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Raising the Bar

Continued from page 3

The GTO comes in two sizes -- huge and super huge. Without even specifying, Donna, who's an angel straight from heaven, fixes up a Super Huge GTO, about the size of a tennis ball canister and, at 2:52 p.m. on a Friday, places it in front of you. It costs $11, but it's about eight times the size of J. Bucks' $11 sunrise. She declines to reveal its ingredients: "It's a secret [and] native to Slo Tom's." Your expert buds, however, reveal that it's sweet, orangey, rummy and Southern Comfortable.

There are five people in the bar on a Friday afternoon: Donna, Clay, some dude, some other dude and the obvious outsider, you, who's a big hit. Clay keeps bellowing, "You are all right! I like you!" He's pretty long gone, a point he emphasizes during one glorious outburst. "I like to get trashed. And I like Donna! I come here for Donna. She's great. You're all right, Mr. Riverfront Times man!" Clay is drinking a greyhound -- vodka and grapefruit juice -- out of a glass that's shaped like a cowboy boot.

He and some dude are talking about vegetarian hamburgers. "The only vegetarian burger I know of is between the legs," says Clay. Great. The talk switches to the pros and cons of menthol cigarettes, and from there to Johnny Cash's version of "A Boy Named Sue." Clay sings along even though he doesn't know many of the words. The result is one long, drunken mumble that merges every so often with the melody.

"I've got a rock & roll heart!" Clay shouts out of nowhere. Unconditionally, you believe him. He is drinking vodka-grapefruits out of a cowboy boot at 3 p.m. on a Friday. That's pretty rock & roll. "You think I talk bullshit, Riverfront Times man, but I've been playing rock & roll for twenty years."

Donna hates Mardi Gras, which is tomorrow. It irritates her, these people getting drunk for pleasure, not out of necessity. "I don't party with them," she explains. "They're amateurs." A moment of reverent silence, then the talk turns to the new casino. "It'll work out well for us and our customers," says Donna. "They won't have to drive far to get drunk after they lose all their money."

"And they won't have to drive far to jump off a bridge," adds the other dude.

Mangia Italiano, 3145 South Grand Boulevard, South City

If you're looking for the center of South Grand nightlife circa 2004, look no further than Mangia Italiano, a totally excellent bar and restaurant that draws a fantastic mix of locals who congregate on a Friday night to eat and drink and listen to live jazz by the always amazing saxophonist David Stone, who should be famous. They sell this Belgian ale called Delirium Tremens that will set your head a-spinnin', especially after spending happy hour enjoying doppelbock at the Schlafly Tap Room. Mangia sells pints of it, and they sell big bottles. You should have one of each, if only to celebrate Delirium's 350th anniversary, which is this year. Plus, it's Friday night.

Delirium is a beer so strong (8.5 percent alcohol to Budweiser's 5 percent) and beautiful and sweet that you just want to kiss it. A beer within a bottle, one of the most visually pleasing bottles that can be had: beige bottle, blue label featuring dancing elephants, strutting alligators and some sort of catfish dragon balancing on top of a ball. Tonight, you are that strutting alligator. You have teeth, and you have pride, and you have been drinking for seven hours straight.

What maybe you didn't know is that Delirium Tremens is also known as D.T., as in the DTs, the medical term describing the severe mental changes, you know, like the psychosis, the brain warps that drunks get when deprived of their alcohol. Lots of fast heart thumps, googly eyes, sweat, red-faced insanity. You seem to remember a story your bar mate told you in the later stages of the D.T. at Mangia on Friday night. It was about an evil villain who roamed from city to city stealing people's noses. He was a bad man who left people without the pleasure of smell and, as a result, the pleasure of taste, just like when you have a nasty cold. This evil villain had a dastardly plan: He was stealing noses for their snot. He stored all these noses in his secret hideout, and he vowed to keep stealing noses until he had enough of them to cover the entire world with snot. He had to be stopped.

Some Dude's Apartment in Soulard

You are in a room in Soulard at 1:04 p.m., smack-dab in the asshole of St. Louis Mardi Gras, and a stranger is wrapping two 40-ounce bottles of beer into both of your hands with duct tape, tight, and directly against your skin. Within five minutes your hands will be unbearably cold. In ten, they'll be numb, and the reality will start to sink in that these 80 ounces of beer, a six-pack-plus, must be consumed. You'll have to drink these two things fast, or your hands will get frostbite and your reputation among drunks will be greatly diminished.

You look like Edward Scissorhands, but of course, not as adorable. And instead of blades, your hands are big glass bottles, one of Bud, one of Miller (the Bud is a better beer) and silver duct tape. Rub your eye, poke it with glass. Strangers look at you and laugh. Others watch out of the corner of their eyes and feel sorry for you, the pathetic jester. A grown man standing at the second-story window of a friend's Soulard apartment, bottle-arms abreast, addressing the drunken masses, bellowing like a banshee to any man passing by. Days earlier, you were royalty, and the jester-type repulsed you. Now you are him.

Soulard, Outside the 1860 Saloon

So it's come to this, Edward Fortyhands. Clumsily, willfully, drunk at 3:32 p.m. Lost in a roiling mass of people, your hands hairless and burning by 4 p.m., stepping up to the hurricane stand, ordering one in drunk-speak -- "I guuh have uh hurricane?" Then, into the ocean of lushes, so many at Mardi, all of whom agree in principle: Let's get loaded!

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