#67: Mooseknuckle

The Bar

Mooseknuckle. 406 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/7/17 @ 11:30pm.

The Drink

Whiskey Coke pitcher. $10.

While not quite the blockbuster deal that you can get at Shakespeare's or Peckerheads, a big ol' vat of whiskey Coke for $10 is still worth a second look, if that's the kind of mood you're in. Something you might want to take into consideration, though, is that while you'll definitely get a buzz off the pitcher, you'll also get brainfreeze. The sheer displacement of these drinks means that unless you want to spend an hour carefully sipping an endless supply of well whiskey and Coke, you'll have to start chugging. And that means sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia! It actually sort of reminded me of high school: Jack In the Box once sold the Quencher, a 44 ounce drink bucket that my friends and I would fill to the brim and try to drink as fast as possible. There's more booze in these than in my high school soft drinks, but the overall experience is similar in how it firmly transitions from novelty to drudgery about halfway through the pitcher. We were struggling. Definitely not recommended if you're ordering at any time when there's a risk of a bathroom line, but on a less crowded night, anyone too lazy to get more than a single drink will find their needs amply served.

The Crew

Travis, Cecilia, Karen, Aaron.

Notes

Mooseknuckle has three different bars inside its walls, the kind of scenario that presented me with a conundrum when I was starting out. I had toyed with the idea of ordering different drinks at each multi-bar venue, just to really and truly get "every bar" checked off for the hundreds of thousands of loyal readers this blog was destined to accumulate, but I quickly realized how tedious, expensive, and ultimately pointless that would be, unless I actually wanted to get down to the level of reviewing individual bartenders. I picked the second one of Mooseknuckle's three bars, after the sodden scrum of the entryway but before the patient queue at the outside bar. There's not much about its interior that separates it from other bars on Dirty Sixth - it has the same historical stonework overlaid with modern touches like flatscreen TVs and backlight liquor racks. Same for the music, which was the same loud DJ-spun club music you'll find anywhere. We spent a lot of time on the smallish back patio dancing a bit and watching local bros hit on out-of-town bachelorette parties. I've spent a long time rhapsodizing about how friendly Austin is, and I guess trying to get laid with a 30something Dallasite could count as friendliness too, or at least as a way for her to cross something off one of those bachelorette party lists. We didn't stick around long enough to see whether anyone was successful, but best of luck to all parties involved.