#172: Moose Bar

The Bar

Moose Bar. 406 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 1/30/21 @ 10pm.

The Drink

Deep Eddy. Deep Eddy lemon & cranberry vodka, soda, Sprite. $8.25.

Over the course of this project I have consistently praised Deep Eddy many times for its excellent flavored vodkas, and I will do so again here. Cranberry and lemon are not common flavors to mix, but to be honest you could probably pull the childhood suicide drink game with all seven Deep Eddy flavors and still come away with something drinkable. I am not sure why the bar was so uncreative with what they called it, but I have to admit that it might be the single most honest name I've encountered yet. Perhaps the ultimate first round "something to sip on while I ponder what I actually want" cocktail you could find, although we didn't stay for more.

The Crew

Mark, Karen, Aaron.

Notes

This was a really tricky one for me. As we were walking along Sixth away from Mala Vida intending to hit up Soho Lounge, I noticed that Mooseknuckle had changed their sign to Moose Bar. It was a crowded Saturday night, but I stopped dead in my tracks right there and asked the door guy if this was really a different bar. He said yes (as if he would have said no and lost potential customers), so we went in, expecting to see a rebranded establishment. There was still a ton of Mooseknuckle stuff adorning the walls (and, as I discovered while googling on my phone, the old website, Instagram, etc are all still up), but there was enough new Moose Bar paraphernalia to assuage my doubts. The interior of the ground floor bar (we didn't check out the other two) remains eerily similar to how Mooseknuckle had it, so perhaps the bar has merely pivoted away from the unsavory crassness of the old name to something a little less unpalatable, if less memorable.

Postscript: I checked and the credit card receipt was updated with the new name, so it does count as a new bar. Apparently the bar rebranded in the middle of 2019, perhaps due to an unpaid wage lawsuit brought by their employees, so keep that in mind when deciding on your next bar stop.