![gay bars pittsburgh carson street gay bars pittsburgh carson street](https://cdn.businessyab.com/assets/uploads/43e6b60843fcd99ed0559887e465b91b_-united-states-pennsylvania-allegheny-county-pittsburgh-south-side-flats-east-carson-street-1117-jacks-bar-412-431-3644.jpg)
The floor-to-counter multitiered speed rack, stocked with rarities like maraschino liqueur, straight rye whiskey, Dubonnet, and Cynar, is a dead giveaway: The Zig Zag knows drinks. Here, where old tiki bars go to die, is the real thing.
![gay bars pittsburgh carson street gay bars pittsburgh carson street](https://cdn.businessyab.com/assets/uploads/2dc4dcab52143004a254cbdf2bb6c8fd_-united-states-pennsylvania-allegheny-county-pittsburgh-south-side-flats-east-carson-street-1117-jacks-bar-412-431-3644.jpg)
By the time the ferry showed up, Randy had gotten sick, Pat had given away his deer, and I'd descended into drunken melancholy at the realization that bars like this hadn't been seen in southeast Alaska since the cruise ships took over in the eighties. There are nights when no one needs to twist your arm to dance with a 250-pound Tlingit woman you just decide all at once to do it. By seven o'clock, the three of us had four shots and five beers apiece lined up in front of us. The room filled, rounds for twenty, thirty, then forty guys arrived every few minutes. For three hours, locals with paychecks filed in and swung the bell's frayed rope handle. Killing time at the Office, we heard the first round-for-the-house bell clang behind the bar at four o'clock, a friendly gesture from a regular patron for the five or six guys in the place. On the way back toward town, Pat had hopped out of the truck and shot a doe from the road, but to Randy and I that wasn't saving face, so we'd returned empty-handed from three days on rainy mountainsides. It's perfectly situated, in other words, to take advantage of a failed hunting expedition and late ferry back to Juneau. But hovering over the dock in the center of the native village of Hoonah - where the town's nine hundred residents cling to the mountainous edge of misty Chichagof Island, thirty-five miles southwest of Juneau - the Office is a temple for out-of-towners on the way out and locals on payday spending their checks at the bar and spreading wealth the ritual way. In most places, a plywood floor and metal roof wouldn't command attention. Despite our connections, we've clearly shortchanged some great cities and have no doubt overlooked some great bars. For the parts of the country we've never had the honor of drinking in (Hoonah, Alaska, for instance), we asked our friends - the most knowledgeable and passionate of whom is Esquire drinks correspondent David Wondrich. One thing: We haven't patronized every bar in America, though we're working on it.