Some bars just want to pour booze down your gullet and collect your cash. Well, all bars want to do that. But some do it with style. Today, we’re looking at bars around the world that draw you in with their quirky, awesome, weirdness.
Top picture: Patrick de Lang
It’s time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo’s weekend booze column. A cocktail shaker full of innovation, science and alcohol. Let’s do shots in someone’s nightmare!
Do you want salt on your margarita? This bar in Uyuni, Bolivia near some enormous salt flats, is made almost entirely of salt. That isn’t sand on the floor.
Picture: Gelände/Straße Travels
November 12, 1954: A customer at the Moka Bar in London’s Soho saves time by using the cafe’s electric razor while he drinks his morning coffee.
Picture: Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images
People sit behind ice blocks at Icebar Tokyo on August 17, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. The entrance fee is ¥3500 ($40) with one drink, and customers can borrow a coat upon entry. Everything in the bar including the counter, the wall, table, glasses, chairs are made from blocks of ice cut from Sweden’s Torne river.
Ice bars are actually getting pretty common these days, with locations in Las Vegas, Orlando, London, Paris and Athens to name just a few.
Picture: Junko Kimura/Getty Images
A man watches a model train running along the bar at Bar Ginza Panorama Shibuya Branch on June 3, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. The bar caters to model train enthusiasts and customers are able to bring their own model trains to run on the tracks.
Picture: Junko Kimura/Getty Images
Pongying Chayad, centre, stands on a scale as his friends look from behind while weighing at Ichub Club, Bangkok’s fat-themed karaoke bar in Bangkok, August 13, 2002. There’s a twice-weekly special at this club: if you and three of your friends together weigh more than 360kg, you get a free bottle of whiskey.
Picture: Sakchai Lalit/AP
A patron watches live video images of other patrons in the digital nightlife lounge Remote April 19, 2002 in New York City. Remote uses interactive technologies, including 60 video cameras and 100 video screens, to relay live images to guests via closed-circuit television.
Voyeurs and exhibitionists… happy hunting.
Picture: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Patrons enjoy the traditional Christmas ‘wunderland’ decor in Rolf’s German restaurant December 22, 2004 in New York City. The 19th-century German tavern decorates for the Christmas season with artificial fir trees and pine garlands, Victorian dolls and thousands of Christmas lights.
Epileptics, stay away!
Picture: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Game Of Thrones bar
We don’t actually know what or where this is, but we want to go to there. If you’ve been there, let us know in the comments below!
Picture: Keith McDuffee
The News Room bar, downtown Minneapolis. This place is gorgeous. It’s like having a drink in a fever dream of Charles Foster Kane. Except pleasant.
Picture: Carrie Sloan/Carrie Sloan
Located in Downtown LA, The Lab is a science themed gastropub. It has beakers for vases, leather study chairs, science books everywhere. It’s at USC, but it’s way cooler than your average university bar.
Picture: Zagat Buzz
The infamous H.R. Giger bar (and museum) in Château St Germain, Gruyères, Switzerland.
Terrifyingly awesome.
Picture: Patrick de Lang
The Clinic Bar, Clarke Quay, Singapore. All the fun of being in the hospital, without all the gross sick people.
I guess that’s one solution to being staggering drunk.
Picture: Tama Leaver/Anne Murray/snowflakegirl/Grégory Knaff
Bringing the beach to you, this beautiful bar called Areia in Madrid, Spain is full of sand, despite being 360km from the ocean. The rugs, pillows and drapery give it a Moroccan feel.
Picture: Alisa Kennedy / Happy in Hungary
The Himiko, designed by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999), ferries people along the Sumida River in Tokyo by day. By night it becomes a floating bar and nightclub.
Picture: Catherine/Ken Worker/Hanako’s Life, in a Flash/Edmund Yeo
Insert Coin(s) Video Game Arcade Bar, Las Vegas.
There’s also Barcade in Brooklyn and many others.
Picture: Insert Coin(s)/Facebook
The Storm Crow Tavern, a hardcore nerd bar in Vancouver, Canada. The phrase Storm Crow appears in World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, and even Magic, The Gathering. Axes, laser weapons and Cthulhu statues abound.
Picture: stormcrowtavern.com
Pixel Winebar, Brussels, Belgium. If you ever admired the landscape in the original Super Mario Brothers and thought, “that looks like a nice place to get drunk”, well, you just found your spot.
Picture: Guy Philippart/pixelwinebar.be