Awesome Ice

Munchies dropped down Ginza, Japan’s Bar High Five to get a look at owner Hidetsugu Ueno’s perfectly balanced and artful cocktails, and his ability to individually carve chunks of ice into glimmering diamond shapes. Ironically, Hidetsugu doesn’t even drink.

While we’d all love to have perfect ice cubes in our drinks, it’s not always feasible. Nate Cotterman’s glassware has a cube or sphere built in that resembles a crystal-clear block of ice. The highball gets a pair of cubes. While they don’t improve cooling, they don’t melt either.

Holland recently coined the term “straatsen” – a mashup of “straat” (street), and “schaatsen” (skating) – after ice covered the country’s roads, making them impassable. TasteLikePizza compiled this video of residents turning their frozen lemons into frozen lemonade.

Back in 2012, percussion group ЭТНОБИТ (Ethnobeat) transformed the sheets of ice on Siberia’s frozen Lake Baikal into a wondrous natural musical instrument. The recording engineer for this clip deserves just as much praise as the musicians.

Step up your whiskey game with some spherical ice cubes. These silicon rubber ice molds create a 2.5″ ice ball that will help keep your drink chilled for a long time, and looks cool doing it. The set makes two ice spheres in about 4 hours.

Cool your drinks with freedom. True Fabrications’ U Ice of A lets you make ice shaped like the Continental United States. Or at least most of them. The East coast was compressed in the service of serviceable ice.

With Winter gasping for its final breaths here in the Northern Hemisphere, editor Scott Duffy pays tribute to the sport of ice hockey – sampling sounds related to his now melting backyard ice rink. Well, there’s always the indoor rink.

Hikers in the High Tatras Mountains in Slovakia came across a crystal clear lake that was frozen solid. Walking out on the slippery, transparent surface was a surreal experience which must be seen to be appreciated.

Skip the ice cubes and keep your cocktails cool by wrapping them in ice. These silicone molds sculpt a wall of ice – using water, juice or other drink mixers to dramatic effect. Available in martini or rocks versions.

Firefight Films shot this awesome footage inside and around some incredible ice caves in Alaska, using a GoPro HERO3+ Black Edition and a DJI Phantom drone. The behind the scenes reel is loaded with amazing shots as well.

You’d think that ice and motorcycles wouldn’t mix, but stunt rider Jorian Ponomareff proved just the opposite as he pulled off some awesome drifts and tricks on the slippery stuff. An oldie, but a goodie from 2012. Fun BTS video here.

To prove that the car battery it sells works in extreme cold, Canadian Tire commissioned a truck with a body made of nothing but ice, and then started it with a battery frozen to -40°C. Its body weighed a husky 14,000 lb. More here.

Normally, if your car falls through the ice of a frozen lake, it’s fish food. Not so for these guys in Russia, who managed to retrieve this Honda SUV from its icy tomb using brute force and ingenuity. According to the video’s poster, it still drives.

Driver Roman Rusinov powers the 540hp AWD Nissan GT-R to a staggering speed of 182.8mph in the car known as “Godzilla” across the icy surface of Siberia’s frozen Lake Baikal, breaking the previous Russian ice-driving record.

Keep plenty of drinks chilled with the Brainfreeze Glass Skull Ice Bucket. Its ample cranium hold up to 54 ounces of ice, though we also like the idea of eating raspberry sorbet out of it.

Driving on ice give us nightmares in which we both drown and freeze to death. But that didn’t stop this guy from creating a vehicle that can drive across fractured ice and extract itself from icy waters.

We would not recommend getting too close to thin ice but thanks to YouTuber Brice Center we will now most likely be throwing rocks at the next slightly frozen body of water we come across.

Shout Out Louds previewed the single Blue Ice off of their latest album to a select few fans and critics by sending them a kit for making a record out of ice. What a cool idea. (Thanks James P.!)

It doesn’t get much cooler than the Ice Jacket when it comes to keeping your booze chilled. It turns your favorite bottles into mini ice sculptures by encasing them in a thick sheath of ice.

Architect Zaha Hadid’s see-through acrylic table looks looks like a melting glacial formation with its drippy icicle legs. See it up close at London’s David Gill Galleries through 5/30/12.

Check out the Porsche GT3RS and Mitsubishi Evo 9 versus a Yamaha R1 and WRF 450 in -25° Lapland, with speeds of 160 mph on ice on a replica of Le Castellet; winners tbd on 3/27. (Thanks Gile!)

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a Formula race car taking on the Nordschleife and Grand Prix tracks when covered in snow. At least they skipped the slicks and went with snow tires.

Quick Spikes for the green, YakTrax for snow and ice. This easy to wear traction device fits on most types of shoes. It’s made of an elastic material with hand-wound rust-resistant coils.