tears before her, as well as stockmen, publicans, maids, and a dog expecting a beating from his frustrated master, all of them in a foul mood thanks to an empty pub. The song’s descriptions of each of these characters are arch and brief, a cartoon of melancholy drinkers.

Since the song’s release, the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the small New South wales’ township of Taylor’s Arms has claimed itself as the original Pub With No Beer, and, in fairness, it has some rights to that claim — it was, after all, frequented by songwriter Gordon Parsons, and did frequently run out of beer. The Cosmopolitan has since renamed itself The Pub With No Beer and positioned itself as a tourist destination, with a microbrewery, a fine restaurant, live musical performances, and walls lines with memorabilia from the Australian outback, as well as a Pub With No Beer Festival every Easter.

And, if you’re a weary jackaroo looking for a cold refreshment, you’re going to have to go to the former Cosmopolitan. Were you to attempt to get a drink at the original Pub With No Beer at the Day Dawn Hotel, you’d walk away as frustrated as any of the characters in Slim Dusty’s song. The Day Dawn Hotel, it turns out, was demolished in 1960. One could, presumably, purchase a can of Fosters, stand on the site of the old hotel, and toast its memory; one might as well celebrate its disappearance by enjoying a beer with no pub. (SPARBER)

The Bottle Gang Happy Hour Wiki

WE AT THE BOTTLE GANG NEED TO ENLIST YOUR HELP, fellow drinkers. We have decided to create a comprehensive list of Minneapolis/St. Paul bars, happy hours, and specials, but it just too vast a task for this small cadre of professional drinkers. So we're inviting your help, in the manner favored at the start of this 21st century: We've created a wiki that can be edited by anybody. If you know the details of your favorite bar -- its address, its specials, its happy hours, bands that might be playing -- head on over to the wiki and plug the information in. Password: sazerac.

Cocktail I made last night: The Polish Sidecar

IT'S ALWAYS NICE WHEN A drink surprises you. See, we at The Bottle Gang like to muck around a bit, and for every Stiletto, there's a Pink Panther. Or even an Alaska, which is a nice drink for certain circumstances, but we don't think you'll be rushing home to make one the way you would a good solid martini.

You may have noticed there's no picture for this drink. Well, guess what? It's Friday, and we're a little more interested in drinking and writing a quick recipe than setting up a photo shoot and all that argle bargle.

We picked up a giant handle of blackberry brandy a couple of weeks ago with the express purpose of making this drink, and it's nice to reach your goals. Here's the recipe for this lovely little drink, straight from a sight that might be Polish (it might be Swedish):

6 cl gin
3 cl bjørnebær-brandy
3 cl nypresset sitronsaft
friske bjørnebær

Lemme help you: combine 2 pts gin (we used Hendrick's, which continues to impress-- you'd think that a gin with hints of cucumber and rose petal would clash with a lot of ingredients in mixed drinks, but really: it's just lovely), 1 pt blackberry brandy and 1 pt fresh squeezed lemon juice in a shaker with ice and shake it like a Polaroid™ picture. Serve in a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with friske bjørnebær, er, fresh blackberries. Or possibly frisky blackberries. Your call.

Once again, it's all about the conversation the ingredients are having. A good mixed drink is like a good cocktail party-- everybody gets along famously, and everybody has something to say. The blackberry and the lemon are a naturally compatible pair, and the freshness of the cucumber overtones livens everything up a bit. The cumulative effect is not unlike some cosmos we've had, although with more zing and less sweet.

Highly recommended. (McPHERSON)

Five tequila cocktails for Cinco de Mayo

SO TOMORROW IT IS THE FIFTH OF MAY, which is a pretty big deal if you are in Mexico -- although, to get a common misconception out of the way, it is not Mexican Independence Day (that falls on September 16). No, instead it is a celebration of the Battle of Puebla in 1862, which was a significant victory for the Mexicans against the occupying French army. By the way, had Mexico not defeated the French, it is widely assumed Napoleon III would have supported the Confederate side of the Civil War, which might have changed the course of history. So, unless you're one of those Americans who thinks the South should have won the War of Northern Aggression, you've got reason to celebrate Cinco de Mayo too.

So we'll be reaching for tequila tomorrow, instead of a shotgun and a Rebel Flag. We tend to prefer top shelf tequilas for these drinks, although it'll push the price sky high. Nonetheless, we're loathe to give up a good tequila. We recommend Patron, which has gotten quite popular later. We're also fans of Don Julio, Tres Generaciones, and Cabo Wabo, although we try to ignore that the latter is owned by Sammy Hagar. Lately we've been drinking a lot of Cielo, and find it agrees with us. Pick your own favorite tequila, and here are a few tequila cocktails to get you started:

Green Iguana

2 ounces sweet-and-sour mix
1/2 ounces tequila
1 ounce melon liqueur

Mix all ingredients with ice in a shaker or blender. Serve in a chilled Margarita or cocktail glass, the rim of which has been dipped in salt. Garnish with basil as you would add mint to a mojito.


Petroleo

1-1/2 ounces tequila
1 ounce Mexican lime juice
1 serrano chile halved from top to bottom

Pour the tequila and lime juice into a small glass. Add salt, pepper, Maggi sauce and Worcestershire sauce to taste. Mix ingredients. Add one half of the serrano chile and one or two ice cubes. Use Blanco or Reposado tequila.


Tequila Collins

2 ounces tequila
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp powdered sugar
fill carbonated water

Shake well with cracked ice and strain into 12 ounce collins glass filled with ice cubes. Fill with carbonated water and stir. Decorate with a slice of lemon, orange and a cherry. Serve with a straw.


Tequila Sour

1-1/2 onces tequila
2 ounces lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar

Blend ingredients with crushed ice and strain into sour glass. Garnish with a red cherry. Use Añejo for a better taste.


Tequila Stinger

1 1/2 oz white tequila
3/4 oz white creme de menthe

Shake well with ice, strain into large martini glass.(SPARBER)

Drinking Games: Top Notch Nymph

This is a drinking game I invented, and has proven to be popular for years. The rules are quite simple: Get an old hard-core pornographic novel. They're usually available for a couple of bucks at a bin in those anonymous adult shops that you'll find in the downtown of any large city. (Minneapolis suggestion: Triple-X Superstore.)

Next you'll need some liquor and some naughty-minded friends. For liquor, we recommend shots of the trashiest sort possible -- Buttery Nipples, for example (Irish cream floated on top of butterscotch liqueur), or the deservedly despised Jello shot. I know, I know -- the Twin Cities' Guide to Sophisticated Drinking, eh? Well, we'll get back to Scotch and cognac soon enough, but sometimes you're just in the mood for some cheap liquor and licentiousness.

The game is simple: Each participant opens the book at random and reads a sentence. If the sentence is unspeakably filthy, they take a shot. Continue until the police and the tabloid reporters arrive.

The game gets its name from the book that inspired it, Top Notch Nymph by the formidably named Dana Furstenbed. This particular book is so filthy that the rules of the game had to be modified somewhat. Rather than take a shot when you read a notably vile passage, with Furstenbed's opus, you are only allowed to drink when you read a passge that is entirely innocent, of which there are precious few. Some samples passages, taken at random, I swear to god, and edited for our more prudish readers:

"She was fascinated by the deliberate strokes of Keith's pr***."

"Sandy swallowed his c*** and began her sucking motion."

"'Roberta, f*** me,' she whispered. 'F*** me hard. Ram that big c*** into me.'"

I can't really explain the last one either.

By he way, the Internet has allowed for a novel variation of Top Notch Nymph that I have dubbed "Suck and Screw Orgy" after the MP3 that inspired it. There's a surprising number of audiobloggers converting old erotic recordings into MP3s and posting them on their blog. Find one, download it, and play it to your assembled guests. Every time someone laughs, they must take a drink. Here's a sampling from Dinosaur Gardens to get you started, including the original Suck and Screw Orgy, which I highly recommend. (SPARBER)

The Bottle Gang presents these drinking games for entertainment and educational purposes only. Their presence on this site should not be construed as an endorsement of these games, and The Bottle Gang accepts no liability for the misuse of any information presented on this site. Alcohol should be drunk responsibly, and irresponsible or binge drinking can result in alcohol poisoning, injury, and even death.

When you can't live top shelf ...

WE CONSIDER OURSELVES a pretty top shelf website, but sometimes, you can't drink top shelf. Maybe you're at a bar that just doesn't have the good stuff. Maybe someone else is buying. Or maybe you're in a band. See, most venues will give you drink tickets when you play, which are good for everything-- as long as it's on tap or below waist level.

What's a classy drinker to do under circumstances like this? There's a powerful argument for the sour drink at a time like this, but you have to know where you are. The Triple Rock Social Club has great sour mix, as does the Turf Club. First Ave and Seventh St. Entry? Pretty good. The Nomad's terrible when it comes to sour. Great at other things, like the Negroni, but their whiskey sours leave a lot to be desired.

There are a couple other tricks you can pull to make a drink made with rail liquor more appetizing. Knol Tate, of the bands Askeleton and Ela (and a veteran of many a drink ticket-fueled evening), makes any drink a "Tate" by asking for a lemon and a lime in it. The original "Knol Tate" is a whiskey sour with a lemon and a lime, but the other night at First Ave he was throwing back a "Tate Sunrise." By the way, you can totally order a "Knol Tate" at the Turf Club and they won't look at you funny.

Of course, you can always go with an amaretto sour, which is pretty much the candy of the gods. It's pretty hard to catch a buzz off of, given amaretto's relatively mild alcohol content, but damn if they're not tasty. Amaretto also varies a lot less between the top shelf variety (DiSaronno) and the lesser types. My co-editor, Max Sparber, turned me onto the amaretto Coke, which basically tastes like alcoholic Cherry Coke. It also works pretty well with Diet Coke, if you're watching your
figure.

Also great with Diet Coke are rum (get Malibu and ask for a lime to make a Diet Hawaiian, a drink I will stay lay claim to inventing, although I'll give Kevin Hunt credit for the name) and whiskey. Oddly, the combo of diet cola and whiskey provides a taste not unrelated to that of a Manhattan. My theory is that the diet cola (being less sweet than real cola) behaves more like bitters. Try it with a maraschino cherry and tell me I'm wrong.

One final tip: you might want to find out if the cola the bartenders are shooting out of that nifty little nozzle is completely off brand or just semi-generic. Bad diet cola in any drink can totally ruin it. (McPHERSON)