Back to Basics at Juju

The face that launched a thousand diabetic comas.

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Juju, formerly The Bad Juju Lounge on Capitol Hill, now resides in Belltown. It is no longer "Bad" or a "Lounge," which means they better be careful because they're bleeding syllables and I don't think they can afford to keep the last one on its own. Lost name parts aside, Juju has kept the honorific of being "Seattle's Original Whiskey Bar," placing the drinkery right in my sights.

Whiskey Wednesday has crawled its way through all-star bartenders and speakeasy facades. The column sought the perfect cocktail, focusing on exotic mixers and precision preparation... But at what cost?

Although delicious and palate-changing quaffs like the Zig Zag's Albertini's Night or the Knee High's Preakness stand as potable works of art, sometimes whiskey needs to take off its fancy wingtips and its period dress vest and start slumming it. Sometimes whiskey needs to leave Campari and Lillet back at the yacht club so it can go hunting for trim with Sprite, triple sec, and even (*gasp!*) sour mix.

For the unenlightened, these cheap and dirty constituents make up the sorority house staple that is Lynchburg Lemonade. Most whiskey purists (whiskey separatists? whiskey supremacists?) turn their nose up high at the very mention of the Lynchburg as if they were just asked to let a Candy Land character pee in their mouth.

The super-sweet beverage has gained even more infamy since being sold pre-packaged next to wine coolers and Mike's Hard Whatever, but the saccharine mix allegedly began in the cocktail shaker of an small-time Alabama lounge owned by one Tony Mason. Jack Daniels Distillery, also allegedly, stole the recipe and boasted it as one of the whiskey giant's trade secrets. In a back and forth legal battle, Mason eventually came out victorious, gaining exactly one dollar in nominal damages -- which is about one-eleventh of what you can expect to pay for a Lynchburg Lemonade at your average music festival.

Idealistically, Lynchburg Lemonade is an easy drink to hate. In practice, it's really not all that bad. While I can't speak for what you can buy bottled at your local grocery, Juju gave me something that at least sipped smoother than a regular whiskey sour while having a bit more heft to it than a whiskey seven. Lynchburg Lemonade possesses no complexities or undertones, just a flat zip that gets the job done.

The best part of Juju, what you'd think would be the defining characteristic of a whiskey bar unless you've only experienced them through this blog, is the noise. Juju is loud. When you aren't hearing Refused blaring full blast on the bar's speakers, the soundtrack is probably being drowned out by the patronage screaming about stripper war stories or how someone might've broken some pervy asshole's neck last night (or was it last week?).

I don't know whose backward-assed idea it was to restrict well-crafted cocktails to bars with a din comparable to your average Catholic church service, but it's always struck me as odd that even the presence of a television is taboo practically anywhere that you can get a decent Old Fashioned. It's like the Liquor Control Board passed some by-law behind Washington's back that says no respectable cocktail menu can be seen within one hundred feet of a jukebox or anything else that makes noise.

I realized how I'd been restricting myself to ordering whiskey by searching for prestigious titles or names of Italian vermouth and took this opportunity to order whiskey as God intended -- frequently and flavored at an apathetic barkeep's discretion. After a whiskey ginger, a whiskey seven, and a whiskey soda, I'd stopped even listening to what I was being served. I swear I had something with vanilla in it, but that's purely speculation.

Whiskey, the idea, thrives in the black paint-smeared brick interior of the Juju. Where previous Whiskey Wednesday establishments tried to replicate the décor of a hip '60s lounge or an innocuous airport bar, Juju seems comfortable emulating a cancerous lung, adorned with skulls and a creative set of glass-blown flames ceremoniously topping the bar's liquor selection.

Eventually, my blood sugar started to hurt, the music took a turn for the worst and my bawdy barmates became less endearing and more a constant reminder of the rapidly draining drink in front of me. Like any good dose of self-destruction, Juju sends you off with an invigorating mixture of inspiration and dissatisfaction.

Next week, with snob batteries fully recharged, I put my best foot forward into Liberty. Here, I'll attempt to find the maximum ratio of sushi to whiskey the human mind can endure.