Bars – awkward vodka

One of our favorite places of all time is now closed. Cue the tears. So it’s about time we honor beloved Cowboy Slims by describing our top 5 favorite things about the sacred place, complete with pictures to illustrate the amazing times we had.

1. Sunday Funday

One of Cowboy Slim’s most redeeming qualities was its patio. The patio made this the perfect place for day drinking, especially on a Sunday when the liquor stores are closed. We had many a Sunday Funday at the bar which in turn, left us with many Sunday Funday memories. Some include going there to drink on Easter, because, why not? Changing outfits with S in the bathroom, because, why not? Handing out my business cards to strangers in an attempt to get more Twitter followers, because, why not?

2. Holidays

No matter what the holiday, you could usually find us at Cowboy Slims at some point in the day. Case and point: Easter (see above). But most holidays we liked to celebrate at Slims were themed. This was because people there didn’t judge you for showing up in a huge Kentucky Derby hat (Cinco de Mayo/Derby Day), gorilla masks with alien and statue of liberty costumes (Halloween), shamrock shorts, glow sticks and temporary tattoos (St. Patrick’s Day). If anything, these crazy costumes made us the most popular people there. Or at least that’s what drunk me likes to remember…

3. Celeb sightings

Okay, so maybe the word celeb is a stretch here – but it never stopped me from stalking one of my favorite basketball players of all time. This is probably my most memorable, and most missed, part about Cowboy Slims. He would often show up, looking as handsome as ever, and I could spend hours (or at least three drinks) creepily staring at him from afar. The best was when he would bring his other bball buddies – the more eye candy the better. Okay, so you can’t see him in this pic, but he was right behind our booth out by the bonfire this night. Trust me.

4. Food

OH MY GOD THE FOOD. Queso dip. Fish tacos. Tots. BRUNCH. Need I say more? The food here was amazing and we will never be able to find a place that has all this greasy deliciousness all day every day. RIP. Sorry, we aren’t those kind of people who take pictures of food, so the one below will have to do. Madam Zora knows all – especially how good the food was.

5. Shots

Whisky shots, tequila shots, multiple rounds of cherry bombs with mom (not to mention her continuously sending K up to the bar with her credit card to keep ’em coming) – shots were a staple for any day or night at Slims. Once again, no one here judged you for taking three different kinds in one night. Or taking a tequila shot at 2 p.m. Or getting bombed with your mom off shots after a 5K, still wearing glow sticks and neon yellow t-shirts. Cowboy Slims was our favorite place to take shots, and now it’s no more.

However, not everything about this place was perfect. There is one thing that stands out from everything else that could ruin a super fun night at Slims in a moment: BITCHES IN THE BATHROOM. God, they were the worst.

Ever have one of those nights you just don’t want to be responsible?

Well, that was last night for us girls at Awkward Vodka. But that really wasn’t our intention at all. Our plan was to go for a walk – Happy (late) National Walking Day, friends – and then go check out the movie Spring Breakers. Sounds like a nice low-key night, right? We started the evening off with a walk – win! But after that is when things started to downward spiral… We has plans to meet our friend S over at Whole Foods to grab dinner at the salad bar because sometimes we pretend to be healthy. And they have the best salad bar in town, hands down.

While waiting for S, we decided to stop over at the Liquor store because… why not? It has been a long week and everyone deserves a glass of wine, especially after an intense walk around the lake.

Did you know they made wine juice boxes? They do! Introducing Bandit wine. Is it amazingly delicious? Mmm not really. It’s ok. But look how convenient? It looks just like that coconut water you can buy in mini boxes, but is way better because it’s alcoholic – duh. And guess what? Whole Foods sells that coconut water – so if we ended up bringing them with us to the store, no one would notice, right? Next think you know, we’re buying three of them and heading over to the salad bar.

After filling our salad containers to the brim, we sat in the eating area of grocery store surrounded by people, stealthily drinking our juice boxes and eating our yummy salads. See the awesome photo below documenting our delicious BYOB dinner? And please note the amazing Katniss braid in the background.

After slamming our “juice boxes” and salads, S realized she left her wallet at work. Our next planned course of action was to go play darts, so before that we had to stop back at the office pick up her forgotten wallet.

While there, we obviously had to leave notes and “really difficult” scavenger hunts for everyone with office supplies – you’re welcome, girls. We hung out for a bit before realizing this is the last place we want to be after work hours so we left…not before stealing some yummy candy from the candy jar and dropping off our spare change in the Monocle Fund of course!

The time was creeping closer to our normal 9:00 p.m. bedtime, but by now we were feeling rebellious so instead of darts, we went to check out a new bar in Uptown Minneapolis – Morrissey’s Irish Pub. I’m cautiously optimistic this place could be a new Cowboy Slims (RIP). My only concern is that it doesn’t seem like the type of place to place country music… However, they did have delicious Vodka Diet Cokes – YUM!

So takeaways from #WastedWednesday:

Buy Bandit wine. It tastes ok, is fairly cheap and can easily hide in your purse.
Avoid work after hours. It’s fun for about 5 minutes and then gets sad and boring.
If you live in the Minneapolis area, check out Morrissey’s Irish Pub in Uptown on Lake St.

Hope you also had a fabulous Wednesday evening!

Tag: Bars

Cowboy Slims, RIP

Just a Typical Wednesday Night…