Breathable Booze: A New Bar in London Has An Innovative Way For Patrons To Imbibe [VIDEO]
Drinking can be a tedious task: Consuming glass after glass of the stuff, needing to pee, occasionally having to interact with other humans while doing so... You may as well just cut out the middleman and go from zero to drunk, right?
That seems to be the idea behind the latest craze that's taken over London's bar scene: Breathable alcohol.
A pop-up bar called Alcoholic Architecture offers guests the opportunity to get drunk quickly and efficiently via alcoholic vapors. Customers are given plastic ponchos so the fumes won't get into their clothes and hair. They're then led into the Cloud, a room where vaporized gin and tonic is pumped into the air by a humidifier. The vapor is absorbed by the skin and eyes, and breathed in as well.
Guests are only allowed one hour in the Cloud to prevent them getting too drunk, as the alcohol's permeability will get you drunk 40% quicker than drinking the same 1:3 spirit to mixer ratio in liquid form. It also means no ingesting calories -- Perfect for all those vodka tonic and Skinny Girl drinkers looking to lose weight while still getting drunk. In a world where alcoholic energy drinks and powdered alcohol exist, it just seems right that the next big thing would be alcoholic fumes.
Alcoholic Architecture also offers a traditional, if short, list of drinkable libations, which coupled with the inescapable breathable stuff means it's bound to turn into a nightly Bacchanalia.
"Picasso once said that good taste is the enemy of creativity," Sam Bombas of Bombas & Parr, the architecture and design firm responsible for Alcoholic Architecture explained to Fast Company. "We love bad taste. It is very playful and polarizing. So with this we are really plumbing the depths. In many ways we are creating a modern version of a tiki bar. Through creating this faux fantasy land we give adults license to play in ways which they might not otherwise have."
Unfortunately for anyone not living in London, the sensation has yet to come stateside, or anywhere else but in the former Gothic monastery where Alcoholic Architecture currently resides. The installation will run through to early 2016, however, and British drinking laws mean you only have to be 18 to get your drink on. Tickets run about 10-13 pounds, so if you're willing to buy a plane ticket, you still have a few months to enjoy the Cloud before it's taken down. Get your tickets here.