'You get drunk through your eyes in this place': Inside Britain's most bizarre bar - where the air is saturated with alcohol

• At Alcoholic Architecture in London, ****tails come in the form of a mist
• Fine spirits and mixer, in ratio 1:3 ratio, are pumped out of humidifiers
• You absorb equivalent of large drink through lungs and eyes in 40 minutes

By Olly Smith For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 18:13 EST, 1 August 2015 | Updated: 10:35 EST, 2 August 2015

A woman with a clipboard ushers us through a door and into a gloomy corridor, the darkness broken only by candles surrounding a strange faux-Gothic church altar.

We carefully make our way down narrow steps into a kind of dungeon. ‘You’ve got to take your sunglasses off, babe,’ says the girl in front of me to her friend. ‘You get drunk through your eyeballs in this place.’

Welcome to Alcoholic Architecture, a bar in the basement of a Victorian building in Borough Market, South-East London, that was once the site of a monastery.

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Feeling foggy: Sarah Duguid, above, at Alcoholic Architecture in Borough Market, south-east London

The bar is the bizarre idea of Bompas & Parr, a design duo who, according to their website, make fine English jellies and curate spectacular culinary events.

At Alcoholic Architecture you don’t simply drink a ****tail. Instead it comes in the form of a sweet mist of fine spirits and mixer, in a 1:3 ratio, generated by powerful humidifiers that saturate the air. If you are in the chamber for about 40 minutes you absorb the equivalent of a large drink through your lungs and eyeballs. They call it the ‘first alcoholic weather system’.

It sounds like biological nonsense to me but, apparently, breathing in alcohol bypasses the liver, allowing you to consume 40 per cent less while enjoying the same effect. It’s also said to be less fattening.

I have been to a mist bar before and on that occasion I had to put on a kind of white boiler suit, like police forensics officers wear. As you sniffed the armpits, hoping the previous wearer had washed before they came out, it felt like the antithesis of drinking for pleasure.

Imagine sipping a fine bordeaux in a tucked-away Parisian bar while wearing your favourite little black dress. The opposite to that must surely consist of standing in a bar in a boiler suit with your eyes wide open to get maximum eyeball alcohol absorption. As if we Brits need to find any more ways to saturate ourselves with alcohol.

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At Alcoholic Architecture (pictured) you don’t simply drink a ****tail. Instead it comes in the form of a sweet mist of fine spirits and mixer, in a 1:3 ratio, generated by powerful humidifiers that saturate the air

At the entrance to Alcoholic Architecture is what looks like a school changing room with benches and pegs. We are handed transparent rain ponchos to keep the mist off our hair and clothes, and directed through a PVC curtain into the bar area.

The Gothic/naughty-church theme continues: the drinks menu is called Holy Orders and features ****tails such as Dirty Habit, Afternoon Penance and Friar Tucked. It’s a normal kind of bar – and you can buy a drink in the conventional way, in a glass. What is not normal is that the air feels a little damp.

That’s because through another two sets of PVC curtains is what’s called the Cloud, where the air is 140 per cent humidity.

Inside, there is almost no visibility. All you can make out is the silhouette of the other ‘absorbers’ – they are not called drinkers – vaguely lit by a diffuse blue light.

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Advice: A sign inside the bar offers patrons advice. If you are in the chamber for about 40 minutes you absorb the equivalent of a large drink through your lungs and eyeballs

 

Check out the new London bar with 'breathable' booze

 

 

With the hoods up on their ponchos, caught in the shafts of light, they look like pixies in a misty forest. It’s not possible to really taste anything, only a slight sweetness when breathing through your mouth.

I can’t be sure where the mist ends and the wall begins so I walk slowly with my arms out in front of me.

The music is turned up loud, a strobe occasionally flickers into action and the whole place has the slightly strange feel of being at a school disco after the dry-ice machine has been on too long.

People, who’ve paid £10 to experience this, stand in small groups close to one another. They dance a little but only on the spot. You dare not move too much in case you bash into the wall.

When I’ve had my fill (you’re allowed no more than an hour), I make my way back through the curtains. I can’t feel any effect but other people tell me they feel a little ‘woozy’.

My clothes are damp and my skin is sticky. I’m curious to see if the humidity has taken the creases out of my silk trousers but, in fact, when I check, I wonder if it’s made them worse.

The bar is apparently a trial to see whether London is ready for ‘breathable clouds of alcohol, supping from skull cups, snakes in the bathrooms and drinks made by monks’.

Of course it’s a gimmick, and while it is the kind of thing that should be fun, it’s not. It’s just strange – and it leaves you stinking like a pub

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3182567/You-drunk-eyes-place-Inside-Britain-s-bizarre-bar-air-saturated-alcohol.html#ixzz3hh0Y0yqt
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