MD 20/20 was a popular beverage of choice when I was in high school and college. It came in many fine flavors. I had a friend who mixed it with Aristocrat Vodka and Mountain Dew. It went down well but guaranteed a crippling hangover the next day. Boones Farm wasn’t bad but it didn’t give you any bang for your buck.
Judging from the refuse dropped in the alley overnight, the bums that hang around in my neck of the woods prefer tallboys of Steel Reserve, and Velikoff Vodka. Weirdly enough, these seem to be popular in the District. The link above contains a breakdown on the unit cost for Wild Irish Rose, Steel Reserve and the above mentioned Velikoff.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen empties of any bum wines around here.
Cheap vodka like Aristocrat and Popov is crap I remember people buying in high school and college. I always worked so I’d spring for Smirnoff or Absolut at least, but I did take a double shot of Popov once in college. Immediately ran to the bathroom to barf. And my bf told me he drank the majority of a bottle of Aristocrat when he was in college, he calls it “the night I almost died.” Harsh shit. Same with Boones Farm - high school and college junk. We called the blue kind Smurf Piss. It’s weak though, for novice drinkers.
If I want cheap crap I go for some Natural Light or Pabst or a $5 bottle of Beringer white zinfandel. Don’t drink much booze and definitely don’t drink bottom-shelf booze anymore.
Night Train and Thunderbird are awful. I used to drink T-bird fairly regularly. It’s quite cheap, and will kick out the back of your skull. Cisco will sneak up and steal your wallet. MD 20/20 is OK, but not great. I sorta like Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, but the alcohol % is too low. I go for rotgut spirits - the cheapest vodka around, usually Royal Gate.
I don’t know too much about bum wines, but I can vouch for the potency, nastiness and cheapness of Steel Reserve. Its .99 a 24oz can, and it’s 9% alcohol. Drinking two quickly gives you the alcohol of eight beers in a very rapid amount of time.
For a taste of the bubbly - Andre Cold Duck. One bottle and your skull would feel like it was hit by a fire axe. Two bottles - after the eruption, and it always came out again through the mouth and both nostrils, and you’d be looking for the fire axe yourself to end it all.
Some other sweet red wine came out about this time period (Ripple, Boone’s Farm, Cold Duck were hot) but I can’t quite place it, around 1980 or so. A girl in our class was into it - she’d fall asleep on the nuke warheads the next day. Really piss the instructor off.
Cold Duck! That’s the one I was trying to think of…never drank the stuff myself (not much of a drinker), but my dad was a heavy drinker in his youth, and I remember him talking about that being the cheap drunk of choice.
A 750ml bottle of is somewhere around $5, tax included, at the liquor store a mile from where I work. For comparison, a 40 of malt liquor is about half that.
I don’t care much for the taste of alcohol, but I like the effect, so I go for strong but bearable, and cheap, meaning I drink bum wines not unoften.
I was looking for an old Washington City Paper (possibly from the 80s) article called “Booze You can Lose.” I couldn’t find it, but this article covers a lot of the same ground.
In this perilous economy, every nickel counts. That’s why you should invest in gold, just like G. Gordon Liddy says, and tell your Congressman to vote down this disastrous health care reform.
Sorry, been stuck in a customer lounge with Fox News (New motto: “All the news that’s fit to spit!”) blaring at me for ten hours a day straight. It’s like I’ve been stuck in some variation of an Orwellian fascist state. Must…come…down.
Ah…some Hitching Post St. Rita’s Earth Pinot Noir…not bum wine by any stretch, but it’ll mess you up good if you abuse it.
Oh, you kids and your high class $3 flavored wine. When I was a bum we put jellied sterno in a dirty sock and squeezed the alcohol out and sucked on the sock. Chateau la Feet.
(I am just kidding, but people really do this and sometimes either die or go blind)
I’ve had my fair share of MD 20/20. A friend of mine used to be very fond of it, back when we didn’t have a lot of money and were just out of college. I was working, but he was looking for a job. He liked it because he could get toasted three times for $5.
I tried pretty much all the flavors except the plain fortified wine one. All of them pretty much tasted like boozy Kool-Aid with a side of vomit. My buddy was kind of like a pusher for it so I got a bottle every few times he did. I finally figured it wasn’t worth it when it tasted so dreadful, especially when I could get a bottle of Admiral Nelson rum for about $6.99 (or, hell, that shitty Paramount rum for $5.99), mix with Diet Coke, and have something that didn’t taste like puke.
He gave up the MD 20/20 after awhile, when he got used to drinking beer, and didn’t want to get quite so intoxicated so fast. Up until very recently, even though he had plenty of money for the good stuff, he was drinking cheap beer (Natural Ice).
It’s not the best wine ever but for $3 a glass it’s perfectly passable for everyday drinking, in my opinion. I bought several cases of it for parties and such. I don’t drink routinely anymore, mostly due to wanting to not have the calories, but if I wanted to drink wine every day, I’d probably stick to 3 buck chuck. Shiraz is my favorite but the Cab wasn’t bad either.
Then again, I don’t really know if it’s ‘drink-to-get-drunk’ kinda stuff. MD 20/20 is pretty fast-acting stuff and you don’t need a corkscrew.
