In the summer of 1889, the St. Paul Daily Globe in Minnesota published a tongue-in-cheek study of drinkers in bars — the self-important society man with his elegantly curved arm, the lady who drinks Champagne, the man about town with the latest gossip and news of the freshest scandals, the regular who drinks alone because he likes it and does so in silence, the “posers” who blow foam off their lagers…and this guy, the vaguely Irish, slightly simian tough who pinches stale beer dregs in a keg and…well, read on.
But peerless as she is and tempting as is the sight of beauty and wine, the lady thinks the liquid she is about to taste not with half so tumultuous and pleasurable anticipations as the gentleman of the tin-can brigade as he makes a fat find of stale beer in the discarded keg in front of the saloonist's door. Already provided with a cigar stump from the gutter, he has now made a discovery that to him is more than jewels and fine raiment. There is enough of the flat extract of hops in the keg to fill the can, and ecstasy— yes, unspeakable joy— is imprinted on his features. He has a withering contempt for cold victuals now, and he would scoff at champagne. Safely to the nearest alley will he hie him, and there alone and unaided will he engine in a Bacchanalian revelry that will not cease till the tin vessel is emptied thrice and again. He will attempt no style in drinking. He will simply hoist the can with both hands, and not until it has been replenished and drained many times will he sleep, to be awakened rudely by the policeman, who will hammer the soles of his feet with the stinging club.
St. Paul Daily Globe
July 28, 1889
Reminds me of the juice served at certain lowbrow bars — either as punishment or prize — consisting of all the spills that accumulate in bar mats, a sickly prank juice of commingled whiskey, energy drinks, cordials, vodka, shot slops, deflated beer foam, melted ice, and whatever else didn't stay in the glass.
Understand that Amsterdam is one of my most favorite cities in the world. In fact, when I lived in Philadelphia, I kept a bag packed for those weekends when roundtrip airfare to Amsterdam dropped under $200. It didn't happen often, but when it did, I knew I'd soon be eating breakfast at Cafe Luxembourg overlooking Spui, the cobblestoned square at the heart of so many of my Amsterdam adventures.
A "private" model from whatsupwithamsterdam.com
Heavy drinking and concomitant public urination is so common in the city, however, that residents have a term for it: "wild pissing" (wild plassen in Dutch). Despite the presence of outdoor pissoirs throughout the city, such pubic conveniences aren't always used. Anything is fair game when a full bladder demands attention — trees and buildings, for instance. Even the city's famous canals are not exempt from a good hosing down.
Earlier this year, Radio Netherlands relates a story from De Telegraaf that 51 people have died in those canals over the last three years. One was the result of crime. The other 50?
De Telegraaf newspaper concludes that the other deaths were the fault of the victims themselves: they fell into the water and were unable to get out...Most of the canal casualties are apparently men who fall in while attempting to urinate into the water from the side.
How is it determined that men fell to their deaths while urinating? The article doesn't specify. Of course, witness statements might help establish that. But my guess is that their open flies were the common giveaway.
The article makes no mention, either, of the obvious: many of these drowned men with their supposedly open zippers had to have been drunk enough to lose their balance at the canals' edges and, hands occupied, tumble into the dark waters below: an ignominious end.
Please, dear readers, should you visit Amsterdam, have a few drinks too many, and find yourself outside, use the public toilets. That's why they are there. If the completely open four-man pissers make you a bit shy, keep an eye out for older, more private ones like the one above.
And before your flight back home, be sure to piss on a fly in Schiphol Airport.
As a freelancer, it's important for me to wrest as much value from the things around me as possible. In that vein, I keep a number of "yard work" shirts. They have frayed collars, bleach stains, little rips and tears — flaws that make them unsuitable for wearing to client meetings, but just right while raking leaves, trimming hedges, painting, etc. Old jeans serve the same purpose. The truth is, though, that I haven't had a yard in fifteen years.
That's not thrifty; that's hoarding.
But not this week. This week, I'm culling possessions ruthlessly.
We're in the midst of closing on a nearly 100-year old Craftsman home just off Balboa Park in San Diego's North Park neighborhood. I've already weeded the clothes. Today, I start pulling books I no longer use and boxing the library in earnest. Before the week is out, I'll turn that gimlet eye on the offsite storage unit.
But during the entire time, we're shifting how we use the liquor library. When we drink at home, we usually decide what we feel like, then simply gather bottles and start mixing. With several hundred open bottles at home, nearly any cocktail is possible, except for the most outlandish concoctions of modern molecular cocktology (or whatever it's called). The kind of drinking has to go on hold for now. Until we're settled in this place, the simple new rule for any bottle of spirits is:
Kill the open bottles.
We'll start with those holding just a few ounces of booze and then move on to more full bottles. I know we won't be able to drink it all, even with the help of friends, but I'm not moving frayed, torn old shirts — and I'll be damned if I'm moving heavy glass bottles with next to nothing in them.
Goes well with:
My Culinary Library: What Good Does It Do? Once you find yourself with a few thousand books about food and drink, you've got to ask yourself: What's the point? Here's what I came up with.
One street behind San Diego's pan-Asian supermarket 99 Ranch Market, beyond banners announcing its perpetual grand opening and the all-you-can-eat $18 hot pot, lies Mr. Dumpling, one of my default lunch joints.
I am enamored of Mr. Dumpling's xiao long bao (called on the menu "pork juicy buns" and elsewhere known as Shangahi soup dumplings). The steamed dumplings are little more than tiny pork meatballs and a splash of stock wrapped in a thin caul of dumpling wrapper. The trick to eating them is to bite a small hole at the bottom edge, slurp out the stock, and only then tackle the rest of it. Invariably I dunk mine in a soy/chile/black vinegar concoction I mix at the table. Sure, I'll order other things once I'm there, but those fat little rascals are the reason to go.
Naturally, the staff have come to know me. Small dishes sometimes appear unbidden on our table; pickles, boiled peanuts, little pancakes. One day when eating alone, I was engrossed in Chris Bunting's book Drinking Japan. When the waiter brought dumplings, I set the book aside and he read the title.
"Drinking Japan?" he exclaimed, in (mostly) mock indignation. "How about you drink China instead?"
"Sure, ok." You see, I'm agreeable about these things. "Where can I get Chinese liquor in San Diego?"
"Hmm. Maybe 99 Ranch Market."
"Yeah, I saw their sake and shōchū, but I didn't notice any Chinese spirits."
"They also have umeshu," he offered, naming a Japanese plum liqueur.
"Chinese umeshu?" I pressed.
He smiled, caught. "Yeah, Chinese stuff is pretty hard to find. Maybe it's ok if you drink Japan sometimes."
And so I do.
Mr. Dumpling
7250 Convoy Court (not Convoy Street)
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 576-6888
[Edit 10.9.12: With a change of staff for both the front and back of the house, the quality of the restaurant has suffered. I can't in good conscious recommend a meal here any longer. Pity. Those were great dumplings]
It is a lie that nothing tastes as good as thin feels, but consider this: I blew the ass out of my jeans this week.
When we moved to San Diego in 2006, I had a tan line and weighed 86 kilos. Five years later, the tan is gone and I tip the scales at 104 kilos. For those more accustomed to pounds and ounces, that rounds out to around two and a half new ounces each week for the last 5 years.
Cringed when I saw this printed in the local paper
The result? 230 pounds of Rowley.
Whether you think in grams or pounds, there’s no denying: I’ve grown obese.
As an adult, I’ve never been particularly concerned about my actual weight. For better or worse, I’ve always been able to define my own space in a crowd. Standing 6’ tall with size 12 shoes and broad shoulders, I can pull off 210 muscled pounds and feel confident enough to peel off a shirt while working in the yard. But let that muscle atrophy and the fat balloon? It’s no wonder my pants couldn’t take the strain.
Since childhood, I’ve wavered between husky, thick, muscled, and, occasionally, flat-out fat. My father, on seeing me for the first time in a year, recently remarked, “Looks like you’re not missing any meals.” It’s true. I’d tapered off going to the gym in 2009 and, sometime in the last year, just stopped altogether. I did not, however, stop eating like someone who worked out regularly.
In addition, work has kept me increasingly tethered to computers — and chairs. With the onset of a sedentary life, the tan faded. My waistline inched up. That San Diego is extremely casual and few meetings call for suits or ties let me easily overlook the fact that several of my suit jackets no longer close and my old shirts won’t button at the neck.
Drinking hasn’t helped. Unless it’s for work, I don’t drink alcohol during workdays. But the fact is, I write about and for distilleries and their products. Sampling spirits and cocktails at distilleries and bars is what I do. Even on an off night at home, my preference for tiki drinks — pumped with fruit juices and syrups of passion fruit, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, almonds, pomegranates, and more exotic tastes — means that I consume an enormous quantity of calories in cocktails alone. Lately, I've reverted to my old habit of after-dinner whiskey. Just whiskey.
I am tired of being fat; of snoring at night because the flesh of my neck now interferes with normal breathing; of getting winded after running up stairs; of rotating through the same four pants because only they fit; of catching despondent looks from my family who clearly worry about my health and whether I’m going to be around in five years, much less 20 or 30.
So. Spring cleaning, physical and mental.
With a deep and resigned sigh, I cleared the fridge of most of the syrups, poured them down the drain, and dropped the bottles into the recycling bin. No more homemade raspberry, black pepper, marshmallow, or chocolate syrups. Threw out my beautiful golden schmaltz and the blessed bacon fat. Tossed the homemade ice creams and 86’d the frozen coffee cake.
Because the intense California sun can cause irreparable skin damage, I got a skin cancer screening this morning (all clear) and renewed my membership at 24 Hour Fitness. Tuned up my bike. Shaved off my beard (although skinny guys can have — and look great in — beards, it’s far too common for us fat bastards to hide our spreading jowls behind fur).
There are very few things that give me such unbridled pleasure as good food in good company and I dread — absolutely dread — the cooking I’ll be doing in 2011. But I do want to be around to see the end of the year. And of 2012. And of every year after for as long as I can.
Say hello if you see me at the gym. But please don’t laugh if I blow the ass out of my shorts; I’m working on it.
As a 20-year “Friend of Bill W.’s” I am a bit embarrassed by my fellow ex-drunks’ pious attitudes. Sometimes I forget that I’m in the minority and that the vast majority of people can drink (and occasionally overindulge) without grave consequences.
If you haven’t seen the blog Proof over at NYCTimes.com, go check it out. Articles approach alcohol and drinking from diverse angles as contributors “consider the charms, powers and dangers of drink.” Writers include Paul Clarke, Susan Cheever, Glenn Eichler, Iain Gately, and others. If you read AND drink (or used to drink), they may be familiar names. Particularly revealing are the comments sections of each article. It’s here where drinking and abstaining Times readers duke out their differences.
Among non-drinkers, comments typically range from tight-lipped disapproval to off-the-charts sputtering rage leveled against drinkers. One of my favorites is in response to Eichler’s list of alcohol-fueled lines from holiday parties (“None of these are real, and also they are not funny at all”—many of them are, in fact, funny: see below). But the sheer vitriol heaped upon drinkers by recovering alcoholics across all the stories was something of a shock.
It’s not that I don’t know recovering alcoholics. Of course I do. Given the role alcohol plays in my professional life and the pleasure it’s given me personally, however, I forget on a day-to-day basis that drinking can be ruinous for some, that there are those who simply cannot or should not drink, and some for whom others’ drinking has presented heart-wrenching challenges.
For those of us who can have a drink or two, then stop, the proposition that casual enjoyment of well-crafted cocktails or fine spirits—even the occasional PBR—leads to ruination and ignominious death seems preposterous. But the implacable alcoholics and their joyless flames over at Proof set me thinking about the sheer volume of alcohol we have at home.
Well over a hundred bottles of liquor are readily apparent as visitors step into our living room. The copper-topped dry sink is covered with whiskey and brandies, its cabinet stuffed with single barrel bottlings and limited releases. The wheeled, two-tiered, mid-century bar cart is so laden with rums and caçacha that moving it is difficult. Bottles are filed by type and size in two additional closets and the kitchen counter is frequently host to bottles I haven’t filed or that I’m using in research, not to mention the various infusing, pickling, and candying experiments underway. In the last five years, our bowl of limes has gone dry exactly once.
Such a collection always seemed like…well, a working collection to me, a research tool—much like having a culinary library so extensive that I rarely need to leave to find that one bit of information I want to track down. Need absinthes for some 19th century baroque cocktail? Check. What about genever for a Dutch treat? Sure. What brandies are best for sidecars? Let’s find out. Does it really matter what kind of gin goes into a bijou cocktail? Here, try four small versions and be your own judge. Once we settle on the best gin for the job, let’s see what bitters make the thing shine. Just want a Jack and Coke? I can help you there, too, though I’m likely to try steering you somewhere else.
I’m looking at this forest of bottles in a new light now, though. A casual visitor could well be appalled at this collection, to see it, in fact, as a red flag indicating certain alcoholism and impending doom. I don’t and neither to the people who know me well. But still, there’s the matter of appearances. Perhaps more of this liquid library could go behind cabinet and closet doors.
I mean, really, do I need two dozen rums at the ready each and every day? We’re not talking about hiding the stuff (now there’s a trick that suggests someone should drop by an AA meeting), but maybe three or four rums for the cart are sufficient while the remainder rests a whole two meters away in a cool, dark place behind a door. That's better for the liquor in the long run, anyway.
I’ve got to mull this one over. If I don’t play this right, it means putting books in storage to make room for booze and that is truly the last step of a desperate book addict.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the air of a much more successful person?”
“I don’t believe we’ve met. Oh, really? Right next door? Ten years?” “We’re not really budgeted for a vacation this year, what with the exchange rate and my gambling addiction.”
“I have to apologize for not reading your new book yet. It’s just that the last one was so awful.” “I don’t usually drink this much, but you’re insufferable.” “I had pants on when I came in, right?”
