San Antonio Ice Houses?
I am returning to San Antonio for a long weekend after spending several memorable (and well-fed) years there in the late 1970s. Got lots of useful updates on eats and drinks in these posts but....not a word about ice houses. Can they all be gone?
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No, there's one downtown by a Holiday Inn with lots of bikers, la Tuna has one and there's a new one on S. Alamo - the Friendly Spot.
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re: bronwen
SAguy
Jan 22, 2010 06:38 PM
La Tuna is a beer joint.
To be a Ice house, you had to have or still sell ice in bag or block out front.
An Ice house used to be a old style convience store where the old timers had a couple of cold ones in the back...
There is lots if beer joints that call themselves ice houses. Leon's Ice house and bait on Rigsby has turned into just a beer joint.
The last real ice house on the southeast side is the Texaco Station about 5 miles east on HWY 87 east. Its a gas station, they sell some grocery items and have tables for the old timers to drink a beer...they even sell pickled eggs and wieners. Im sorry I dont remember the name.
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re: SAguy
Thanks for the tips and clarification on ice house criteria. Besides selling blocks of ice – and yes, pickled eggs and little wieners on toothpicks – I recall them as neighborhood spots, usually converted garages with tables inside the permanently open garage doors. Very cold bottles of Pearl and Lone Star. Old timers would bring in their Old Crow, order set-ups for a quarter or 50 cents, and chew on the toothpicks. As the night wore on, a few couples would get up to dance to Blue Bayou on the jukebox. Recommendations on better SA beer joints, if that’s what I’m describing, are also welcomed. But we will definitely head out to Hwy 87 and look for that Texaco station.
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