Last night I took PictureGirl to The Freakin' Frog. Actually she took me, because she drove, but I paid, so whatever.
Back in May, the first time I went to this bar, my plan had been to only drink beers that were new to me. That plan was immediately ruined by the fact that they had Alaskan Smoked Porter on tap.
Last night, my plan was, once again, to only drink new beers. Last night, that plan was ruined by their having Alaskan Amber on tap.
Not that I'm complaining. I haven't had draft Alaskan Amber in two years, since the last time I was in Seattle. I managed to limit myself to just the one glass (2044).
I had to ask for a thawed glass. The bartender tried to argue with me about that. "Most Americans like to drink from chilled glasses," he told me.
"Most Americans can't tell the difference between piss and beer, and they wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this," I responded. So the bartender granted me my point and he provided unchilled glasses for the rest of the evening.
PictureGirl and I grabbed a booth and had some dinner and a lot of that mundane first (and in our case, only) date chat about nothing much. For the most part we just made fun of the other people in the place.
The Freakin' Frog is similar to Rich O's in that most of the women are lesbians. There are beer snobs as well, but this place's beer snobs are all very young and they play chess. They all drink Chimay, and the lesbians all drink PBR or Mickey's.
PictureGirl stuck with Alaskan Amber, and I branched out a little.
Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter (10)
(draft) Looks nice, with good lacing. A fairly intense coffee/licorice flavor that didn't appeal to me very much. The high alcohol is fairly apparent. The second half of the glass tasted better to my numbed taste buds than the first half had.
They had a Galaga video game there. I put a dollar in so we could play. I wanted to see how much I sucked after 30 years. Well the machine stole my dollar, so it wasn't as much fun as I remembered from when I was a kid.
Alaskan Stout (12)
(bottle) A decent head that faded very quickly. Aroma was mainly chocolate, with perhaps some cola as well. Flavor was a mix of coffee, chocolate, and cola, with maybe a touch of juniper. A decent and safe beer from one of my favorite breweries.
I don't know if it's a Las Vegas thing, or just a Freakin' Frog thing, but a lot of people were wearing strange hats. There was one guy wearing a gray flannel gangster cap. Another was wearing a straw hat like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz might have worn. This one beatnik dude with a disconcertingly pretty girlfriend was wearing some strange knit winter cap but it had a bill on it. PictureGirl and I, we were hatless.
At one point, we found ourselves watching bits of this Underworld movie that they were projecting onto a big screen TV. Then PictureGirl said not to watch it anymore, we could go to her apartment and watch the whole thing.
Check, please!
We only ended up watching about half the movie.