My Hunt for the Next Four Loko

Having grown up in the fertile cheap-beer crescent of Virginia, I learned early to appreciate the qualities of bush-league booze. Much of my dumb youth was spent in the company of gaseous swill, whether it be 40s of Schlitz Blue Bull inside abandoned houses or piss-warm Natty Light in the parking lot of Ozzfest. To this day I still prefer the less-fine alcoholic things in life, as you might discover if you buy me a goblet of Belgian Tripel and I return the favor with a glass brimming with clean, refreshing PBR.

So imagine my delight upon moving to Oakland, California, to find a paradise for unfamiliar, bottom-barrel hooch. My East Coast corner-store vocabulary consists of words like Hurricane, Icehouse, and Mickey's Big Mouth; here stores trade in an entirely different language of "BuzzBallz," "Twisted Shotz," and "CAMO Black Ice." These inexpensive, high-octane, frequently radioactive-colored and cologne-scented drinks land in Oakland from all over the world – New York, Las Vegas, New Zealand. And then they get decimated by a thirsty populace that must have sheet-metal taste buds and a Superman-like imperviousness to hangovers.