With so many bars out there, it’s only natural that some would resort to pretty…unique tactics to catch customers’ attention. There are ice bars, speakeasy style lounges, and now, a bar that supposedly allows you to get drunk without ever bringing a drink to your lips.
Alcoholic Architecture is an installation from design company Bompas & Parr, who started off making jelly, but now “leads in flavour-based experience design, culinary research, architectural installations and contemporary food design.” Sounds awesome, whatever it may mean. On B&P’s resume: creating an “inhabitable cloud of gin and tonic” and “sensory fireworks” for the Guinness Storehouse. Alcohol Architecture is their latest project, and it’s situated in the basement of a Victorian building in London’s Borough Market, right next to a gothic cathedral.
After descending into the dimly lit bar, you basically walk into a cloud of vaporized cocktail. According to their website, the mist is made up of spirits and mixers at a 1:3 ratio. Humidifiers “super-saturate” the air, and you soak up the booze via your lungs and your eyeballs. According to the Daily Mail, it takes around forty minutes for your body to soak up a big drink. It’s reportedly healthier than actually drinking, because the booze is less taxing on your liver while still delivering intoxication. Oh, and it’s supposedly less “fattening.” We’ll take it!
Bar frequenters don ponchos, enjoy loud music, a humidity set at 140%, strobe lights, and misted drinks with an underlying theme: religion. Keeping in line with the installation’s proximity to a church, drinks are made out of booze created by religious figureheads. Libation ingredients include Benedictine, Trappist beer and last but not least: Buckfast wine, i.e. Buckie. Drinks are named things like “Dirty Habit” and “Friar Tucked.” We applaud Bompas & Parr for being committed to a theme. You can only breathe booze for fifty minutes, tops and the feeling in the air is described as “sticky.” Some people claimed that the mist had a “woozy” effect.
There are also snakes in the bathroom, and it looks like in addition to the booze mist you can drink actual liquid drinks. Seems a little dangerous to us.
Alcoholic Architecture is available for people over the age of 18 (duh) and isn’t really wheelchair accessible. Head over here to buy tickets to obtain entry into this terrifying but undeniably intriguing booze pop up.
Images via Garage CCC/Alcoholic Architecture
