A friend of mine living in Texas recently told me of an adventure her and her friends embarked upon, a journey so magical and incredible I feel it is my duty to share. It’s called the Pedal Party, and it is awesome. The Pedal Party is a 15-man, one bartender/navigator mobile bar with bike pedals on every seat. While sitting at each of the bar stools, the patrons pedal their way along their route to their destination, while the person at the front steers. The bike/bar itself comes loaded with several taps, so thirsty pedalers can swig some brew while en route to the next bar (presumably you’d be going to a bar on this thing). The brilliance behind this plan is that the bartender is the one who steers, thus never violating any DUI laws, even if the people pedaling the bike are hammered! But alas, since this wondrous device is in Texas, a state with no open container laws, it wouldn’t be possible in Baltimore.

Unleeeesssss the bike didn’t feature alcoholic drinks, and everyone performed their responsible imbibery at destination bars. A 15-man tandem bike bar crawl, if you will.

Logistically, having one of these things in Baltimore could be… difficult. What with the state of our major thoroughfares, aggressive drivers and many, many hilly areas, finding a good route for such a thing has a limited geography (although this route could work pretty well). That, and the fact that these things are manufactured in Germany, and there’s only three of them in the world. But hey, a guy can dream, can’t he? Just look at how awesome this thing looks in action!

For something a bit different and with far less vomit during this year’s Halloween festivities, I fully intend to patronize Station North in lieu of more jam-packed, expensive and otherwise drunk as hell areas like Fell’s Point or Federal Hill. And so should you. Granted, you’ll be trading your crowd of 20,000 totally sweet sexy nurses/school teachers/eskimos/vinyl siding salesmen for a crowd of hipsters/art students/or both in TOTALLY IRONIC costumes, but I’m willing to bet you’ll see a lot more creativity and far less public urination with the latter.

Not to mention that all six participating venues – with the exception of one – are FREE to attend and offer a lot of entertainment and SWEET CONTESTS for your general enjoyment. For a full list of such events, check out the fine freaks over at Gutter.

On another note, this will be the first year in my mind (or rather, for me personally) that Station North has really been put on the map as a legitimate holiday blowout – with the exception of Artscape – since the revitalization of that area began. Or maybe I’m just generally out of the loop. Wait, let me rephrase all of this: This will be the first year that I actually would really like to patronize Station North for a holiday of any variety. It’ll be interesting and somewhat heartwarming to see a great party going on in a section of the city that less than four or five years ago was considered literally untouchable. Warms my cockles, it does!

Behold as the tragically hilarious guest poster Lee of The Jackal’s Den bestows upon us his thoughts and feelings on this past Saturday’s vodka infusion festival (my own material will be posted when I get my hands on some pictures of it):

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Getting Awesome With Awesome Vodka

When you get awesome the way Jackals get awesome you tend to know people who do awesome things. Evan “Strike List” [redacted] does awesome things, namely make awesome vodka infusions.

$20 all you can drink vodka’s and mixers as well as a buffet (the meatballs were the fucking bomb). In the interest of full disclosure I was still feeling the effects of how awesome we got Friday night when we (Heather, Beth and I, DC Representing in BMore two saturdays in a row. respect that!) arrived for the 2:30 pm tasting but I fought through it like Butch fighting through pride fucking with him if he chose to do that instead of fucking over Marcellus in a most Jackal way, but I digress…

The menu of vodkas went something like this:

• Peanut Butter Vodka
• Lemon and Grape Vodka
• Bacon Vodka
• Coffee and Caramel (it was awesome. like van goghs but not as sweet. if van goghs is a white chocolate mocha this was espresso. damn that was GAF, but i’ll just keep it moving to the KIM)
• Cucumber and Jasmine Vodka
• Pickletini (fuck pickles fuck them in their nasty ears. i even had my pickle hate t shirt on in protest)
• Cherry and Lime Vodka
• Lemon and Ginger Vodka
• Rosemary and Garlic Vodka

I started out as any red blooded MerCan would with the Bacon. Damn did that shit taste like Bacon. I mean really taste like Bacon. Big time. I had it on the rocks for a bit and felt like it really needed some horseradish (note to Evan, make Bacon Horseradish Vodka and sell it to me). Not wanting to be a pain in the ass I settled for adding some Tabasco. It was good when I had one of my awesome ideas. What if I made a screwdriver out of this? I mentioned the idea and was met with 5 or 6 “what the fuck” looks but the bartender was feeling my genius. He topped me of with OJ and The Breakfast of Champions shot was born. It basically tasted like you took a bite of awesome breakfast sandwich and then a sip of your OJ all in one awesome alcoholic beverage.

Next up was the peanut butter vodka. Damn that shit tasted like peanut butter and was awesome. This was hands down the most popular vodka at the tasting. People were mixing it with Baileys, making awesome white russians with it, we dropped it into Guinness and did car bombs, mixing it with the coffee one. It rocked. I even rocked it out with some 100 poof peppermint schnapps and made a Girl Scout Leader.

Moving right along I tore into the Lemon and Ginger and mixed that bad boy with Blue Moon to make a Fancy Poison. If you’ve had Poison it was exactly the same but with good vodka and better beer.

We also tried the Lemon and Grape with an IPA but it wasn’t as good as fancy Poison, way too bitter.

The champion of the stand alone vodkas however was the Rosemary and Garlic. That shit was good. Really fucking good. The other vodkas had stronger flavors but this one was just smooth as all get out and made me want lamb something fierce. Now that I think about it I was a good 6 or 7 vodkas deep when I tasted it so perhaps I should try it again when sober but I am 99% sure, ok make that 79% sure it still would be my favorite. As for the mixed drink that goes with this awesome vodka, Lambtini = ground lamb and Rosemary and Garlic vodka.

So all in all the vodkas were quite awesome and the event was quite fun. As an added bonus I got nice and drunk before 5pm which is always fun. The only negative thing I have to say about the entire thing is that The Wiz and Steven didn’t show up with basically makes them GAF.

Until the greatest vodka infusion party the city of Baltimore has ever known. Needless to say there’s an excitement in the air folks, expect a grande olde wrapup by Mondee!

The Bacon and Beer Happy Hour IV has come and gone and it was a pretty great time indeed. For a bar that has essentially made a name for itself solely through Tweeting frequently, Bad Decisions has really done a fine job of generating a ton of interest in their events and establishment in general, this particular event especially. The place was packed by 7pm and it was still packed when I left, having a grande olde time eating entirely too much bacon and drinking cheap beer.

And when I say entirely too much bacon, I mean entirely too much bacon; instead of pretzels in baskets, they put out baskets of bacon as snacks. Each and every menu item had bacon in it (a lot of bacon) – I played it safe with a grilled cheese and bacon but other sandwiches, such as the GBLT (a BLT with Guacamole) were piled enormously high with the smokey goodness.

And no evening featuring all things bacon would be complete without a star, a bright shining star that eclipses all other food items, a truly epic piece of food destined to destroy us all in a white hot supernova. That food item is known as The Gutbuster, and it is truly horrifying. The Gutbuster is a double bacon cheesburger with – are you ready for this – two bacon grilled cheese sandwiches as a bun (no lettuce or tomato, that shit’s for pussies). Yeah.  This thing was like a Hollywood star on the red carpet when it came out of the kitchen. Pictures being shot left and right, ooohs and aaahs and gags all around. Upon taking his first bite, one guy stated “it’s like I’ve been slimed!” as grease and butter covered his chin. But he ate the whole thing, and then ate a plate of nachos. Unreal. (I also submitted it to This Is Why You’re Fat)

People were met, beer and bacon vodka were consumed, it was great. Can’t wait for the next one!
LIGHTING EDIT: For tons of really really good pictures of the event, head here.