What's the most fun way to consume alcohol? By doing body shots off a High Society cover girl? With a maniacal clown in a decrepit New England cemetery? By emptying a bottle of Champagne into a dolphin's blowhole, then dancing around in the fountain when the dolphin sprays it out?
Peter Mumford
At a dollar a shot, Tug patrons Dora (left) and Elizabeth Young can buy round after round—for the entire house.
Peter Mumford
Tug bartender Arthur Rodenhauser says Jell-O shots have been a boon to business.
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Those alcohol-consumption strategies might be mildly entertaining, but nothing compares to the awesome fun of Jell-O shots! If you somehow converted the amount of fun in a typical Jell-O shot into hugs, you would be able to hug every lonely latchkey child on earth 10 times!
Once considered the developmentally disabled cousin in the family of cocktails, the Jell-O shot has finally come of age here in Seattle. Jell-O shots have historically been found in dive bars and sorority-girl hangouts. These two scenes might seem diametric opposites, but they are in fact both so extreme that they connect in back, the way retrograde right-wing fascist and ultra-leftist political theories seem to bizarrely coincide. How did Jell-O bring them together? Elementary, really: One customer base wanted a cheap buzz, the other was looking for something that didn't taste like booze.
The fact is, Jell-O shots appeal to a variety of drinkers, cutting a wide swath across various demographics. And they're becoming more popular all the time. According to data furnished by Anne Radford—spokesperson for the Washington State Liquor Control Board and a woman with a name that sounds so classically Pilgrim that she had no choice but to go into liquor control—vodka is the only spirit whose market share has risen, no doubt due to the extra vodka bars have needed to purchase to make Jell-O shots.
Puzzlingly, the WSLCB doesn't seem to be too worried about Jell-O shots suddenly taking Seattle by storm. Says Radford, "Our Seattle enforcement officers do see the occasional sale of Jell-O shots at liquor-licensed businesses. They usually see them around holidays or special events. Our officers treat them the same as normal shots." Asked if, in the WSLCB's opinion, Jell-O shots were the most fun way to consume liquor, Radford, with a charmingly harried sigh, replies, "We're in the business of making sure alcohol is consumed responsibly."
But everyone knows responsibility is no fun!
Dive bars were the first to embrace Jell-O's quivering renaissance, which feels like being embraced by an obese aunt and smells like the clothes of a guy who works in a chewing-gum factory. Mac's Triangle Pub in White Center (9454 Delridge Way S.W.) was an early adopter—they began offering Jell-O shots in 2005. The popular Rat City hangout offers five flavors, each paired with a different liquor. Cherry is mixed with vodka, which tastes unfortunately like a jiggly shot of solidified Robitussin. Raspberry gets spiked with rum. Tequila, of course, goes with lime. Gin, as per Snoop Dogg's suggestion, pairs nicely with orange. And "Seahawks Berry" is a combination of the dubiously named "berry blue" Jell-O and raspberry vodka. When the Seahawks score a touchdown, the price of the Seahawks Berry shot drops to a mere 12 cents from the normal price of $1.
Geoffrey "Mac" McElroy, proprietor of Mac's, explains his rationale for selling alcoholic Jell-O: "It's fun. If you have a wad of dough, you can buy the whole house a round." Apparently, the Jell-O-shot trade was too fun; "pretenders," as McElroy calls them, quickly swooped in to grab a piece of the action.
By "pretenders," he means the Tug Inn (2216 S.W. Orchard St.), his closest geographic competitor. The Tug is West Seattle's most nefarious dive bar, with a reputation shady enough to grow coffee beneath it. In fact, the bar's own website (tuginn.com) feels the need to post a grim disclaimer: "The Tug has been know [sic] as a dive bar that is full of violent and crazy drunks. This reputation is completely false." It's true: Tales of the Tug's violent and crazy clientele are exaggerated by as much as 50 percent, because the clientele is in fact merely crazy.
Still, the Tug makes a mean Jell-O shot. Like Mac's, the Tug's shots are only $1, come in pretty much every Jell-O flavor on Earth, and are so strong they must be stored in the freezer because there's too much alcohol for the gelatin to set properly otherwise. In November 2008, the Tug obtained a hard-liquor license. Sales immediately spiked, but once people got used to the idea of the Tug selling the hard stuff, interest dropped off. Management was looking for a new revenue stream. Intrepid bartender Arthur Rodenhauser was part of the brainstorming session that brought Jell-O shots to the Tug. "We'd close by 1 a.m. on Friday," he says. "We wanted to get a younger crowd. Nothing screams 'younger crowd' like Jell-O shots!"
At first, it seemed that maybe Jell-O would be another dud for the Tug. "We tried different liquors, but tequila and rum were sending people down the wrong path," says Rodenhauser. "We thought vodka was safer." Then revenue took off. "It's been a year since we started selling them, but we've at least doubled sales."
As for Mac's Triangle, Rodenhauser has this to say about his neighborhood rivals: "I was glad that the Triangle started selling Jell-O shots because it kept the riffraff from coming here."
