#173: Thirsty's

The Bar

Thirsty's. 325 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 1/30/21 @ 10:30pm.

The Drink

Kickass margarita. Tequila. $30.

I am not going to rehash my numerous litanies against these oversized novelty frozen cocktails again - by now you are all too familiar with my belief that these monstrosities are generally overpriced, under-boozed, hard to drink, impossible to enjoy, and so on. This rendition did nothing to change my opinion. I was all but begging the bartender to pick something other than this inverted cone of frozen woe as the drink that "best represented the bar", but they persisted, and I suppose that in the end it was the correct pick. We sat at our table chugging away at our trough of sorrow until we couldn't stomach another drop and we departed. It's a common trope for unwary travelers to get stuck in quicksand, but imagine if you had to drink the quicksand. 

The Crew

Aaron, Karen, Mark.

Notes

Much like with Moose Bar, I was confused by yet another semi-rebranding of a bar. I did some sleuthing and discovered that both Thirsty's and Moose Bar renamed themselves in mid-2019. This seemed uncoincidental, and so I was not surprised to find that they are both owned by the same company Twin Bar Management. I learned this fact thanks to the unhappy discovery of an unpaid wage lawsuit brought by their employees about 2 months before the name change occurred, so keep that in mind when you're deciding what bars to hit up. 

Quite what the company is thinking I am not sure, but as with Moose Bar, both the old name The Thirsty Nickel and the new name Thirsty's compete for mind share in terms of branded items in the interior, with merch both updated and not scattered about haphazardly. I say mind share, but only weirdos like me would even notice anything had changed - since the new joint still has the same layout, lighting, beer pong, etc, most patrons there on a busy Saturday night were perfectly content to, like us, slurp on their tubs of woe and listen to the really loud house music until, like us, they just couldn't take it anymore. Visiting on a Saturday is always different than visiting on, say, a Wednesday, but a bar where you can't hear yourself think is a bad time no matter what day of the week.