drinking

The Drinkers

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo is part of a run of early photos I have purchased either on Instagram or in an online version of the Brimfield sale. (I have only been to Brimfield a few times and it is one of my life’s ambitions to go again. As a car-less non-driver there is no good path from Manhattan. Fellow junk collectors who would like to make the trip in future less disease inhibited times, please do advise. Happy to fund gas.)

This photo postcard came out of the Instagram haul. Purchasing on Instagram is like being in a real time auction although there is no raising of a bid – just who gets to claim it. Some are fast paced and other items just sit and get marked down. It is interesting to me to see what @MissMolly thinks I would like from what I have already purchased and when she DM’s me about one. She’s low on cat photos though and I have yet to manage to purchase one from her.

The Brimfield sale (those to follow in future weeks) moved at a somewhat slower pace, which works better for me. I do like to have at least a bit of time to ponder and consider. The Instagram sales are definitely you snooze you lose – the Brimfield one largely allowed for some consideration and even negotiation before things started to get snatched up.

This photo postcard is entirely unmarked and was never sent. I suspect that it was the composition that caught my eye. The photographer caught a good moment with the legs of these gentlemen, their shoulders and that flag creating a triangle in the middle – a sort of perfect composition – with those table legs adding to it. All the gents sport ties so they were dressed for the occasion, the one even completes the ensemble with a vest and watch chain. I would hazard a guess that it wasn’t a day that started out with drinking and smoking, but was ending with it.

Each fellow has a liberal shot of what appears to be hard liquor, with a bottle of beer chaser as well. (Or so it appears to me.) The two younger men may be brothers, a thought that only occurs to me when I start looking hard at it. Cigarettes spring from the mouths of the two guys. I think it is fair to say this is serious business, they do not appear jolly. Their attire marks this photo as very early. The room is pretty nondescript although there is an oddly incongruent and cheerful boarder of flowers on the wall near the floor and what I thought was a series of either small holes or something along the middle of the wall, but turns out to be something on the negative or in the printing. It’s hard to see, but there’s a happy flowered carpet on the floor too.

I spent a little time considering the flag at the back and its position. Taking out the possibility that somehow the photo negative and printing process somehow flipped which could be possible, I wondered what the statement might be. As many readers probably know, an upside down flag is a signal of duress. I had not encountered backward.

Our friends over at Google informed me that the military positions the flag this way (blue section, stars up highest) on uniforms, vehicles and whatnot, making the flag look as if it is waving as the person or the vehicle moves forward. I don’t know that I agree that they achieve this effect, but I guess it isn’t for me to weigh in on. Meanwhile, I admit that somehow I have never noticed this. So much for my general powers of observation. I cannot find any other reference to this positioning of the flag. (Someone with better eyes might be able to date this within a range by counting the stars on that faded flag.)

Meanwhile, I believe there is a general sense that our prolonged quarantine has increased people’s drinking (um, why wouldn’t it?) and probably not always in a good way. Zoom cocktails (starting earlier and earlier in the day it seems) being the social version of this – although here in New York you can sit outside with someone and drink if you are comfortable doing it in what turns out to be a not-quite socially distanced way. (I have yet to do it but I did have an in-person work breakfast outside on the corner of York and 86 the other day. It was very hygienic and just fine.)

When it comes to work if someone invites you to Zoom cocktails it to be a way of saying it isn’t really a work meeting, and maybe you will talk a little work, but you’ll also chat about other things. (Strangely though, like the meetings we have all tuned into, they tend to last exactly an hour.) Whether you have a jam jar of white wine in one hand, cold hibiscus tea (my favorite summer drink which makes me look like I am guzzling red wine), or something harder, it’s up to you and anything pretty much goes – after all, you’ll on someone’s laptop or iPad screen. I personally seem to be consuming the large quantity of my calories through baked goods rather than alcohol, but to each their own.

However, the other evening we (meaning we at Jazz at Lincoln Center) hosted a Dizzy’s Club online event and sent out the offer for cocktail and mocktail fixings for the guests. Although I purchased the requisite box (which came with salted peanuts in a nod to Dizzy himself) featuring Negroni fixings, instead I made a vodka tonic the way I like, with a ridiculous amount of fresh lime. (I had spent the day packing the apartment for the installation of bookshelves and needed the pick me up – more on this in a future post.) In this way, I found myself on Zoom with 60 or so jazz lovers. The evening kicked off talking to the great Catherine Russell followed by a clip of her at Dizzy’s. (I don’t have that clip but instead offer another which at the time of writing can be found here.)

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Our apartment packed up for the bookcase installation.

 

However briefly it did seem we were transported to a summer’s evening, wiled away at Dizzy’s, sweating drinks in hand – a serving of spicy mac ‘n cheese within reach and maybe some fried pickles, enjoying some companionable time, listening to the music and watching the view of the sun setting over Central Park. I must say, those were the best Zoom cocktails so far.

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View of Dizzy’s, Central Park and the East side out the windows.

 

 

Teed Up

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I dust off an item I have owned for so many decades that I do not remember exactly how or where I acquired it. However, given the time period I came into possession of him I would guess I found him at a street fair.

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s Manhattan had street fairs, spring through fall, almost every weekend and all over the city. Unlike what they became later, in those early years there were a lot more tables of mom and pop types set up selling old stuff, semi-flea market style. (Meanwhile the beloved flea markets were being chased from their real estate so that new, towering condos could be constructed.) I followed them religiously around the city, taking in each new neighborhood along the way as I was fairly new to the city still, and purchasing odd items.

The street fairs were eventually taken over by corporate entities and the small time sellers pushed out and with that I stopped going. These days I would guess they will continue to be paused entirely during our coming pandemic colored summer and fall and who knows if they will come back and in what form. However, as I pointed out in yesterday’s post, all of Manhattan is developing a sort of a free for all, al fresco attitude with street vendors selling food and every establishment with a liquor license selling wine, beer, sangria (think diners trying to make that extra dollar) and mixed cocktails for consumption on the street. Protesters close down streets with marches daily, but the city has comparatively few cars in it, at least in my part of town. I realized recently I haven’t seen a yellow cab in months.

I believe this china, smiling, cart-driving, solid citizen was purchased in a nod to my then boyfriend, Kevin, who always had a nicely decorated, very 1950’s style bar in his tiny apartment on I think it was 10th between Avenues B and C. He was my street fair partner in crime and his taste in bar tchotchkes and decor definitely had an influence on me and my collecting in those days.

We drank as well and would explore interesting old New York lairs on the weekends. In that way we explored all of the still extant Yorkville bars, some almost private clubs like Elsie Renee’s Oke Doke Bar, where the elderly owner studied each person via a small window in a wooden door before deciding if safe to allow them into the charming, if barren, bar – not much decoration here; some dusty liquor bottles and plastic flowers as I remember. Her apartment was behind it through a small outdoor courtyard you could see from the bar if it wasn’t dark. Elsie was a stout, gray-haired, no nonsense kind of German matron. I think she served more or less two kinds of (German only) beer. I believe I drank Dinkelacker and Kevin maybe Spaten. A second woman of a similar age helped her and I would see her in the neighborhood, a bright kerchief over her hair, shopping in the remaining German markets of the neighborhood.

Then there was another tiny hole in the wall one called The Toy Bar in the East 70’s, around 77th and Second I want to say. It was ablaze in twinkling Christmas lights and was heavily decorated in toys that were from the 60’s and 70’s, that decade or two largely dating them to my own childhood. They weren’t great toys as such (I was just at the very dawn of toy collecting interest), but the overall effect was splendid and it was a friendly bar. Sadly it drifted out of existence fairly quickly. I often thought if I had lived a bit closer I would have frequented it more.

There were others – a strange subterranean piano bar in full 50’s regalia attached to a restaurant in the East 50’s; another neighborhood piano bar further east; the Top of the Tower Bar perched atop of the Beekman Towers on First Avenue on Mitchell Place (where First Avenue meets Sutton Place) with the most splendid views up and downtown and of the enormous Coca Cola sign across the river. I think we knew that we had a finite amount of time to experience all of these and took advantage of it, to the extent that our limited resources allowed.

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My Bar Caddy would have fit right in at most of these places I think. I find his smile just a tad smirky – the tiniest slip of the brush contributing to that. There is strangely detailed straps and bits hanging off of his cart and bags which being golf ignorant I know nothing of – but I am impressed by the detail nonetheless. (My eye-hand coordination, or lack of, made me such a remarkable failure at golf that I never tried after that first time in gym class, although I sort of admire tell of its Zen qualities. I have a golfing branch of my family however, on my mother’s side, and my great-aunt once won a car at a tournament with a hole-in-one. Notably, she made a second hole-in-one at the same club a few years later. Her granddaughter, a successful eye surgeon, was also splendid at the game and still plays.)

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Finally, tucked into the back of this chipper fellow is a single drink stirrer. In the shape of a golf club (a putter? Kim who did a stint as a caddy says yes.), it has lived, appropriately, in the back of the caddy as long as I can remember. However, it is my memory that it was purchased separately. It is evidently from the Highland Hotel, in Springfield, Massachusetts and on the reverse side it declares, Every Meal a Pleasant Memory. In parting I share a postcard of the Highland Hotel and their menu below. More meals and drinks gone by although in another time and place.

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Drinking with Fat Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Taking a break from the chaos of renovation here at Deitch Studio today, I am focusing on this odd recent acquisition. It was purchased for a few dollars on a whim – Kim and I liked the logo, a sassy Sylvester type kitty with a fat cigar hanging out of his mouth.

I generally do not purchase new items and I do not own any beer or soda cans – although I believe I have bid on an early Felix soda bottle in my life and lost. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, Fat Cat, is a popular name. As a result I am having a bit of trouble making sure that all the information offered is about this particular company. For example, there is a Fat Cat brewery in England which seems to be tied out to a pub there and distinctly different. I see some different logos for it and remain unsure if they all belong to this product.

As Deitch Studio has a professed interest in beer bottle cap collecting (Eleanor Whaley makes her first appearance in Kim’s bottle cap collecting tale published in Deitch’s Pictorama) which harkens back to Kim’s own childhood bottle cap collecting, I checked out the internet to see if Fat Cat beer had a good one. It does not appear to be sold in bottles, however I did find this rather nifty golf ballmarker below which admittedly probably does not have its genesis with the beer, although it turns up with a search of Fat Cat beer cap. (Yep, had no idea about ballmarkers in general and I gather it is just as it sounds – marks where your golf ball landed which I gather is occasionally needed.) If I played golf I would want one of these.

 

The can itself reveals that it is brewed and canned by MOII, Monroe, WI. In addition, it proclaims the following about contents, Malt, hops, water, bla bla bla, what more can I tell ya? It’s just plain ol’ good beer! We will have to take their word for it as I purchased this can pre-emptied, from the bottom as I guess collectors prefer? In addition, not sure who or what MOII might be.

The ratings for it online appear to my unschooled eye to be about average, sadly not living up to the exuberance of the can. Citrusy seems to be a popular adjective, but also bitter and “average hops” whatever that really means. It seems that there was a brewery that you could visit in San Diego until recently. Yelp has marked it closed however.

Generally speaking, I like beer in a rather unspecified way – such as in a cold one on a hot day. I generally prefer a light lager such as this one more or less proclaims to be, although bitter does worry me. Even more than wine, I have never really ventured into the world of beer and the various aspects of tasting it and what I might like best. (When I was in training to be a chef I was taught a bit about wine tasting so I have a point of reference for that.) In high school I knew several guys who started making home brew from a kit and then started taking it very seriously. One went on to be come a brewmaster professionally. It was very dark beer and I confess I never liked it. I am a Corona kinda girl.

Kim no longer drinks (stopped long before I met him – as he says, he did all of his drinking early on) and although he doesn’t mind having liquor in the house I don’t keep beer since I think it is what he misses most and not having it is no hardship for me. However, there’s usually wine around and currently a somewhat exotic bottle of Jack Daniels that I got at a work event recently as well, but the fact is I don’t drink much, especially at home, either. I do cook with wine however and I was taught that you should only cook with wine that is a quality that you would drink – hence the presence of wine in the house.

In the end I just applaud this jolly can and commend it to my crowded shelves. Certainly given the opportunity I would order it in a bar or restaurant out of curiosity. Meanwhile, as their can proudly proclaims, We gottit made!