#24: Star Bar

The Bar

Star Bar. 600 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/4/17 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Friends & Allies Noisy Cricket IPA. $6.

I had never heard of this beer or this brewery before my bartender picked it for me, probably because Austin's craft beer scene has been absolutely insane recently. This is a session IPA, the star member of that still-amorphous beer category that's less a strict style and more of an attitude towards a beer's role in a drinking period. At 4.7% and not too hoppy, this was absolutely perfect for me in this particular scenario, needing a drink to sustain me without pushing me over the line into stumbling buffoon.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My main memory of this bar is eavesdropping on a great discussion some out-of-towners were having about which Dirty Sixth bar they were planning to hit up next. They made Sixth sound like a combination of Bourbon Street and the Vegas Strip, a fabulous wonderland of adventure and debauchery. I remember feeling that way in college, that Sixth (back before you had to prefix it with "Dirty") was a private playground for my friends and me, a world free of consequences or regrets beyond your bar tabs or your hangovers, which back then were temporary morning twinges to be banished with hair-of-the-dog instead of multi-day catastrophes. It's refreshing to hear someone describe your city as an escape from their troubles, instead of the tepid picayune stew of congestion, deadlines, and chores that it seems to you when you live there every day.

Star Bar is actually one of the oldest bars on West Sixth (on their website they brag that they were the very first). A 1995 founding won't compete with, say, Hoffbrau Steakhouse's 1934, but 22 years is a long time for a bar! FBR, their ownership group, also runs a few other solid bars around town. In terms of the ambiance, I would say this straddles the line between sports bar and scene bar. The bartender told me it was a Packers bar and a Seminoles bar, which is an odd pairing but no less jarring than say, The Tavern's role as both a Ravens and Bulldogs gameday spot. My main sports focus the time was the UK @ FL thrashing, but I spent plenty of time admiring the neat tilt-shift style photos of city landmarks on the walls.