Canadian Bar Offers Human Toe Cocktail

DAWSON, Yukon Territory – The folks here still roll
their own cigarettes, drink hard and gamble in a casino where ragtime
is played on a stand-up piano.

These days the town is down to a population of 1,200
and the municipal government is bankrupt despite a growing tourism industry
and artists’ colony. But some things never change in the remote Yukon.

This area used to be known as the Wild West. Dawson,
which many residents still call Dawson City, still is. Just the other
day, a man burned down a garage at the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police
headquarters, destroying a jet boat, for no apparent reason.

One hotel in town is rumored to be haunted and another
follows an old tradition by serving drinks mixed with pickled human toes
(the establishment says they are dehydrated and preserved in salt) donated
by people in their wills or by the unfortunate who suffer frostbite in
the winter. (Those who imbibe are installed in the "Sourtoe Cocktail
Club.")

"One thing about the Yukon, you check your past
at the door," said Bob Hilliard, 53, Dawson’s leading saloon piano
player, who is better known as Barnacle Bob. "There are a lot of
personal histories here best left outside the territory. All I can say
is Yukon me, I con you."

Mayor Everitt is now the subject of a Royal Canadian Mounted
Police investigation, and he has publicly admitted to the Canadian Broadcasting
Company to having submitted a bar bill of more than $2,000 for payment
by the city that was written on a cocktail napkin and signed by a waitress.
His explanation to CBC was that it was "a promotional thing."

"In a city, a guy like me would be considered a
bum and rich people would have little to do with me," said Bill
Donaldson, 41, who is better known here as Caveman Bill, since he lives
in a cave across the river from town. "Here I can shoot the breeze
with anybody and they’ll listen to me, and if you didn’t know us you
wouldn’t necessarily know who was the rich guy and who was the bum. We
look the same."

This sounds like our kind of place. We may
have to case the joint as a possible retirement hideout in case things
go
sour in Ecuador where, as all old South American hands know, the political
climate can change as fast as an armored personnel carrier can get from
the Presidential Palace to the International Airport in Quito.

from the New York Times