Archive · Press release
London: "Who'd have thawt it?"
Press release, 11 January 2010. Thousands head to Absolut Icebar London despite subzero temperatures — outside.
What it announced
Britain was having its coldest winter in thirty years. Snow closed roads, the Met Office warned of nearly half a metre falling in places, and temperatures in parts of the country reached −20 °C. The bar reported its busiest start to a January in over three years.
The joke the release is built on is a good one: at a constant −5 °C, the coldest bar in the country was warmer than the street outside it, and guests found themselves going into an ice bar to warm up. Matthieu Bourgogne, the general manager, said they were "surprised and delighted" to have welcomed over 2,000 guests in what is normally a quiet week.
The cold scale, as the release printed it
| Temperature | What |
|---|---|
| −5 °C | Absolut Icebar London, the coldest bar in the UK |
| −9 °C | Icehotel, Jukkasjärvi — the coldest hotel on earth |
| −27.2 °C | Coldest ever recorded in the UK: Altnaharra, Scotland, 30 December 1995 |
| −40 °C | Denali, Alaska — the coldest mountain on earth |
| −89.2 °C | Coldest place ever recorded on earth: Vostok Station, 21 July 1983 |
| −252.7 °C | Liquid hydrogen |
| −273.2 °C | Absolute zero, where particle motion stops |
The scale is reproduced as the bar's press office wrote it, records and all. It is a period document, not a reference table — the Vostok figure in particular has since been superseded by satellite measurements of colder surface temperatures in Antarctica.
Rebuilt from the Internet Archive's captures of this URL between 2008 and 2011, when absoluticebar.com was the official site of the Absolut Icebar bars. The wording is the archive's own summary of what the page said; quoted material is attributed.
Historical detail on this page describes the bars as they were then. For anything current — hours, prices, whether a bar still exists — go to the operator.