On the rocks

Minus5 creator Craig Ling has opened another ice bar, this time in Stillwater, Minnesota. “Patrons looking for something really cool will now be able to don a parka and gloves and step into an 18-degree lounge where everything – the walls, the seats, the tables, the sculptures, the bar and even the glasses – is made of ice,” explains the St Croix Valley Press. Ling built his first ice bar in Auckland in 2002, based on the success of a Russian bar he had there. Now Ling has ice bars in Auckland, Queenstown, Sydney, Gold Coast, Las Vegas, Viseu in Portugal, and soon Canada. At 450 square feet, the one in Stillwater was designed as a “portable igloo” to take around the country, but Ling said he’ll probably leave it in Minnesota for a while. “It’s not a freezer, it’s completely different,” Ling explained. “We’ve got the engineering right.”