The Perils and Pleasures of Bartending in Antarctica (2017)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bartender-antarctica-south-pole

by mpweiher • 7 years ago

124 44 7 years ago

atlasobscura.com

enjoyitasus• 7 years ago

Let me guess before I read. One of the pleasures is that ice is abundant?

BartBoch• 7 years ago

Not really, but the freezer is a hole in the wall.

GorgeRonde• 7 years ago

That must be dangerous. I certainly wouldn't drink a shot of sub-zero liquor. There have been occurrences of people having their stomach frozen dead by ingesting liquid nitrogen enhanced drinks.

scruffyherder• 7 years ago

Cheap and cold. Perfect for your drinks.

wahjiwah• 7 years ago

What kind of research do these science teams do at South Pole?

kaybe2• 7 years ago

I recommend checking out some websites which explain in detail, e.g.

https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp

The station has an Atmospheric Research Observatory, the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory for astrophysics, and computer systems for research and communication including Internet access. It has collected the longest continuous set of meteorological data from Antarctica's vast interior ice plateau, and it is well located for studies of the cusp region of the magnetosphere. Astronomy and astrophysics have flourished in recent years, taking advantage of excellent optical properties of the atmosphere (resulting from its high elevation, low temperature, and low humidity) and, for neutrino detection, the extremely clear and homogeneous thick ice below. A small biomedical research facility is present. Other areas of interest include glaciology, geophysics and seismology, ocean and climate systems, astrophysics, astronomy, and biology.

walrus015• 7 years ago

The ICECUBE neutrino observatory, for one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory

achoice• 7 years ago

Reminds me of this book, which I recommend; Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica http://feralhouse.com/big-dead-place/

mothsonasloth2• 7 years ago

Do you think it would be possible for me to make an application to work at a research station?

Surely they need to do some important experiments to see how cold affects the performance of a software developer, when it comes to typing and bug levels. :)

kaybe2• 7 years ago

Well, see if your country has a research station, go to their homepage and check their openings. If you know how to fix electronics maybe there is a possibility.

walrus015• 7 years ago

The australians have their own recruiting website:

https://jobs.antarctica.gov.au/

The US government does a great deal of its hiring through Lockheed Martin, which took over from Raytheon Polar Services in 2012.

https://www.usap.gov/news/contenthandler.cfm?id=2603

noir_lord2• 7 years ago

Never say never.

I know a developer through the local meetup who has done a couple of tours for British Antarctic Survey, he's mostly a dev but he's experience with electronics and some other stuff so he can cover a lot of ground.

clarkema4• 7 years ago

Either this is me, or there are multiple ex-FIDs with the same background hanging around meetups in the north of the UK ;)

To the GP: I started off as a sysadmin / dev many years ago, but always wanted to work in unusual places like Antarctica. Trouble was I couldn't see how I could get there or what use they might have for me. Turns out, of course, that the bases also need all of the logistics and support services that any modern office needs. I spent a while following blogs of the IT / radio support guys who were working down South and eventually realised that I could do everything that was involved in their jobs. I applied and got in, and have since been to Antarctica three times. I got to see and do some _incredible_ things down there and meet some awesome people.

It can be done.

lenticular• 7 years ago

There's a big IT department at McMurdo station. There's a ton of infrastructure, after all. It's essentially a small town. The money is good down there for support workers, and your sole significant living expense will be alcohol. Sure hope you don't mind sleeping three to a room though!

A downside for working at McMurdo is that your only day off is Sunday, and the hours are long. Due to safety restrictions, there are very few outdoor opportunities. There's only a few relatively short hikes near town that are allowed. Fortunately, there's plenty of social opportunities (three bars) and a lot of culture. The people down there self-select to be rather interesting. I've only been there for a few weeks at a time before going out into the field, but I enjoyed it. I don't know about a full season, though. As support staff, you would be hired for an entire summer. There's 200-300 people who overwinter as well (compared to ~1000 in the summer). But, for God's sake, do not do that. You will lose your mind.

walrus015• 7 years ago

The money is good, but not great. Formerly it was possible for people to claim up to the first $85,000 USD of their income tax free, as long as they remained outside of the US at least 330 days in a tax year (part of the time spent in Antarctica, and part of the time anywhere else that was not the US). Now that exemption apparently no longer applies and the US IRS is taxing employees of Lockheed Martin, or direct NSF employees, as if they were domestic jobs in the US.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

cozzyd• 7 years ago

I recommend becoming a physicist, much easier to go to Antarctica that way :)

dpflan2• 7 years ago

Encounters at the End of the World is an entertaining documentary about the people and circumstances of living on Antarctica. If you’re curious about life on the ice and the researchers and people make up the society there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounters_at_the_End_of_the...

telesilla• 7 years ago

Oh that movie.. it's so good.

And the saddest penguin scene ever, I believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI

dpflan2• 7 years ago

That penguin might be the best character and metaphor. I would like to imagine the slow accumulation of such penguins that find some strange way to survive (imagining a Gary Larson cartoon).

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

In the 1970s, there was a woman in my social circle from New Zealand. She did two tours of work in Antarctica. Both times she said she took 500 condoms and two cases of liquor as part of her allowed personal luggage. I remember her talking about life there, basically periods of difficult work and lots of free time also. She said that it was an interesting experience but that two tours were enough.

Another friend in our social group had a job freeing trapped porpoises from tuna nets. As a programmer, my work life seemed tame compared to my two friends.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

>Both times she said she took 500 condoms ...she said that it was an interesting experience but that two tours were enough.

I guess she knows best, at some point it does take a toll on you :)

yakshaving_jgt2• 7 years ago

I’m sure I’ll be laughed at, but I wonder what the condoms were for. How long is a “tour”?

I’m assuming she wasn’t sexually active 100% of the weeks in her tour, so 500 seems like a lot even if the tour was for a year. Were they distributed among colleagues? Were they used for some other interesting reason (like when the Top Gear presenters took viagra when driving over a volcano)?

Or is there really nothing else to do in Antarctica than have sex all day?

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

"About four or five months for typical summer contracts (October thru February) in McMurdo, three and a half months for a summer south pole contract, or thirteen months for winter-over contracts. A winter-over usually starts at the beginning of summer (October-ish) and lasts until the beginning of the next summer."

http://www.60south.com/about/faq.htm

I also really enjoyed this quote from the same page:

"The first time you come down for the adventure. The second time for the money. And the third time because you can't function anywhere else anymore."

DonHopkins2• 7 years ago

You can trade them for weed.

pvaldes• 7 years ago

freeing trapped porpoises from tuna nets

Is less glamorous than it sounds

walrus015• 7 years ago

It grew out of the author's blog. Sadly, he took his own life in 2012.

http://www.albedoimages.com/blog/2012/12/06/death-of-antarct...

madaxe_again2• 7 years ago

As an aside, there is a public bar at Vernadsky Station in the Argentine islands just off the Antarctic peninsula. It was built back when it was Faraday Station, with a shipment of lumber that was supposed to be for a new pier.

All other bars in the Antarctic only serve alcohol to base staff, as they import their stocks, and they’re limited. Understandable. They’ll still happily sell you a coffee at McMurdo, but you’re SOL for a drink unless you BYOB.

The drinks menu at Vernadsky is somewhat limited, offering Zamagonka or Samogonka, depending on how you want to spell it - the guys there make it using their potato rations, and it’ll knock your socks off.

So yeah, if you ever find yourself in that neck of the woods, stop on by, have a few, shoot some pool, admire the pound coin embedded in the bar for which the station was sold to Ukraine, chat gravity waves and atmospheric phenomena with the researchers, and then go hang out with the penguins.

walrus015• 7 years ago

At McMurdo it's not strictly BYOB, like you have to bring your own alcohol to the continent in your luggage allowance, there is a "store" where you can purchase things.

https://www.jeffreydonenfeld.com/blog/2014/12/mcmurdos-gener...

http://passporttoknowledge.com/lfa/background/NSF/mc-stay.ht...

madaxe_again2• 7 years ago

Well aware - been there - but as I said, booze is for base staff only - if you’re a visitor you can buy pretty much anything you like in the store, so long as it isn’t a consumable.

It’s also not a “store”, it’s a store - they even take cards!

username223• 7 years ago

Hah, drinking has been a big part of how people wintered over at the South Pole since almost the beginning, e.g. in 1967: "Trivia: average winter alcohol consumption was 54 cases of beer and 6 cases of liquor for each of the 20 men (some of whom were nondrinkers)." That's quite a bit...

Source, which is worth spending some time exploring: http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy2/igy2.html

DoctorBit• 7 years ago

I love this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE

DonHopkins2• 7 years ago

I thought the healthier, more medically useful thing to do at the South Pole was to grow marijuana.

https://hightimes.com/news/world/smoke-weed-antarctica/

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/tales-of-rampant...

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/30/world/drugs-are-an-issue-...

The Perils and Pleasures of Bartending in Antarctica (2017)

Related Stories