Some bars just want to pour booze down your gullet and collect your cash. Well, all bars want to do that. But some do it with style. Today, we're looking at bars around the world that draw you in with their quirky, awesome, weirdness.
It's Friday afternoon, you've made it through the long week, and it's time for Happy Hour, Gizmodo's weekly booze column. A cocktail shaker full of innovation, science, and alcohol. Let's do shots in someone's nightmare!
Do you want salt on your margarita? This bar in Uyuni, Bolivia near some enormous salt flats, is made almost entirely of salt. That isn't sand on the floor—it's grains of salt.
Photo: Gelände/Straße Travels
12th November 1954: A customer at the Moka Bar in London's Soho saves time by using the cafe's electric razor while he drinks his morning coffee.
Photo: Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images
People sit behind ice blocks at Icebar Tokyo. After paying an entrance fee of 3500 Yen (which includes one drink), customers can borrow a coat upon entry. Everything in the bar including the counter, the wall, table, glasses, chairs are made from blocks of ice cut from Sweden's Torne river.
Ice bars are actually getting pretty common these days, with locations in Las Vegas, Orlando, London, Paris, and Athens to name just a few.
Photo: Junko Kimura/Getty Images
A man watches a model train running along the bar at Bar Ginza Panorama Shibuya Branch in Tokyo, Japan. The bar caters to model train enthusiasts, and customers are even able to bring their own model trains to run on the tracks.
Photo: Junko Kimura/Getty Images
Pongying Chayad, center, stands on a scale at Ichub Club, Bangkok's fat-themed karaoke bar in Bangkok. There's a twice-weekly special at this club: if you and three of your friends together weigh more than 794 pounds, you get a free bottle of whiskey.
Photo: Sakchai Lalit/AP
A patron watches CCTV footage of other drinkers at the "digital lounge," Remote, in New York City. Remote uses interactive technologies, including 60 video cameras and 100 video screens, to relay live images to guests via closed-circuit television.
Voyeurs and exhibitionists... happy hunting.
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Patrons enjoy the traditional Christmas "wunderland" decor in Rolf's German restauran, in New York City. The 19th-century German tavern decorates for the Christmas season with artificial fir trees and pine garlands, Victorian dolls and thousands of Christmas lights.
Epileptics, stay away!
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images
A Game Of Thrones bar, because of course.
We don't actually know what or where this is, but we want to go to there. If you've been there, let us know in the discussion below!
Photo: Keith McDuffee
The News Room bar, in downtown Minneapolis. This place is gorgeous. It's like having a drink in a fever dream of Charles Foster Kane. Except pleasant.
Photo: Carrie Sloan/Carrie Sloan
Located in Downtown LA, The Lab is a science-themed gastropub. It has beakers for vases, leather study chairs, science books everywhere. It's at University of Southern California, but it's way cooler than your average college bar.
Photo: Zagat Buzz
The infamous H.R. Giger bar (and museum) in Château St. Germain, Gruyères, Switzerland.
Terrifyingly awesome.
Photo: Patrick de Lang
The Clinic Bar, Clarke Quay, Singapore. All the fun of being in the hospital, without all the gross sick people.
I guess that's one solution to being staggering drunk.
Photo: Tama Leaver/Anne Murray/snowflakegirl/Grégory Knaff
Bringing the beach to you, this beautiful bar called Areia in Madrid, Spain is full of sand, despite being 200 miles from the ocean. The rugs, pillows, and drapery give it a Moroccan feel.
Photo: Alisa Kennedy / Happy in Hungary
The Himiko, designed by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999), ferries people along the Sumida River in Tokyo by day. By night it becomes a floating bar and nightclub.
Photo: Catherine/Ken Worker/Hanako's Life, in a Flash/Edmund Yeo
Insert Coin(s) Video Game Arcade Bar, Las Vegas.
There's also Barcade in Brooklyn, and many others.
Photo: Insert Coin(s)/Facebook
The Storm Crow Tavern, a hardcore nerd bar in Vancouver. The phrase Storm Crow appears in World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, and even Magic, The Gathering. Axes, laser weapons, and Cthulhu statues abound.
Photo: stormcrowtavern.com
Pixel Winebar, Brussels, Belgium. If you ever admired the landscape in the original Super Mario Brothers and thought, "that looks like a nice place to get drunk," well, you just found your spot.
Photo: Guy Philippart/pixelwinebar.be
This list was just the beginning, really. We know there are tons of other awesome bars out there that we missed. If you know of some please share them (with a photo, if possible) in the discussion below.
Image curation by the esteemed Attila Nagy. Top photo: Patrick de Lang