North Texas Daily

James Rambin / Design Editor

As a general rule, you want to avoid making jokes about rape. Only a few comedic geniuses manage to “get away“ with it, and considering the outrage that rightfully appears pretty much every time someone else tries and fails, it’s kind of a bad idea to seek chuckles from something so fundamentally unfunny. Keeping this in mind, I’m not sure which local jokester The Garage bar in Denton hired to write up their drink menu, but I personally think “Statutory Grape” needed a little extra polish before it went public.

That’s right — Statutory Grape. This felonious combination of grape vodka and Sprite has apparently occupied the bar’s extensive shot menu for a while without controversy, rubbing elbows with chestnuts like “Smurf Piss,” “Alien Nipples,” “Duck Farts” and “Liquid Cocaine.” If you’re not already tipped off, these names should fill you in that the Garage is kind of a scary dump you should avoid at all costs.

Dentonite Rachel Anne Ayers obviously didn’t get this memo, experiencing an unpleasant run-in with one of The Garage’s bartenders last Friday over the grape-flavored shot’s unfortunate name.

The story hit the Dallas Observer’s food blog yesterday, so now I guess we can officially call this whole situation a full-blown controversy. Here is what will probably happen over the next few days: This story will continue to spread, probably finding a voice on some insufferable squawk box like the Huffington Post, until the controversy is widespread enough for the bar to change the shot’s name to something smug and unapologetic like “Censorship Grape.”

But sure, it’s a joke. A pretty unfunny one considering that one in four women on college campuses reports they have been sexually assaulted — many of those assaults involving alcohol — but hey, don’t be so uptight. They’re just some cool guys telling jokes about underage rape, and we’re obviously too close-minded to see why “some or most” of the bar’s clientele thinks that kind of thing is a real knee-slapper. Why aren’t you laughing, weirdo?

The real problem is that between the responses from their bartenders, the official comments the business posted on Facebook and the fairly scummy defense from the bar’s patrons, the Garage comes across like an awful dungeon of a joint, staffed and frequented by aggressive dullards who think offending someone is the only way to practice their right to free speech. If they had apologized and changed the name when someone complained, this freakout wouldn’t be happening.

Don’t believe me? The same mess happened in Austin last year — the bar’s management sincerely apologized, dealt with the issue and watched as it magically disappeared. If the Garage’s staff hadn’t been so busy high-fiving each other over their hilarious shot names, they probably could have done the same. Instead, we get this: