Contrary to the lies of public television, the highest aspiration of every scientist is neither receiving a Nobel Prize nor grasping the most elusive of nature’s secrets. No, these are mere distractions. The true crowning achievement in any scientific career is the use of institute funds to pay for alcohol. Tragically, unlike our distinguished professors, we undergraduates are barred from getting accounts at the Athenaeum. Caltech’s exclusive clubhouse discriminates against us, forcing us to scour the Pasadena wasteland for precious booze.

Whether spending your own money, or in my case the Tech_’s money, I recommend shopping at Liquor Mart. It is superior to the local drugstores and supermarkets, and being located less than a mile east on Colorado Boulevard, it is just as convenient.

Liquor Mart’s appearance doesn’t do it justice. Its faded green paint job and burnt-out red sign probably date back to the seventies. Judging from multiple layers of beer stains, the linoleum floor has endured several decades of use. Every inch of the store stinks of cigarettes and spilt liquor. Years of hard living are etched on the faces of Liquor Mart’s derelict cashiers. Unlike the Athenaeum, this isn’t a good place to mingle with professors or ask for SURF recommendations, unless you don’t mind ‘gravity’ being misspelled and used in the term “high grafity malt liquor”.

These shortcomings matter little, as no one lingers for hours in a liquor store except to buy votes or harvest internal organs. Rather, the measure of liquor store is the price and selection of its alcoholic beverages.

Though modest in appearance, Liquor Mart surpasses other local purveyors of alcohol. Its sale prices on medium-priced beers like Dos Equis, Rolling Rock, and Heineken put Ralph’s and Vons to shame. By focusing on alcoholic beverages, Liquor Mart can offer a greater variety than supermarkets and drugstores. Counted among its inventory are Steel Reserve, St. Ives, Mongoose, Schlitz, Cobra, Magnum, and other distinguished malt liquors enjoyed in stolen limos everywhere. If you condemn malt liquor as being too “pedestrian” or “vagrant” there is always the classier Miller Genuine Draft, you bourgeois prick.

Liquor Mart is only slightly inferior to the greatly esteemed and remote Beverages and More (BevMo). The Shangri-La of beer and hard liquor alike, BevMo is located in distant Brea, and is most efficiently reached by freeway. Frequent travel on California freeways makes death more likely by car accident than by liver failure, indeed a frightening prospect. Stay alive by driving to BevMo only for huge purchases, and shopping more frequently at Liquor Mart for smaller orders. And never drink and drive. Not even for sex.

Liquor Mart is a fine purveyor of alcohol, one of many drugs that helped fuel the careers of John Belushi and Chris Farely. Therefore, I give it two Happy, Dead, Fat Comedians: (Minimum Rating: 3 Sad, Dead, Fat, Comedians. Maximum Rating: 3 Happy, Dead, Fat Comedians.)

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