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Raising the Bar

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Pin-Up Bowl, 6191 Delmar Boulevard, the Loop

In Heaven, the beer won't bloat you, the dirt weed won't make you dumb. The rivers will flow wine, and those that don't will overflow with Orangina and tart cherries and break off into Lindemans framboise tributaries. Baileys will come via the bloated breasts of ripe waitresses, and all kisses will be wet kisses. In Heaven, baby-blue birdies will fly through a soft pink sky to tie your shoelaces, shave your legs, trim your handlebar mustache and pluck your wasp-nest eyebrows. Chipmunks will run wind sprints through your heart. As you pass the pearly gates, Saint Pete will hand you an iPod (white) programmed to play the first verse of "Heaven" by the Talking Heads: "Everyone is trying to get to the bar/The name of the bar, the bar is called Heaven/The band in Heaven, they play my favorite song/They play it once again, play it all night long."

And in Heaven, the bowling alley will resemble the Pin-Up Bowl, and, like Joe Edwards' new Loop alley, will run videos of "Hey Ya!", "Milkshake" and "Tipsy" and will show King of the Hill and Futurama reruns. Edwards, who also owns Blueberry Hill, the Pageant, the Tivoli Building and an excellent collection of Simpsons memorabilia, opened the Pin-Up a few months back, and it kicks royal ass. Eight black-light-lit lanes of bowling provide challenging distraction.

They serve this drink called the stiletto martini here, which is either a reference to the knife or the shoe. Did we mention that we love this drink, especially at 1:31 a.m.? It's kind of odd, the stiletto. First, there's Glacier potato vodka. Most vodkas are made from grain; a teeny minority, however, are fermented and distilled from potatoes, which makes the finished product more distinctive; you can pick the potato vodka out of a lineup. Next, there's a splash of the French aperitif Lillet Blonde, a blend of white wine, brandy, fruits and herbs. Finally, the dash of olive brine, which adds the dirt, twang and salt.

Bowling and drinking: such a heavenly match. Roll a ball, return to your seat and drink. Then again, and again. You can't simultaneously drink and play football. Too much action; hard tackling tends to break longnecks; not enough downtime. Drinks tend to get spilled. Baseball -- same deal. With bowling, most of the time you're sitting, contemplating the space between the ball and the pins while watching the big booties shake-it-like-a-Polaroid-picture on the flat screens.

The drink menu, too, is out of this world. Cocktail heads will be giddy -- four whole categories of drinks: Signature Cocktails, Classic Cocktails, Modern Cocktails, Martinis. Among them: Dutch harvest, kaffir limedrop, red sangria, Algonquin, El Floridita, maiden's prayer, antifreeze, orange Creamsicle. Huzzah!

House of Rock, 5 Ronnie's Plaza, South County

On your way from Tejas, a new Clayton Tex-Mex place where you loved their mango margarita, to the House of Rock, a south-county rock club, J-Kwon's hit "Tipsy" is booming out of the speakers. The desire to celebrate alcohol through song is universal: from Sammy Hagar's "Cruisin' and Boozin'" to John Lee Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" to Nina Simone's "Lilac Wine" to Hank Williams' "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" -- to this, St. Louis' newest superstar bellowing, "Urrrbody in da club get tipsy," we all want to sing about getting drunk.

"Tipsy" is a good song about celebrating via booze if you ignore the words about the girl getting her tubes tied at 21, but it doesn't rock the way, say, Led Zeppelin's "Fool in the Rain" does, and you are now headed south on the near side of midnight, to south county, to the heart of the mullet, where the mustaches are well coifed and the Wranglers too tight.

Ah, the House of Rock, a joint with perhaps the most obvious and unoriginal moniker in the history of nightclubs. On Thursday nights, a band called Joe Dirt plays all the KSHE classics. The band wears wigs, however, which is just silly. If you really want to rock, you have to mean it. And you can't mean it if, when the gig's over, the hair gets tossed in the corner and Joe Dirt turns back into Joe Blow.

Budweiser is boring, Bud Light is for girlies, Michelob Ultra is for ladies who lunch. And Busch is for wussies (kidding!!). And yet, a very informal poll at the House of Rock revealed on a Thursday at midnight that nearly 98 percent of the crowd -- 150 strong -- were drinking one of those four beers.

Wanting to fit in, you do a shot of Jägermeister, then another, then down a big glass of water, and then another. (Psst: the secret is in the water; drink a lot of it, and you'll avoid a hangover.) Pounding one is akin to getting shot in a bulletproof vest, and for that reason this German liqueur has pole-vaulted into America's consciousness as the shot of record when you're out partying hard. Of the 57 different nettles and berries and herbs that give Jäger its flavor, a very prominent one is anise, which puts it in the same company as both ouzo and chartreuse, both crazy-good liqueurs that, if you're not careful, will gradually drive you and your liver to the grave. The band kicks into "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."

Slo Tom's, 6728 South Broadway, South City

The GTO is the house specialty at Slo Tom's on South Broadway, a few miles shy of Lemay, a town all abuzz with talk of the new Pinnacle casino development. This is the rough-and-tumble bar celebrated by the Bottle Rockets in their song "Slo Tom's"; the bar's even pictured on the back of their CD 24 Hours a Day. Yes, that kind of bar.

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