Writing for Both Sides of the Bar

By Gamal Hennessy

There is a magazine for almost every human interest. If you doubt this, just browse your local Hudson News or Barnes & Noble. Obscure topics like pen collecting, Civil War reenactments and female horror movie victims all have magazines devoted to them. Drinking has traditionally been under represented, unless you count wine magazines, which we don’t. Do publishers think drinkers are too smashed to focus on small type? A company called Chilled Media is trying to solve this problem. Their solution is called Chilled.

Chilled Magazine is part bartending magazine, part drinking guide and part nightlife magazine. It has lighter pieces (like where to buy a fake beer belly to sneak in own booze under your shirt or a list of what different pop singers like to drink, in case you run into one of them at the club), practical nightlife advice (how to get a drink at a crowded bar or cure a hangover) to deeper pieces (the origins and uses of rum, the tragic fall of the daiquiri and a history of flair bartending). There are also interviews, a comedy section, short nightlife guides and hot female bartenders in bikinis…because every magazine needs that.

Part of the magazine is for the people who drink, part of it is for the people who pour the drinks, but no matter what side of the bar you sit on at night, Chilled is a pleasant diversion from the pen collecting magazines.

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Are You Ready for Everyday Drinking?

DRINKING
Every Day Drinking: A Preview
(Dwight Garner: New York Times)
When you imagine a man who consumes a lot of liquor, you might imagine a sloppy mess of a man who talks a lot but doesn’t say anything that makes sense and falls over a lot before kneeling over a toilet to pay for his overindulgence. A literary classic about the virtues and charm of regular drinking might seem counter intuitive…how can a drunk stay awake enough to write a book? The only way you can find out is by reading Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis.

Sir Amis (1922-1995) was a British poet and novelist. He was also obviously well versed in the art of drinking. He was so enthusiastic about liquor that he wrote not one but three books on the subject; On Drink (1972), Everyday Drinking (1983) and How’s Your Glass? (1984). The out of print books have recently been compiled and re-released as Everyday Drinking. The new work is part practical guide (“Serving good drinks, like producing anything worth while, is troublesome and expensive”) part recipe book (it includes, among other things, instructions for a tequila based Bloody Mary that serves as a “pick-me-up, throw-me-down, and jump-on-me” kind of drink) and part philosophical treatise (“humor and drinking are connected in a profoundly human, peculiarly intimate way”)

In a city of $20 cocktails, bottle service and a “liquor brand as a status symbol” culture it might be nice to take a step back now and then to enjoy drinking for its own sake. Instead of elbow wrestling 200 people at the bar to get that shot of Cuervo down your throat as fast as possible, maybe its time to gather good friends and sit down to some quality liquor. Maybe then we can have a few more nights of enjoying our drinks and a few less nights kneeling in front of the toilet.

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Smoking, Drinking and Dancing...

Nightlife News for June 10, 2008

Smoking: Will the Smoking Tax Make New Yorkers Quit?
Drinking: Why Should You Love Your the Hangover?
Dancing: Can You Sell a Dance Style?
Find out in Nightlife News