#80: Buckshot

The Bar

Buckshot. 422 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 5/3/17 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Colt .45. Pearl pomegranate vodka, X-Rated liqueur, mango juice, spicy salt. $6.

At a shot bar, you get a shot. This was one of the bartender's favorites, or so he said. If I were a bartender, I'm sure at first I'd start out with an ambitious mission to sample the entire menu, before regressing into a jaded, surly drink-slinger whose hatred for concept shots is matched only by my contempt for my customers, but luckily our bartender actually cared about us. I haven't seen a whole lot of pomegranate so far on this journey, and was looking forward to it, but it was hard to taste over the mango juice and the liqueur, which according to their marketing copy is "a sensuous blend of ultra-premium French vodka and blood oranges, mingled with mango and passion fruit". I don't know about sensuous, except in the loose way that taste is a sense, but think a tropical fruit base, with the spicy salt making the whole ensemble taste like one of those tasty Mexican street snacks that's fruit dusted with Tajín chili powder. I'm not sure how that flavor relates to the name, but it was delicious all the same. Even better, they had well drinks for $1.50, so even if you hate Mexican street snacks like some kind of monster, you can wash it down with an insanely cheap gin and tonic. Which I did, followed immediately by yet another shot.

The Crew

Cristy, Louis, Aaron, Chris, Kyle, Travis (not pictured), Hannah (not pictured).

Notes

Buckshot is a shot bar, as you might guess from the name. Now, shot bars have a negative reputation among many people, for a few different reasons: they tend to have fairly no-frills decor, they often don't have a wide selection of drinks beyond shots, and, perhaps worst of all, they tend to attract the kind of people who go to shot bars, meaning people who want to get (even more) drunk as quickly as possible. Well, I don't care so much about decor as long as it's not actively unpleasant, I'm willing to accept a wide range of drinks, and the kind of person who goes to a shot bar happens to include me, and I tend to be very forgiving of myself.

One of my questions to the bartender was how he felt to be competing with Cheers, right down the street and far more of an institution. Everyone knows about Cheers. Well, Buckshot has existed since 2012, backed by Bob Woody as a silent partner no less, and with its few years under its belt it's been able to carve out its own place. Not just as "the other shot bar", even though it's always good to have choices, but as a full-fledged bar of its own. Another frequent criticism of a shot bar is that they don't tend to be conducive to becoming "your bar", since most shot bar patrons are one-round transients, yet they have plenty of regulars, and there's no enmity or sense of rivalry between the two (just as well, given how one-sided a rivalry would most likely be). I could see this being worth a fairly lengthy stop, although there's only a bit of seating, so it was with hesitation that we finished off the third of our three rounds, watched the end of TOR @ CLE, and departed.