To my surprise, bargoers in Stillwater have gone nuts for the ice bar.
I stopped by on Friday night and sure enough, the suburbanites funneling into the ice bar looked like bright-eyed kids at an amusement park. Out on the patio, two snow bunnies (a pair of women dressed in skimpy faux-fur outfits) beckoned curious bargoers to give it a try.
Those who did were helped into long parkas before being led through the structure's two refrigerator-like doors. Inside, a bartender in a snowmobile suit was stationed behind the bar, pouring drinks into those glasses made of ice.
The ice bar is open daily through the rest of the summer. But why open one here? Ling said the engineer he worked with on this smaller prototype ice bar (it's portable; others are stationary) lives nearby.
| Movie Finder |
I tried to get some factoids on how this overgrown freezer works, but Ling was a bit mum on the specifics.
"It's a lot different from a freezer. It's specially engineered to maintain the ice," he said.
This sounds like a big energy cost, I said.
"It's environmentally friendly," he said. "This thing doesn't run the whole time."