[Kenton]

yup, it’s an acquired taste. The time I tried to drink ouzo, I couldn’t get past the smell to drink it...

Ah yes, ouzo.

My first experience with ouzo was one Saturday night at a place named "John Bull", a famous sailor bar on the waterfront of Pireus, Greece.

The prices were way out of my pay grade and the B-girls relentless, but one of my shipmates discovered that the small store right next door sold bottles of ouzo for 50 cents, so everybody bought ouzo and smuggled it back into the bar under our peacoats.

The first time we tried it, we all agreed that it was kind of like licorice and it went down a lot easier than liquor, so we mixed it with Coca-Cola and all got really weirdly drunk.

The effects were devastating. The next day I finally was able to roll out of my bunk around 1600 hrs. (4 p.m.), horrified at the fact that I had survived.

After that, most of us decided it tasted more like paragoric than black licorice.

* Another sea story from an ancient mariner from the days of the real "Old Navy"

[cport]

When our ship (USS Independence CV-62) pulled into Frisco for Fleet Week in '89, the first bar my shipmate and I went to was some upstairs/downstairs bar/restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf. We were at the bar doing Flaming Sambuca shots. At the time I sported a cheesy mustache, just because it was the only thing we were allowed to grow on our face. After about 5 shots each, I took shot number six, lingered at mouth a heartbeat to long, and my lip caterpiller ignited.

Well, I dropped that shot glass post-haste, and all the remnants of the previous shots (glasses turned upside down of course to commemorate their passing) ignited on the bar surface, resulting in a fairly scary wall of blue flame.

Needless to say, we were 86ed pretty quickly.