By Andrew Court
The afternoon light streams in through the dirty windows, casting a warm spotlight on a corner of the mahogany bar. It’s September in New York City; the U.S. Open, Fashion Week, and the U.N. General Assembly are all going on.
None of that matters here.
A certain sort of reprobate frequents a dive bar on a weekday afternoon. People are celebrating wins, mourning losses, and just getting by. The decor pays tribute to the past with faded pictures of a city that no longer exists. The patrons mostly are either Bukowskiesque artistic drunks or just plain drunks.
In this company there’s only one appropriate drink, whiskey on the rocks.
There isn’t any fig leaf of respectability. This is not a bourbon tasting with a man-bunned hipster serving a small pour over a big ice cube. It’s not a Scottish wee dram after 18 holes. It’s a swimming pool of brown liquor, an industrial vat. The only thing that could vaguely make it a “cocktail” is a healthy amount of ice, preferably in the style of a high school gym locker room. This is quantity over quality.
America’s Drink — Whiskey on the Rocks
You can only find a proper whiskey on the rocks in America, land of the free pour. Europe has been cucked by the EU’s regulated metric measurements. It’s a shame because Harry’s Bar in Paris would be the perfect spot to bend an elbow.
The patron saint of whiskey on the rocks was Hunter S. Thompson. Every day the famed gonzo writer took his lunch promptly at 7:05 p.m. at the Woody Creek Tavern. To prepare himself he would drink whiskey consistently from his 3 p.m. wake up onwards. Thompson’s greatest innovation was the Chivas snow cone. The bar keep would pour three to four jiggers of the Scottish blended whisky over crushed ice to fortify the author for the drive back to his ranch. At midnight, with the help of some Colombian marching powder, Hunter was ready to write.
Thompson had a long and storied career, but others weren’t so lucky. Bukowski is another famous American drunk author, but he didn’t succeed until later in life. Imagine what he could have done if he drank whiskey instead of wine. F. Scott Fitzgerald was the opposite, an early prodigy. As a gin drinker, however, he flamed out. Whiskey is for consistent success.
Saddam Hussein, a consistent fellow if there ever was one, loved Johnny Walker Red. After the Iraqi dictator was toppled we learned that he used cash from the Oil for Food Program to import thousands of gallons of the drink. This was primarily to keep his loyal, but not very Muslim, Republican Guard happy. His son Uday was another aficionado of Red Label. The whiskey pairs nicely with a gold-plated AK-47. The Iraqi desert is hot as fuck, so we can only assume the Ba’athist Party exclusively drank it on ice.
On the opposite side was Christopher Hitchens, who loved John Walker almost as much as he supported Saddam’s overthrow. He was partial to a midday slug cut with Perrier sparkling water; Hitchens was bisexual after all. In “Hitch 22,” his autobiography, Christopher laid out a set of rules for being a good artistic drunk. They are useful, especially for the Mimossa-loving Field Ethos crew, so let’s repeat them in their entirety:
How to be A Proper Artistic drunk
1. Don’t drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food.
2. Don’t drink if you have the blues: it’s a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood.
3. Cheap booze is a false economy.
4. It’s not true that you shouldn’t drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain.
5. Hangovers are another bad sign (as is watching the clock for the start-time to your next drink) and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can’t properly remember last night.
6. Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed – as are the grape and the grain – to enliven company.
7. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough country it won’t be easily available.
8. Never ever think about driving if you have taken a drop.
9. It’s much worse to see a woman drunk than a man. I don’t quite know why this is true but it is.
10. Don’t ever be responsible for it.
Personally, I have a soft spot for Jim Beam. It’s a little less aristocratic than Makers and a little smoother than Jack. The bartender grabs the bottle from the well and freshens my tumbler, I suggest we do a shot and she agrees. At that moment a group of tourists enter the bar and start chatting merrily, a little too merrily, so I head to the back to be alone with my thoughts.
Am I an alcoholic, artist, or both? My afternoon drinking has become an infrequent occurrence, as the pressures and responsibilities of life have taken over. I do enjoy it, and I believe occasionally sharing your thoughts with a tumbler of amber liquid is salubrious for the soul. In these situations, the bloating effervescence of beer is distracting, vodka is a bit too feminine, but whiskey on the rocks hits just right.
