From beer towers to stripper poles, the Bar Show had every gimmick imaginable, even this shameless tequila-shot ice slide. Open wide! (Photo: Michael Anstendig)

While we at the Feed generally promote spirituous discernment, the annual Bar Show reminds us what most watering holes are really all about: getting drunk, playing silly games, ogling hotties and maybe even getting laid. This unabashedly politically incorrect trade event at the Javits Center on June 14 and 15 was packed with often questionable booze, promo models in Daisy Duke shorts and “entertainment,” from flashy beer-pong sets to mechanical bulls. For anyone seeking to open a bar—speakeasy, biker bar, cowboy bar or strip club—this is your one-stop shop. For everyone else, it’s a spring-break regression in a professional disguise. Click through for the slide show and more depraved diversions.

While the main exhibit hall was given over to boozy debauchery, the show also offered a respectable seminar series. Gary Regan recounted growing up “behind bars” in England. Allen Katz moderated a panel of Jonathan Pogash, Brian Van Flandern and Charlotte Voisey, who all discussed how the cocktail-as-art craze so prevalent in New York is spreading nationally and globally. Van Flandern later uncloaked his secrets of cocktail creation: balancing acidity, sweetness and alcohol strength. Junior Merino, David Suro and Ray Raymond Jr. led us through a blind tasting of more than a dozen cachaças, mescals and tequilas, and Tad Carducci and Erin Williams demoed easy-to-mix, economical cocktails for these trying times that, well, drive us to drink.—Michael Anstendig