#108: Bird's Barbershop

The Bar

Bird's Barbershop. 1107 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 8/2/17 @ 8:30pm.

The Drink

Independence Power & Light. $0.

When we asked the hairdresser to put down her scissors and put on her bartending hat for a moment to recommend us a beer, out of the two available options she picked the Power & Light over the Shiner Bock. Great choice: I've loved Power & Light ever since it came out, and I even remember when I first bought it, on a sunny day in late 2014 at the now-closed Crestview Minimax IGA in order to have something to drink alongside some phenomenal pizza at Little Deli, when the sun was shining and the food right out of the oven....

Self-indulgent memories aside, Power & Light has remained a staple in my fridge ever since. It's a pale ale, so it's not too hoppy, it has a smooth flavor that's enjoyable without ever being too malty, and at 5.5% I can pace myself fairly easily. It seems to go with just about everything, though like I said it's particularly good with pizza. Best of all, it's fairly cheap, and I often see deals for $7.something per sixer at local grocery stores. Also, in a neat tribute to Austin's history its spiffy can art reflects the Seaholm Power Plant, to this day a big part of the city's face on Town Lake. Like I said, a great choice. Of course, ordering it was not quite as easy as it seems....

The Crew

Aaron, Vince.

Notes

Here's a helpful ordering hint: you can't actually order any beer at Bird's. You can receive a beer alongside your haircut, the service at which Bird's excels, but you can't simply walk up to the counter and exchange money in exchange for a beer, no matter how hard you try. Does this make it a bar? Under the strictest, most literal, most exactingly Jesuitical definition of the word, no. Actually, under pretty much any definition the answer is still clearly no: this is a barbershop that happens to provide beer to its paying customers, plain and simple. So including this is a bit misleading, especially since we didn't even get haircuts, we just showed up 30 minutes before closing time and threw ourselves at the mercy of the staff. But because they were kind enough to help me in my quest, I will give them a shoutout on this extremely influential, universally-read blog. Had I been in need of a trim, there are far worse places I could have gone: they have an Asteroid machine, a nice layout, and $25 is not bad at all for a short haircut, if I had needed one. Some people get blackout drunk and wake up with a tattoo, and though I didn't wake up with a new style (perhaps a hungover trim should be a "haircut of the dog"?), who's to say what might happen on some future bar crawling night?