Like its neighbor a block or so down the street (Snuffy
MaGee’s — sorry I forgot about your big “G” last column), Elixer is a
potentially fatal place to drink.
           Located at the corner of South
Goodman and South Clinton, Elixer occupies a sharply angled space that fills
one of five wedges around the intersection. (The fifth wedge is made by the
intersection of Henrietta Street, which enters from the northeast.)
           Sitting
at the bar, you’re only wooden walls away from whatever vehicle may begin
careening at high speed through that spider web of civic engineering.
           Maybe I’m just paranoid.
           Two years ago, right around
Thanksgiving, a car left the pavement known as Pittsford-Palmyra Road and
smashed into MacGregor’s Grill & Tap Room of Perinton (which is actually in
the Hamlet of Egypt). I grew up just down the road, and spent many a college
summer night and winter break drinking drafts and eating fish fries in that
ancient Egyptian watering hole, often in the impacted area. I cringed at the
news of the crash, though I was several states east at the time.
           The scene at Elixer is predictable,
in a sense — most every night has a theme.
           Tuesdays are “Dead Phish” nights,
where Dead Phish-heads can swap bootlegs and pretend they’re in a stadium’s
parking lot. Wednesdays there’s a make-a-craft happy hour (they recently made a
flurry of paper snowflakes), followed by salsa dancing lessons and real chips
and salsa. Thursdays are techno (“Jungle DJs”).
           On
Fridays of late, The Zone takes over, beer-pong is played, germs migrate to new
hosts, white blood cells die in battle… (see last column). Saturday is Karaoke
with Meghan.
           I stopped in early one Saturday
evening, after a late matinee at The Cinema. I recommend going there then.
           For one
thing, it’s empty. The bartender can give you her full attention, and she can
create credits in the jukebox with a wave of a remote. It’s a magical, peaceful
time.
           The bar
itself is rather bare-bones: beer mirrors, a pool and electronic dart room, a
staging area of sorts. The graffiti on the plywood walls of the women’s
bathroom is so crudely sexual and misogynous, it’s a wonder there aren’t crowds
of porn-addled UR students hanging out in there every night.
           Sunday
has no theme. “Make it what you want it to be!” suggests the fluorescent pastel
chalkboard.
           According
to that schedule, Mondays are “Lights and Siren.” Thinking “Techno night,
again?” I asked the bartender what happened then.
           Turns out, every time a cop,
ambulance, or fire truck blows through the intersection, sirens wailing and lights flashing — “It has to be
both,” she says — everyone there gets a free Elixer shot (vodka and some
fruity chick-liquors, apparently).
           Not that
I’d ever want one of those, but opportunities to abuse this game sprang
immediately to mind: “I live near here! A buddy ‘stationed,’ so to speak, at my
place, could call in a combination overdose-fire-‘terrorist alert,’ while I sit
here innocently reaping the rewards!”
           Sure enough, there’s been abuse, the
bartender says: off-duty firemen running out of the bar when their on-duty
buddies stop at a light.
           “That doesn’t count.”
           It was
then that I was struck by a surreal vision: a car crashed through the wall
where the couch is; the driver dazed, doubly shocked to see people laughing,
cheering, and pounding purple shots around the wreckage.
           Please, drive safe.
This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2003.
