
The Perils and Pleasures of Bartending in Antarctica (2017) - mpweiher
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bartender-antarctica-south-pole
======
madaxe_again
As an aside, there is a _public_ bar at Vernadsky Station in the Argentine
islands just off the Antarctic peninsula. It was built back when it was
Faraday Station, with a shipment of lumber that was supposed to be for a new
pier.

All other bars in the Antarctic only serve alcohol to base staff, as they
import their stocks, and they’re limited. Understandable. They’ll still
happily sell you a coffee at McMurdo, but you’re SOL for a drink unless you
BYOB.

The drinks menu at Vernadsky is somewhat limited, offering Zamagonka or
Samogonka, depending on how you want to spell it - the guys there make it
using their potato rations, and it’ll knock your socks off.

So yeah, if you ever find yourself in that neck of the woods, stop on by, have
a few, shoot some pool, admire the pound coin embedded in the bar for which
the station was sold to Ukraine, chat gravity waves and atmospheric phenomena
with the researchers, and then go hang out with the penguins.

~~~
walrus01
At McMurdo it's not strictly BYOB, like you have to bring your own alcohol to
the continent in your luggage allowance, there is a "store" where you can
purchase things.

[https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2014/12/mcmurdos-
gener...](https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2014/12/mcmurdos-general-
store-anything-want-middle-nowhere/)

[http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfa/background/NSF/mc-
stay.ht...](http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfa/background/NSF/mc-stay.html)

~~~
madaxe_again
Well aware - been there - but as I said, booze is for base staff only - if
you’re a visitor you can buy pretty much anything you like in the store, so
long as it isn’t a consumable.

It’s also not a “store”, it’s a store - they even take cards!

------
mark_l_watson
In the 1970s, there was a woman in my social circle from New Zealand. She did
two tours of work in Antarctica. Both times she said she took 500 condoms and
two cases of liquor as part of her allowed personal luggage. I remember her
talking about life there, basically periods of difficult work and lots of free
time also. She said that it was an interesting experience but that two tours
were enough.

Another friend in our social group had a job freeing trapped porpoises from
tuna nets. As a programmer, my work life seemed tame compared to my two
friends.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I’m sure I’ll be laughed at, but I wonder what the condoms were for. How long
is a “tour”?

I’m assuming she wasn’t sexually active 100% of the weeks in her tour, so 500
seems like a lot even if the tour was for a year. Were they distributed among
colleagues? Were they used for some other interesting reason (like when the
Top Gear presenters took viagra when driving over a volcano)?

Or is there really nothing else to do in Antarctica than have sex all day?

~~~
toomuchtodo
"About four or five months for typical summer contracts (October thru
February) in McMurdo, three and a half months for a summer south pole
contract, or thirteen months for winter-over contracts. A winter-over usually
starts at the beginning of summer (October-ish) and lasts until the beginning
of the next summer."

[http://www.60south.com/about/faq.htm](http://www.60south.com/about/faq.htm)

I also really enjoyed this quote from the same page:

"The first time you come down for the adventure. The second time for the
money. And the third time because you can't function anywhere else anymore."

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
That FAQ is super interesting, but this line made me even more confused about
the woman with the 500 condoms.

> About the only thing the dispensary ever dispenses is advice. Drinking is
> officially sanctioned, condoms are freely distributed and sledding is
> against the rules, which gives you some idea of the managing philosophy.

Also, this line made me giggle:

> Just don't come down here expecting a good love life (unless you're a woman,
> in which case the odds are good but the goods are odd).

~~~
rbonvall
Probably those freely distributed condoms are the leftovers from that lady's
trip.

------
dpflan
_Encounters at the End of the World_ is an entertaining documentary about the
people and circumstances of living on Antarctica. If you’re curious about life
on the ice and the researchers and people make up the society there.

>
> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the_World)

~~~
telesilla
Oh that movie.. it's so good.

And the saddest penguin scene ever, I believe.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI)

~~~
dpflan
That penguin might be the best character and metaphor. I would like to imagine
the slow accumulation of such penguins that find some strange way to survive
(imagining a Gary Larson cartoon).

------
mothsonasloth
Do you think it would be possible for me to make an application to work at a
research station?

Surely they need to do some important experiments to see how cold affects the
performance of a software developer, when it comes to typing and bug levels.
:)

~~~
walrus01
The australians have their own recruiting website:

[https://jobs.antarctica.gov.au/](https://jobs.antarctica.gov.au/)

The US government does a great deal of its hiring through Lockheed Martin,
which took over from Raytheon Polar Services in 2012.

[https://www.usap.gov/news/contenthandler.cfm?id=2603](https://www.usap.gov/news/contenthandler.cfm?id=2603)

------
achoice
Reminds me of this book, which I recommend; Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange
and Menacing World of Antarctica [http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-
place/](http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/)

------
username223
Hah, drinking has been a big part of how people wintered over at the South
Pole since almost the beginning, e.g. in 1967: "Trivia: average winter alcohol
consumption was 54 cases of beer and 6 cases of liquor for each of the 20 men
(some of whom were nondrinkers)." That's quite a bit...

Source, which is worth spending some time exploring:
[http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy2/igy2.html](http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy2/igy2.html)

~~~
DoctorBit
I love this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE)

------
DonHopkins
I thought the healthier, more medically useful thing to do at the South Pole
was to grow marijuana.

[https://hightimes.com/news/world/smoke-weed-
antarctica/](https://hightimes.com/news/world/smoke-weed-antarctica/)

[https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/tales-of-
rampant...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/tales-of-rampant-sex-
reveal-polar-life-is-anything-but-frigid/news-
story/123ecb72cb2b7f28113b1e070de74b3a)

[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/30/world/drugs-are-an-
issue-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/30/world/drugs-are-an-issue-at-the-
south-pole.html)

------
walrus01
see also: [http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/](http://feralhouse.com/big-
dead-place/)

It grew out of the author's blog. Sadly, he took his own life in 2012.

[http://www.albedoimages.com/blog/2012/12/06/death-of-
antarct...](http://www.albedoimages.com/blog/2012/12/06/death-of-antarctic-
writer-nicholas-johnson/)

------
enjoyitasus
Let me guess before I read. One of the pleasures is that ice is abundant?

~~~
BartBoch
Not really, but the freezer is a hole in the wall.

~~~
GorgeRonde
That must be dangerous. I certainly wouldn't drink a shot of sub-zero liquor.
There have been occurrences of people having their stomach frozen dead by
ingesting liquid nitrogen enhanced drinks.

~~~
MereInterest
Comparing sub-zero temperatures to liquid nitrogen temperatures doesn't quite
do justice to liquid nitrogen. Imagine how hot boiling water is, and how cold
ice is. Think of the temperature difference between the two. Now, take a step
of that same size, colder than ice. Now, take a second step. That's how cold
liquid nitrogen is. Liquid nitrogen will be at -196 degrees Celsius. Even
Antartica, at the coldest temperature ever recorded, only got down to -89,
still nowhere close to LN2.

The problem with the liquid nitrogen enhanced drinks is when people drink them
before the LN2 has evaporated. You then have that -196 degree liquid in your
stomach, and that's what freezes sections of it. Safety regulations require
that the bartender not give you your drink until all the LN2 has evaporated.

I used LN2 to cool gamma-ray detectors for a while, and it is really fun
stuff. Like driving a car or cooking raw meat, you just need to know what the
dangers are and how to avoid them.

------
wahjiwah
What kind of research do these science teams do at South Pole?

~~~
kaybe
I recommend checking out some websites which explain in detail, e.g.

[https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp](https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp)

> The station has an Atmospheric Research Observatory, the Martin A. Pomerantz
> Observatory for astrophysics, and computer systems for research and
> communication including Internet access. It has collected the longest
> continuous set of meteorological data from Antarctica's vast interior ice
> plateau, and it is well located for studies of the cusp region of the
> magnetosphere. Astronomy and astrophysics have flourished in recent years,
> taking advantage of excellent optical properties of the atmosphere
> (resulting from its high elevation, low temperature, and low humidity) and,
> for neutrino detection, the extremely clear and homogeneous thick ice below.
> A small biomedical research facility is present. Other areas of interest
> include glaciology, geophysics and seismology, ocean and climate systems,
> astrophysics, astronomy, and biology.

