Bra Chandeliers (Gone)
Virginia City, Nevada
The bad boy bar in a town of tourist saloons, the Union Brewery features chandeliers made of hundreds of accumulated bras tossed into the air by customers. Sort of an indoor shoe tree of the inebriated.
We can understand why this might make it a civic pariah on a street trying to pass as circa 1876. The Union Brewery has ignored most of the old west mining motifs of its neighbors, and set its sights on an earthier biker vibe. And that's to its credit.
It's worth a peek, even a spell on a bar stool to sample the local beverages. We were there when it was empty, and so we may have missed out on the full effect. By standing under one drooping mass of undergarments, a motion detector would lower a "surprise." When you look up to see how that was done, you'll notice that many of the bras are signed and dated by their contributors.
The general effect of the ad hoc decor is like the proverbial explosion at the Chinese laundry. So maybe it's historical after all. And honestly, if a bar full of rowdy bikers isn't the closest thing to a bar full of rowdy silver rush miners, then what is?
The Union Brewery posts a general ban on photography (unique, as far as we could tell, in snapshot-friendly Virginia City). When we begged, the nice bartender let us take a few (for editorial purposes).
