#202: Blindside Lounge

The Bar

Blindside Lounge. 211 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 8/2/2024 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Penis colada. "Four kinds of rum", "green", pineapple juice. $7. Plus bonus "breakfast tequila" shot.

The name of this drink, which our bartender selected, is the kind of joke that probably lands really well with the bachelorette parties who are one of the main target demographics of this kind of establishment. Heck, it landed well with us; when you go bar-hopping on this stretch of Dirty Sixth on a Friday night and start asking bartenders complicated questions about which drinks best sum up the bar, you're just asking to be Rumple Minze'd, so a prank cocktail might as well be a Manhattan in comparison. His choice was perfect - affordable but alcoholic, striking to the eye yet easy on the palate. In a reverse of the usual shot + chaser formula, he gave us a round of shots of "his favorite breakfast tequila". If you're wondering why I didn't record more details of these drinks, it's not (just) because this was the fifth stop of the night, although that didn't improve our memories - it's because even though we were essentially the only patrons in the whole place, the bartender kept wandering off to different zones of the bar to concoct our beverages while in mid-hilarious monologue mode on his surprisingly eventful life story, and, being attentive and appreciative patrons, we did not want to interrupt his story for such nitpicky details as "what's in this drink?" or "what do you mean by 'breakfast tequila'?" A+ would recommend.

The Crew

Elijah, Aaron.

Notes

The fifth and final stop of the evening. Blindside Lounge is one of those rare new bars on Dirty Sixth that did not replace a previous bar, instead having been founded earlier this year as an adjunct of the Blindside Tattoo & Piercing establishment in the same building. There was some sort of interesting but hard-to-decipher situation going on with the ownership, who were evidently semi-absentee but also very committed to making the new establishment successful, although like I said this seemed to be an off-night. Having just come back from a trip to Panama and Peru, I appreciated the Mesoamerican/Pre-Columbian art theme of the interior decoration over the classic legacy Austin stone, which also had some sort of deep meaning to the owners. Quite frankly all of these nightclub bars on Dirty Sixth are essentially indistinguishable to the average patron wandering in off the street, so having a friendly bartender and any kind of distinctive motif at all is a huge product differentiator, to use a marketing term. They might need more of that business speak; when I was doing my post-visit research I really couldn't find much on them even though they've been open for half a year, which is usually plenty of time to build a media footprint. Hope they make it.