It’s one of Dawson City’s most bizarre and endearing traditions.
The world-famous “Sourtoe cocktail” is a shot of strong whiskey containing a human toe.
The goal is to drink the whiskey and have the toe slide down the glass and touch your lips. For $5 a Toe Captain will read you the story of its origin when local eccentric Captain Dick Stevenson found the toe in a jar and decided to set up this dare.
“You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow…must your lips must touch the toe,” goes the saying.
Like any club’s initiation the SourToe endures because people love a good rite of passage.
Drinking the sourtoe might take a few beers to “build up courage.” There is dread, building up to one unforgettable second followed by relief and high-fives, pats on the back and common stories about how people almost threw up.
Such are the things that make friends out of strangers and create good stories told years later.
Today on the news it was revealed that an American traveller went to drink the toe and have it touch his lips, instead decided to swallow it. The reaction was loud and many people aound the web have learned about the “sourtoe” today.
Life in Yukon 