five vodka cocktails and thoughts on nightlife
five vodka cocktails and thoughts on nightlife
are you going out correctly?
The pandemic washed out my twenties, I recently overheard someone say. I have to agree with them; no matter what age you are, you’ve experienced the pandemic’s rapid contraction of social interaction and its subsequent quasi-recovery, and are now left to yourself to ascertain a new self-identity. It doesn’t quite matter how you spend your free time – whether you’re back in the throes of things like it’s 2019 or prefer to spend Saturday nights with popcorn and a movie at home – it feels like something fundamental has changed.
Maybe I’m just 27 years old, but to me a city’s nightlife is a litmus test of some sort of cultural health and well-being. So much of community feel, self-identity, and the simple experience of letting loose and having fun with friends is reflected in Saturday nights. They’re a major reason young people like me choose to forfeit the majority of our salaries towards rent. In them you can see – in real life! – what’s going on culturally.
I’m obviously not the person to present an on-the-ground scene report of how New York’s club scene has changed in every generation or which DIY venues are better than others. But I can report from various dive bars, wine bars, Puerto Rican izakayas, and the like, and confirm that what we have is different than before; some ways better and some worse. In particular, costs are higher and, like economists have been telling us again and again amid the collapse of commercial real estate, location matters more. Capitalism’s easy embrace of inclusivity politics is driving expanded options catering to more niche preferences. And “cool” is, as always, being redefined.
Anyways, here’s five recently-enjoyed cocktails leveraging my favorite inflation-proof liquor, Costco “American vodka” (which can be easily substituted for just about anything else). Also, here are some stray thoughts I had while drinking them.
Rosemary Vesper
1 oz. Costco “American Vodka” (Tito’s)
A few sprigs of rosemary, infused in the liquor a few days before
1 oz. Lillet
1 oz. Gin your local corner store owner suggests you buy
Delicate, aromatic, sweet—but not too sweet. Like that photo of Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette smoking a cigarette.
Last week I was (probably illegally) standing on the icy wrought iron of someone’s third-floor fire escape, then used as a smoking balcony, when I spoke to an interesting guy. He had piercings, that mullet look you see now, “American traditional” tattoos that weren’t the trendy minimalist kind. I told him I was relatively new to the city and was curious where he goes out for fun.
“Go out? I don’t go out at all anymore. No bars at least. Some venues for shows, maybe.”
I was totally baffled. We’re in our twenties, right? Also, I wasn’t sure what else to talk about with this guy who had cornered me on this fire escape.
Basil Vodka Tonic
2 oz. Costco “American Vodka” (Tito’s)
A few sprigs of basil
Approx. 4 oz. tonic water
Crisp and bitter. Italodisco plays softly in your vintage kitchen while you make Nonna's pasta sauce.
A major driver in the decision of whether or not to go out is the sheer cost of it. When my choices are between a free (hashtag girl math) Basil Vodka Tonic on my couch or a $14 gin and tonic on a cocktail bar couch, it takes a good reason to justify spending the money to go out. Sometimes that reason is straightforward: a friend from Chicago is in town and wants to see the city, or my house is messy. Other times I’ve just been working from home too long. But it's certainly not as clean a decision as it was when I knew I could reliably get a beer with the five dollar bill in my wallet. Are people going out less? Tough to tell — I wouldn’t necessarily trust a survey telling me either way; it’s too difficult to capture, only felt in the gut.
The chart is CPI for food and beverages in urban cities, indexed to 2009, towards the end of the Great Recession. Things have sure gotten more expensive!
Things aren’t suddenly more expensive for no reason; labor is much more expensive, as is the cost of goods sold. Some places surely inflate beyond that as “the market can support it” or whatever, but at least on paper these price shifts are responding to underlying macro phenomena. I’ve seen a lot of recent discourse which highlights the chief disconnect between the federal economic data/EconTwitter class of analysis, which uniformly point towards a strong economy where inflation has “cooled” – and the increasingly pronounced feelings of voters who know that an $18 Large Big Mac doesn’t make sense in an environment where, if they’re like me, they only got a 4% year-over-year raise.
Worth noting is the nightlife industry was one of the most devastated by the initial lockdown of the pandemic. After years of forgiven PPP loans, venues have rents to pay too. Existing establishments must cater to new preferences and meet their cost burdens, or risk shuttering. Some of these consumer shifts are pretty well-defined, like work from home. Despite the loudness of those fifty-year-old “tech thought leaders” who live in $3 million Menlo Park complexes but need to get away from their wife and kids at home, I’m betting on its staying power. Sadly, this means gone are the days of meeting friends after a long day in the office for cheap beer and fries downtown. Casual weeknight downtown hangs and prevalent happy hour oysters. Now, broadly bars and restaurants in neighborhoods outperform those in downtown areas, and events catering to certain populations – literary It Girls or Buffalo Bills fans – seem to bring people in instead. If you’re going to spend money, you need a good reason now, and it’s unfortunate that the spontaneity of going out with friends after work suffers without geographic convenience and affordability.
Earl Grey Martini
2 oz. Costco “American Vodka” (Tito’s) [or gin]
A few bags of earl grey tea, infused in alcohol a few days prior
1 oz. lemon wedge
Lemon wedge
Dash of sugar
Citrus-forward and sharp. You wake up and it’s raining outside and suddenly you’re the detective in a British procedural.
It feels like many forms of inclusion are a higher priority these days thanks to various social movements, especially as they are easily co-opted by the market.
In nightlife, exclusivity will always play some role, lists and clubs and “speakeasies” and all that. But there’s more to the story now. Or maybe I am just a Midwesterner experiencing shock and awe at the prevalence of non-alcoholic and low-alcoholic drinks and gluten-free and vegan options in San Francisco. Or maybe it’s the post-pandemic internet, where I’ve seen mutual aid groups coordinate funds for neighborhood performers and tiny hobbyist instagram accounts coordinate large meet-ups at different bars. There’s still plenty of sticky-floor dives in my neighborhood with a vibe that can only be described as “harsh,” but people seem to have more options.
It’s more than just listing a vegetarian entree on the menu. In recent weeks, I’ve had “low ABV” cocktails with friends who were seeking to minimize their alcoholic consumption (at a bar!), enjoyed the “low noise” backyard of a club, ate “gluten-free” crudites at a birthday party, “donated” rather than owed the $20 entry fee to the performer at a show, read that I’ll soon have the option to consume cannabis in a manner similar to that of drinking beer at a bar at a store in San Francisco, been offered various drug options promising to “erase the need for drinking,” been asked to specify my pronouns when introducing myself to others at an event, ate the sole meat entree at a (mostly) vegetarian restaurant, attended an event where a big bar closes down solely to lit nerds, witnessed a dozen people play chess at the coffee shop which they declared “for them,” and even – dare I say it – had a $10 mocktail which tasted pretty good.
I think the internet has made various subcommunities (or at least “alternative” lifestyles?), visible enough to create a market to cater towards them. In the long run, if a broader swathe of people is catered towards – especially in venues which emphasize community (whatever that means) and just hanging out – then, cool. Found your dive bar gothic literature book club; people will come.
Tomato Martini
2 oz. Costco “American Vodka” (Tito’s) [or gin]
Heirloom tomatoes from the fanciest corner store you know, infused in vodka for a few days
Dry white vermouth
Dash of V-8
Salt and freshly-ground pepper
Hot sauce
Cherry tomato on a toothpick
Savory and salty. Your art collective thought you lacked creativity until you showed up with this one.
Going out has meant different things for me during different parts of my life. In college it was listening to an “indie” band in a basement with a Rolling Rock in my hand. After college it was fitting myself into a bar with dancing that functioned as a club for people who didn’t want to go clubbing. In grad school it was a table of grain alcohol, a projector displaying a black and white Criterion film, and someone playing 100 gecs. Now, it’s been a lot of telling people over and over again “Hey. I just moved here.” Maybe the forms change but a throughline is there: we’re all just hanging out, bumping shoulders, and distracting ourselves from the pains of the week.
Also, the parts I enjoy most about going out have largely stayed the same: improvising a mixed drink while getting my outfit together, feeling optimistic on a bus, sitting around in a dark room exchanging delightfully meaningless gossip, making plans for kebab later that night. Being a regular somewhere, knowing at least one bartender’s name. (Anecdotally, and sadly, these places seem to be closing down as quickly as I can find them, as the industry consolidates into a few equity-backed “Groups” owning more “Spaces.”)
Watermelon Vesper
1 oz. Costco “American vodka” (Tito’s)
Watermelon slices, infused in vodka for a few days
Lillet
Gin
Sweet and playful. Like an intellectual Malibu beach party.
What’s new and cool? If some of the tech companies in my neighborhood had their way, there would be no real-life socialization, people would lay in bed and message an uncanny representation of Kendall Jenner, confusingly named “Billie” who will probably extort them for money down the line (and is, until then, just confusing people). If there is socialization, they’d want you to do it by splurging big on capital-E “Experiences” via an Airbnb Host or Instagram ad or corporate getaway. The internet and corporate interests have obviously driven many consumer shifts in hanging out and meeting friends (that’s a bigger conversation for another day), often against what’s easiest and simplest. The appification of everything stands against a phone call, walking somewhere new – let alone by yourself - where people might talk to you.
Moreso, technology has muddled our understanding of “cool.” What you see online is certainly popular, but not everything that is viral is truthful or cool (or even exists) in real life. My friend Katherine Dee articulates the challenge of identifying authentically “trending” media as it relates to the people for whom it is trending. She says the fragmentation of culture online means there are too many “cools” for a source like the New York Times to authentically write about one. Representation on the internet is always skewed; its never what people are like in real life, or indicative of how many people are like that in real life. It’s just something people liked looking at.
Recently, I compelled five of my friends to get dinner with me at a Chinese restaurant I saw on Tiktok. It promised “authentic” cuisine, but really what sold me is that I saw the noodles looked spicy and chewy, and tens of thousands of people had already seemed to agree with me. We went, imagining a room full of Tiktok influencers, staging the perfect noodle pull framed by iPhone cameras, and found that we were the only people there under the age of 65. Sometimes internet fame just doesn’t translate to reality in the way you’d imagine. (The food, more importantly, was delicious; it was Happy Family Gourmet in the Sunset.)
Where does cool come from then? My friends in Brooklyn have a definition they are convinced of that doesn’t seem to exist outside of their neighborhood’s boundaries. My friends in the South Bay are convinced it’s going to one very specific movie theater and then be seen getting hot pot at this one trendy place. It’s certainly local, and cultural, so the internet’s disruption of it — towards a homogenized version of taste — is interesting. Cool is no longer simply being on an ambiguous club “list” or having a secret no one one knows, because that wouldn’t proliferate online.
My friend Quinn raised an interesting point to me recently: that foodie hipster culture, for many in various “Downtown” crowds, is on its way out. It requires a lot of effort to find “best” pho spot and then drive an hour out of the city to some strip mall to try it. Instead, there’s a resurgence in more classic French or Italian or American or whatever spots – where the focus is on high atmosphere (and high prices) instead. The food might be mediocre – but I see what he means. If I’m going to spend $50 on a weeknight with friends, let it be somewhere cute and fun.
To me, I argue that what will remain cool, against it all, are places grounded in real life connection that exist outside of a corporatized framework. People doing their thing in a place they like. Clubbing may be fun, but the nightclub owned by the company that owns 25 only-slightly-different nightclubs has lost its luster to me. Brands may sell, but I want a place I can connect with, people with names I can remember. A place I can bring my friends back to once again that doesn’t live on solely in Instagram stories. You won’t find it spoon-fed to you online – but you can seek it out on your own.