#68: Aquarium

The Bar

Aquarium. 403 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/8/17 @ 12am.

The Drink

Starfucker shot. Crown Royal whiskey, watermelon schnapps, Red Bull. $5.

I know lots of people who are into craft cocktails, but nobody's into craft shots, and the entire concept of a "craft shot" is pretty funny. There are standard shots - evidently the Starfucker shot is one of those - but you can't really consider anything that's designed to be consumed as quickly as possible a "craft" anything. Where's the creativity, the artisanship, the extremely expensive boutique ingredients designed to be savored? $5 for a shot on Dirty Sixth during Friday night peak hours is downright proletarian. Besides, this has Red Bull in it, and I'm absolutely positive that nothing with Red Bull could be a craft shot. Luckily, this was really tasty (my love for watermelon at work again), so I'm fine with it.

The Crew

Aaron, Travis, Cecilia, Karen.

Notes

Even if Aquarium hasn't been around literally forever, it feels like it, because I remember hearing about it even when I was in high school, long before I ever stalked the pavement of Sixth to purchase a beer under my own power. I'm positive I've been there before, but perhaps I've got another case of false drunk memory, because if I actually had been here, surely I would have noticed the bar's most hilarious feature, which is the faulty one-way mirror between the men's bathroom and the main dance floor. Theoretically, dudes going to the bathroom should be able to go about their business safely unobserved by the floor of drinkers, but the lighting inside the bathroom is just bright enough so that once an outsider gets close enough, they can trade waves with the urinal users. What's up dude! To the more distant casual observer it just looks like a face-height mirror, but wallflowers be warned - you're about to get real friendly with someone in an intimate moment.

You would think that a bar called Aquarium would have lots of fish, but that is not the case. There's a small bank of aquariums (aquaria?) on the wall opposite the bar, but the number of fish was in the low single digits when we visited, and they didn't seem in particularly high spirits, even for fish. Perhaps they were just tired of people like us gawking at them and wanted a nap - sleeping with the fishes probably takes effort on a Friday night. There were a decent number of people there, but even though the upstairs was closed the place never got too cramped. I've heard that this place does shot pong, and though that sounds like the worst idea ever, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued.