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BrewDog Is Supposedly Building a Bar Across the U.S.–Mexico Border

Getting that wide opening in the fence may be a trick. Photo: BrewDog

Scottish beer-maker BrewDog loves a good publicity stunt — it has offered paid leave to newborn-puppy owners, is building a craft-beer hotel, and once put 55 percent–alcohol beer in a taxidermy squirrel. In other words, we should’ve seen this coming: The brewery has announced plans to build a bar that literally straddles the U.S.–Mexico border. While it’s unclear how it expects to pull this off (check out the logistical nightmare of this home that’s half in Vermont, half in Canada), the one thing you can say about BrewDog’s gimmicks is, they’re usually not empty threats.

Co-founder James Watt sounds totally unworried about the details anyhow. In a press release, he says they’ll simply “request official permission from the local authorities” and make sure to “adhere to any red tape stuff.” (So easy!) The bar’s catchphrase is “Make beer, not walls,” in case it’s fuzzy whether this is largely a statement about President Trump’s border strategy. As Watt notes, it would be “more difficult” to build a wall “if there’s a BrewDog bar in the way.”

BrewDog proposes using old shipping containers for the construction, so that the bar — dubbed the Bar on the Edge — is considered a “temporary mobile building.” It will theoretically serve Mexican beers on the U.S. side, and U.S. beers on the Mexican side (fortuitously for BrewDog, its beers will be available to thirsty patrons in both countries). The brewery argues that the bar is a testament to “collaboration and inclusivity, which have always been a cornerstone of the craft brewer’s identity,” and also to its desire to spread BrewDog beer to “the farthest reaches of the United States,” as the location is apparently very “remote.”

The specifics on where are still “top secret,” but half will be in Texas, and the other half in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It sounds semi-permanent, too, because BrewDog says the plan is just to leave it there “until someone tells us to move it.”

BrewDog Says It’s Building a Bar Over the U.S.–Mexico Border