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The Tower Bar’s Cherry Limeade is its most popular not-beer option
Guy at nearby table saw the 2017 and 2023 bar crashes
The Tower Bar's Cherry Limeade
Christina Hawkins
Yes, San Diego has any number of places you can go for a fancy drink. But The Tower Bar, says owner Mick Rossler, is “not really a fancy cocktail place,” and it certainly doesn’t need to be. This City Heights landmark has its own charm — where else can you walk upstairs from a barroom and get a tattoo in the same building? — and its unique history. Some form of food and drink has been served at this address for nearly a century, beginning with a soda fountain in the 1930s, long before the funky, colorful paint job that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing adorn The Tower. The remains of a dumbwaiter that used to lower food from the upstairs kitchen to the lower level are still visible in the barroom.
Speaking of history, there are also the three cars that have come crashing into the place over the years. Rossler smiles serenely as he talks of a curse that may be at work here. The first crash in 1964 earned the bar its cheeky designation as “the original hole in the wall”. But then there were others in 2017 and 2023. Rossler indicates a man at a nearby table and says that he happened to be here for both of those last two.
Anyway. What if, like me, you find yourself here in City Heights to see some music on a Tuesday night and don’t want beer? Maybe, like me, you’ve had a month-long sinus infection. Maybe you just don’t do gluten. Then maybe, like me, you ask Christina Hankins, who has been tending the bar here for 14 years, to make what she considers to be a representative Tower Bar drink. “I’ll humor you,” she says.
The Cherry Limeade she begins to whip up is advertised with only three descriptor words: “vodka, muddled cherries”. It’s the most popular not-beer order here, and it was inspired by the virgin drink of the same name featured at Hot Dog on a Stick, which you may know from mall food courts throughout the country.
It’s not as sweet as I expected, which is a good thing. It’s also not overwhelmingly boozy. It might even be called refreshing. The boba straw is provided so that the consumer can slurp up the muddled bits at the bottom of the glass.
The bar is still quiet as I sip it. It’s only around 6 pm. As a complement to my drink, the fresh evening air wafts in through an open door. As it meets the warmth of the room, it mixes together another recipe for me, a cozy San Diego dive bar aroma: the lime on the rim of my glass swirled together with cigarette smoke, the ambient alcohol smell of the room, and the meat and spice of the generous, steaming burritos being eaten by a young couple a few yards away.
The Tower Bar’s
Cherry Limeade
- 1.25 oz. vodka
- 1 splash sweet and sour mix
- 1 splash grenadine
- 1 splash Rose’s lime juice
- cherry
- lime slice
Muddle cherry and lime slice in a pint glass. Add liquid ingredients, then pack glass with ice. Add soda water and Sprite. Serve with boba straw.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The Tower Bar’s Cherry Limeade is its most popular not-beer option
Guy at nearby table saw the 2017 and 2023 bar crashes
The Tower Bar’s Cherry Limeade is its most popular not-beer option
Guy at nearby table saw the 2017 and 2023 bar crashes
The Tower Bar's Cherry Limeade
Christina Hawkins
Yes, San Diego has any number of places you can go for a fancy drink. But The Tower Bar, says owner Mick Rossler, is “not really a fancy cocktail place,” and it certainly doesn’t need to be. This City Heights landmark has its own charm — where else can you walk upstairs from a barroom and get a tattoo in the same building? — and its unique history. Some form of food and drink has been served at this address for nearly a century, beginning with a soda fountain in the 1930s, long before the funky, colorful paint job that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing adorn The Tower. The remains of a dumbwaiter that used to lower food from the upstairs kitchen to the lower level are still visible in the barroom.
Speaking of history, there are also the three cars that have come crashing into the place over the years. Rossler smiles serenely as he talks of a curse that may be at work here. The first crash in 1964 earned the bar its cheeky designation as “the original hole in the wall”. But then there were others in 2017 and 2023. Rossler indicates a man at a nearby table and says that he happened to be here for both of those last two.
Anyway. What if, like me, you find yourself here in City Heights to see some music on a Tuesday night and don’t want beer? Maybe, like me, you’ve had a month-long sinus infection. Maybe you just don’t do gluten. Then maybe, like me, you ask Christina Hankins, who has been tending the bar here for 14 years, to make what she considers to be a representative Tower Bar drink. “I’ll humor you,” she says.
The Cherry Limeade she begins to whip up is advertised with only three descriptor words: “vodka, muddled cherries”. It’s the most popular not-beer order here, and it was inspired by the virgin drink of the same name featured at Hot Dog on a Stick, which you may know from mall food courts throughout the country.
It’s not as sweet as I expected, which is a good thing. It’s also not overwhelmingly boozy. It might even be called refreshing. The boba straw is provided so that the consumer can slurp up the muddled bits at the bottom of the glass.
The bar is still quiet as I sip it. It’s only around 6 pm. As a complement to my drink, the fresh evening air wafts in through an open door. As it meets the warmth of the room, it mixes together another recipe for me, a cozy San Diego dive bar aroma: the lime on the rim of my glass swirled together with cigarette smoke, the ambient alcohol smell of the room, and the meat and spice of the generous, steaming burritos being eaten by a young couple a few yards away.
The Tower Bar’s
Cherry Limeade
- 1.25 oz. vodka
- 1 splash sweet and sour mix
- 1 splash grenadine
- 1 splash Rose’s lime juice
- cherry
- lime slice
Muddle cherry and lime slice in a pint glass. Add liquid ingredients, then pack glass with ice. Add soda water and Sprite. Serve with boba straw.
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