It has been something of an unfulfilled dream of mine for some time to explore an aspect of Manchester’s nightlife that has never been seriously documented – large tropical drinks with umbrellas. Obviously, this is the sort of study that tends to get put on the back burner fairly easily, so over time, it has assumed the aura of a quest or a mythic expedition – a Tropical Drink Safari, if you will. Finally, after several years of harping on this, I was able to convince several friends and family members into joining me in my exploration of the soft, white underbelly of Manchester’s tropical cocktail scene.
In order for a safari to be successful, there are three essential elements which must be scrupulously attended to:
1. A carefully phrased mission statement – There is nothing worse than finding yourself stranded in the middle of No Man’s Land, huddled beneath a sago palm during a thunderstorm and shivering with denghi fever if you can’t for the life of you remember why you are there.
Our mission statement? – Drink lots of froofy, tropical drinks.
2. Members of the party – It is every explorer’s nightmare to be months into an expedition to raid the Lost Temple of the Spiders, only to find that his assistant suffers from paralyzing arachnophobia. An expedition leader needs to pick people who are extremely qualified to meet the expedition’s needs. Since the main qualification we were looking to meet was a willingness to participate, that was taken care of easily enough.
Our Roster:
Expedition leader – Me, minus a pith helmet
Major Domo – Our designated driver (Okay, my wife), who forbid me to wear a pith helmet
Great White Hunter – a friend with an over-inflated assessment of his alcohol tolerance
Dorothy Lamour – a writer we know, hoping to use this in her autobiography some day
3. Meticulous notes –Memories become clouded with time, photos degrade or are lost and expense accounts are altered for tax purposes. Only through an explorer’s journals and notes can the success or failure of a safari truly be determined. These must be carefully and clearly written.
Our notes were scrawled on the back of cocktail napkins with pens borrowed from waitresses and are less comprehensive than we’d like. As it turns out, however, these notes have been invaluable in piecing together the events of the evening.
A barbecue joint seemed like a fairly safe jumping-off point for our safari. When you think of beverages to go with smoked meat, you usually think of beer, so we knew that we couldn’t get into too much trouble here. We had, however, heard rumors of a large, powerful, hold-onto-your-hat-whoa-doggie drink served here, called a Bubba Bowl, so we decided to try it out. There was some controversy over whether we should all share one Bubba Bowl, or order one for each of us (this point of view was advocated by Great White Hunter).
More cautious minds prevailed and we decided to share one. We felt vindicated on this point when we saw the bartender take a child’s plastic beach pail off a hook on the wall, dust it out and fill it with liquor. Make no mistake about it, the Bubba Bowl is large. It – and this bears repeating – is served in a bucket! As near as we could figure out, the drink itself had Southern Comfort, Captain Morgan’s rum, vodka, orange juice, limes, lemons and a fistful of cherries, but it was hard to tell, stunned as we were by its mind-numbing size, and the fact that our waitress had been sworn to secrecy.
It was good, though. According to our notes, it was:
“Fantastic!”
“The size of a woman’s head!”
“Cherry-licious”
Another entry notes that our major domo “just shakes head in tacit disapproval”.
To our credit, we actually finished the drink, though as a result, the rest of the evening is somewhat of a blur. Our notes mention some story having to do with someone’s inability to grow a chia pet, for instance, and we all remember that it was hysterically funny, but nobody can remember the actual story itself.
Drink #2 – Cruzan Island Paradise, less than $4.75, The Brass Monkey, 1181 Elm St., 624-6800
The high point of our visit to The Brass Monkey was being frisked at the door. I’ve always wanted to be frisked. I’m not a particularly dangerous guy, but I’ve always wanted to be and getting patted down was something of a vindication to me.
“We just drank a bucket of liquor,” the Great White Hunter told the bouncer, who seemed impressed.
The drink special at The Brass Monkey that night was a mixture of vanilla and pineapple-flavored rums, pineapple and orange juices and grenadine.Our verdict (at least according to our napkin) – “Syrupy, but good!”
The next two bars we visited had closed for the night. As it was 10 pm on a Saturday, this says something important about nightlife in Manchester. We found ourselves on the North side of town, however and decided to go to the Puritan for mudslides – not a tropical drink, it’s true, but dangerous people like us make their own rules.
The Puritan’s mudslides are famous locally. They do sound slightly wimpy and effeminate, but it quickly became clear that these particular mudslides were not for the weak. I know this because I can barely read a notation to that effect in my notes, just above the one that reads, “Ow! Ow! Ice cream headache!!!”
Dorothy Lamour ordered an “After 5-slide”, which was unanimously declared the best – smooth and a little minty. Great White Hunter ordered a “Captain Hook-slide”, which apparently had rum in it. I ordered a “Mexican Ape-slide”, which had a lot of things in it.
The verdict? – According to Great White Hunter, “Yours is gayer than ours.”
When Dorothy Lamour got up to go to the bathroom, I switched drinks with her.
“How is everything?” our waitress asked.
“We drank a bucket of liquor,” Great White Hunter told her.
Drink #4 – Scorpion Bowl, $9.50, New Yee Dynasty, 830 S. Willow St., 625-5500
Any memories of the rest of the evening are a bit spotty, so we have had to reconstruct our last stop from our notes.
“Walks fine line between good and astringent. Roughly the size of…” (Apparently our imaginations failed us at this point.)
“Absurdly long straws”
“Really bizarre, very old man dancing to rap version of Voulet-Vous Couche Avec Moi. Seems to be there on purpose.”
“Hey! You know what we did tonight? We drank a bucket of liquor!”
“The well in the middle of the Scorpion Bowl is filled with pure rum.”
“Holy Christ! That’s pure rum!”
“Another old guy trying to seduce women 1/3 his age with a pupu platter”
It’s hard to tell, but all this seems to speak well of the New Yee Dynasty experience.
Obviously, this safari barely scratched the surface of what Manchester has to offer by way of froofy tropical drinks and plans are in the works to organize a second expedition, though details are fuzzy.
