Very Palinesque . . . but it's freakin' Florida:
"Make a reservation, pay $35, don an insulated cape and gloves and you can have a vodka drink in a 27 degrees Fahrenheit room. There, the couches, chairs, walls, glasses, bar and even the fireplace are made of ice. Lights alternately bathe the room in subtle colors, and the drinks are served by waitresses dressed in stylish all-white snow suits and Russian-style fur hats.
"The bar is touted as one of the first permanent ones of its kind in the United States. Ice bars are popular in Northern Europe, where entire buildings are sometimes carved from ice."
__________
From a silly new ice bar to a serious new bourbon bar: Char No. 4 in Brooklyn.
"You'll almost need the Dewey Decimal system to navigate the sprawling whiskey menu at this new Southern grub/barbecue joint in Carroll Gardens. Smith Street gets a whiskey infusion with more than 300 varieties (from American to Irish to Japanese, from rye to bourbon to single malt) on hand for your hardcore drinking pleasure. Available in 1-oz. or 2-oz. pours (ranging from $3 for an ounce of Jim Beam to $200 for 2 oz. of Martin's Mill 24-year-old Japanese market), the wall of amber bottles will satisfy even the pickiest of connoisseurs."
"Char No. 4 must be Brooklyn's–or at least Smith Street's–first bourbon-centric whiskey bar and restaurant. You can sample over 300 whiskeys here but probably not in one ecstatic sitting, although, borrowing a page from the wine world, every tipple is available by the one-ounce pours. The name of the place refers to the practice of heating the oak staves used to make bourbon barrels. There are four degrees of char, No. 4 being the most intense."
__________
Come on! I like wi-fi, but this is obscene: "Nearly 1/2 of polled college students said they would give up beer before giving up wi-fi."
__________
Sorry 'about that:
Bob and Joanne Breiner returned home from a night out to find a man with a white beard nestled in their bed, sound asleep. Once police showed up and the drunken stranger realized what had happened, he apologized profusely and complimented the couple on their comfortable bed.
The dude was eight miles from his house. He wasn't even close.
A friend of mine once came back to his third-floor apartment after an afternoon of heavy drinking. He had to do some laundry for work the next day, so he stumbled down the north set of stairs to the complex's laundry facilities in the basement. When everything was done, he unwittingly walked up the south set of stairs, thinking he came up the same way he went down. When he got to his floor, he didn't realize that he was turned around. He walked into the apartment of an immigrant Japanese family that lived kitty-corner from him across the hall. I guess it took him a couple of moments to figure out what was going on. When his roommate heard, he laughed until tears came out of his eyes. My friend's probably lucky he didn't get arrested for a hate crime (stereotyping Easterners as raundry experts).
__________
Oh man, I think I'm gonna hurl. This sounds horrible: Espresso Amber Ale is brewed with Maine-roasted, organic fair trade espresso in collaboration with Coffee By Design. The new brew is a flavorful, robust ale with toasty notes from the espresso in the front palate that delicately compliment the sweeter notes from the malts in the back palate. If I want to bounce off the walls while drinking, I'll just do shots of Red Bull between beers.
