Drinking

The wait for tables is getting longer at Buck's, a popular breakfast spot for the tech elite and a weather vane for the Silicon Valley economy. Here, like everywhere else, Facebook is the talk of the town. "Charles Schwab was in the restaurant the other day, and I asked him to hook me up with some Facebook shares," said Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's, in the wealthy suburban enclave of Woodside. "He told me even he can't get Facebook shares. " The new tech boom officially gets underway Friday when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rings Nasdaq's opening bell remotely from the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, launching the largest initial public offering of stock in Silicon Valley history.

Sporting bodacious bodices and over-the-top makeup and wigs, the "ladies" strutting along the Fremont Street Experience hand out coupons for free drinks at one of the newest attractions in downtown Las Vegas . Drink & Drag features drag queens who not only serve up generously sized drinks but also entertain as they get their groove on dancing to popular songs. The lounge, which opened in mid-May, caters both to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) crowd and others looking for a scene that's somewhat unusual, even by Vegas standards.

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Cranberry is not vodka's best friend. Real vodka drinkers know this, but for years their taste has been marginalized by a craft cocktail scene obsessed with whiskey. Change is on the horizon, however. As Los Angeles bartenders vie to keep up with the next trending drink wave, venues all over town are favoring clear spirits. Well-regarded mixologists including Aidan Demarest and Marcos Tello of the cocktail consulting firm Tello/Demarest Liquid Assets are leading the way, serving as brand ambassadors to Stoli Elit vodka and Bols Genever (a grain-based, gin-like spirit)

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

In addition to claiming lives, marriages, homes and careers, alcoholism has a greedy way of robbing its victims of brainpower, as well. Over time, alcohol dependence literally shrinks the brain and several of its components. And in so doing, it erodes an alcoholic's ability to learn new tasks, remember things and organize for action. Even regular, heavy drinking can take a cognitive toll, researchers have found.

As California contemplates legalizing the sale of marijuana, the real war over intoxicants in this country is, as always, over alcohol. Since Prohibition ended in 1933 with the 21st Amendment to the Constitution — which repealed the 18th Amendment authorizing the ban on alcohol — states, counties and municipalities have see-sawed back and forth over alcohol sales. States are still passing laws on the sale of alcohol on Sundays, and municipalities and counties are still voting on whether to permit local alcohol purchases.

As Alcoholics Anonymous prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary, we asked one of its members to write about the group and how he came to join. Following in the tradition of the organization, he is using his first name only. My name is Chas. I'm an alcoholic. I stumbled into my first AA meeting in fall 1997. I had been a hard drinker for 20 years and a serious drunk for the last 10. I had lost my job, was about to lose my family and was having serious health problems.

At a new, clean, classically styled barbershop in Culver City, the three young owners sit in the sun coming through their open storefront window talking women, restaurants and booze. Casual and welcoming, the attitude is akin to that of a clubhouse - a community hangout as in times past. It helps that their shop, the Blind Barber, is also a bar. "My grandfather was a very well-dressed and put-together man," said Jeff Laub, 28, one of the partners. "He hung at his barbershop. That's where they talked about women, that's where they played cards, that's where they made deals, that's where it all went down.

Six teenagers have shown up in two San Fernando Valley emergency rooms in the last few months with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, worrying public health officials who say the cases could signal a dangerous trend. Some of the teenagers used salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, making a potent drink that is similar to a shot of hard liquor. "All it takes is just a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager," said Cyrus Rangan, director of the toxicology bureau for the county public health department and a medical toxicology consultant for Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Florida, it seems, has just gotten its very own Jerry Dewayne Williams. Mark Abaire, who has a history of petty theft in addition to an evident attitude problem, walked into a McDonald's restaurant in East Naples, Fla., recently and asked for a free courtesy cup. You're supposed to take this cup to the soda machine and fill it with water, but Abaire allegedly cheated: He filled it with about $1 worth of soda instead. When a manager asked him to pay, Abaire allegedly cursed at him and refused to leave, prompting employees to call police.

Yuck. A McDonald's  worker in South Carolina has been arrested after surveillance video allegedly caught him spitting into cups of iced tea that had been returned by the customers because they weren't sweet enough. Meanwhile, the operator of the Simpsonville, S.C., fast-food franchise where the incident reportedly took place is asking the public to withhold judgment about his restaurant. “Nothing is more important to me than the safety and well-being of my customers," the franchise operator, John Kennedy, said in a statement released to The Times.

I'm on my way down to lower Orange County in our old minivan, the Honey Fitz. It's bleeding power steering fluid, but other than that the Honey Fitz is charging out of the barn, three of the four cylinders firing in sequence, the other a virtual wooden leg. I'd planned to bring my wife, Posh, but when I left the house, she was all tied up with some project. Actually, she was lying on the bedroom floor, ensnared in the strings of a Pinocchio toy she was trying to put away a little too quickly.

A few months ago, after chef Brandon Boudet toured his newly acquired Mid-City pub Tom Bergin's, a man and his daughter stopped by to reminisce. As the man walked his 30-ish pregnant daughter around the wood-paneled room, he told her a secret. "He told her 'This is where I proposed to your mom,'" Boudet said. "And she just started crying. She said her mom had just passed away six months beforehand. There are some serious stories in this place. " For 63 years, the Irish cottage pub Tom Bergin's has stood out as a winsome incongruity amid the stone palaces of Museum Row near Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue (the original Tom Bergin's was built in 1936 and moved to its current location 13 years later)

A tangy, sour, fermented milk drink may not sound like a likely candidate to move from health food stores to mainstream supermarkets, but that's exactly what kefir has done. The beverage is steadily gaining fans convinced of the health benefits -- proponents tout its purported ability to help cure cancer, reduce high cholesterol and treat high blood pressure -- yet the scientific studies to support the claims are still few. Kefir's closest cousin is yogurt, also made by fermenting milk with bacteria.

Alcohol can be a minefield for anyone trying to lose weight. But for bariatric surgery patients, drinking can become increasingly problematic, a new  study has found. Changes in the way the body absorbs and metabolizes alcohol after gastric bypass mean these patients need less alcohol to register intoxication on a breathalyzer, says a study published recently in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons . After drinking a single 5-ounce glass of red wine before their surgery, the study's 19 subjects had an average  breath alcohol content of .024% -- well below the level at which most states consider a driver intoxicated.

Outstanding happy hour deals at top L.A. bars and clubs. -- Chef Jet Tila, who has battled it out on "Iron Chef America" and opened the buzzy pan-Asian restaurant Wazuzu at the Wynn in Las Vegas, has brought his tasty brand of Asian-fusion comfort food to Santa Monica. Called the Charleston and decked out in snazzy 1930s-era decor, Tila's new boîte features classic cocktails, live music — including jazz — and short rib tacos. Happy hour, which takes place Mondays through Fridays from 5 to 7 p.m., offers a chance to taste Tila's food without residual wallet pain.

There were some questionable decisions made in the food and beverage industry last week and their consequences are still being felt Monday. Belvedere Vodka posted an ad that horrified customers with an implied rape scene while a Georgia steakhouse based a new burger on Chris Brown's 2009 attack on singer Rihanna. And Kraft Foods is discovering that its global snacks business' new name, Mondelez, has an unexpectedly vulgar connotation. Belvedere has removed a spot it posted on Facebook over the weekend depicting a shocked-looking woman trying to get away from the grip of a smiling man. “Unlike some people, Belvedere always goes down smoothly,” the ad crows.