the new england society for the promotion of vice

[by john]

as threatened earlier after our history lesson, we've founded an organization to combat the nosy killjoys over at the watch and ward society, also known as the new england society for the suppression of vice. (nevermind that they're all dead.)

after a soft opening for a week or so, the new england society for the promotion of vice officially flung its arms wide open to cocktail-clutching prospective members at eastern standard's speakeasy this wednesday. laughter, stories, recipes, and pins were all exchanged. yes indeed, vice-sanctioning buttons:

drop us a line if you want one, and wear it proudly.

cocktails and powerpoint

[by john]

all three of us here at the blog have strong opinions on what makes a good set of slides for a scientific talk. generally, they align (conciseness, high information-to-ink ratio, tell a story rather than read the slides, well labeled axes...), but sometimes our opinions clash and we find ourselves in a shouting match over the usefulness of outline slides. (yes, this happened. at drink.)

lately, i've come to develop similar strong opinions on bars' cocktail menus, which are, after all, the bartenders' method of presentation. in addition, as i prepare for my own big cocktail party, i'm thinking about what my menu should look like.

here, then, is a taxonomy of both presentation styles:

the screenshot

we've all (switching to scientist persona for a bit) suffered through a speaker who relied on screenshots of whole paragraphs from colleagues' (or their own!) papers instead of digesting the content into bulleted form. enraging.

the cocktail menu equivalents are the tomes that you can find, say, at new york's pdt. each cocktail gets half a page of rambling attention - some history, some flavor notes, some discussion of seasonality. distill it for me, already!

aphoristic

some presenters like to take the cutesy route to talks. they'll have quotes from einstein or barely related stock photos (usually of einstein as well). they might have good content, but you wouldn't know that if they were on mute.

i think of eastern standard's menu. original drink names (brock's buck) with inside-joke-sounding description (alliterative shout out). what the hell is in it?!

table

similar to the screenshotter, the table-user will lift a whole table of data into the presentation (including the unnecessary columns) and point out the important bits with a dim laster pointer.

i think beer lists are more guilty of this - especially a place like sunset tap which has about a million beers on tap and prints them all in small font, along with brewery location and abv.

maybe the old b-side menu gets close for cocktails:

succinct points

ah the elusive -good- use of bullet points. the basic information and hints of the deeper significance, without becoming a long sentence. there's enough there to understand it in itself, but the speaker fleshes out each point more fully.

craigie on main comes close to this style - the important bare ingredients or flavors, with a little color commentary. and tom is always willing to supply more information.

chalk talk

this speaker is a baller. they are probably old and well respected in several fields, partially for their skill in delivering arresting, note-free, slide-free presentations.

the bartenders at drink and milk & honey are ballers. there is no standing cocktail menu; only what they can hold in their mind. without the crutch of a menu, prolonged interaction between the bartender and customer leads to a better understanding for both.

tiki!

[by john]

(conga room via flickr)

my former self knew nothing about tiki. about the island culture that can flavor your drink beyond the falernum and tiki bitters. about the music, the forget-the-weather-outside vibe, and the crazy carved demigods. that former self is, well, still drunk on three kinds of rum, leaving me to tell the tale.

eastern standard held a tiki bash this weekend that only eastern standard could throw. jackson cannon greeted mike and i with trader vic's punch (rum, more rum, even more rum, orgeat, orange and lemon juice) from a flower-laden tropical punch bowl. that knocked us into our seats, where we played bobby's captive audience.

bobby mccoy is a bartender at e.s. who caught the tiki bug, and taught us a bit about the rise(s) and fall(s) of tiki culture in the states. tiki apparently got big in the early 1900's, when travel by sea (to, say, polynesia) became easier. it was revived during prohibition when peopled traveled to drink, then re-revived after prohibition when (unaged) rum was easier to come by than (aged) whiskies, by the enterprising don the beachcomber, then re-re-revived in the '80s, and currently re-re-re....revived due to the focus on fresh citrus and complex spice flavors.

he made a zombie punch, with FOUR (count 'em) ounces of different rums. smooth sailing from then on, needless to say. paired with a coconut shrimp salad.

brother cleve was next up, and detailed a rambling musical history of tikification, including the necessary cocaine use. he presented his drink from the last tales of the cocktail, the cactus flower. eleven ingredients (including prickly pear puree - ask mike about it) later, i had a tasty drink and part of a roasted pig in front of me. i was starting to understand this tiki thing...

sugar-crusted donuts and a wild, spicy batavia arrack-based non-standard tiki drink rounded out the polynesian afternoon (did i mention it was still light out?).

before i stepped back into the cold, bostonian real world, i had come to realize that the flavors weren't the whole tiki story; a large part was the other fun people sitting at the long table, enjoying the alternate world they had entered and agreeing, 'yeah, this drink is a strong one!'. tiki transports to a -state-, more than a place, and that is why it is alive and well in new england.

weird shit

[by john]

steven and i headed to eastern standard for our second night on the town, and twisted the arms of mike (of this blog) and andy (roomie) to come along. hard sell. the eventual and unintentional theme of the night was 'weird shit'.

we noticed early on (we were all e.s. virgins) that e.s. maintained a dazzling array of original syrups and in-house liqueurs and bitters; the bartenders clearly knew their way around the kitchen. this must have set something off in our heads to order non-standard drinks. (is that a pun? i can't tell.)

these included, but were not limited to: an absinthe and xocolati mole bitters pairing, e.s.'s grapefruit liqueur experiment (made that day), muddled cucumber and salt, vegetable vodka, cayenne syrup, mirto, offal, and bone marrow (those last two not in cocktails).

my final drink - which these bastards ordered for me while i was in the bathroom - was actually on their menu, but was some certifiable strangeness. beet-infused vodka, greek yogurt with horseradish, tarragon syrup, and orange juice. a bizarre, yet remarkably well put-together drink. i felt healthy afterward. [3/15 edit: apparently this style of cocktail is officially a style.]

we were lucky enough most of the night to have nicole, an e.s. expert bartender, put up with our shenanigans. witty as hell. at one point, for instance, she called out andy for performing some questionable acts on his last piece of bone marrow. and she was cool enough to send us on our way with a complimentary fernet flip. the cool minty-ness would have lasted all the way home had we not singed our taste buds at the delicious pad thai cafe.



oh and a p.s. - nicole gave us a nip of the cynar - so that's what it tastes like.

and a final p.s. - some guy stopped his car on the street to compliment steven's hair. think mad scientist meets yves saint laurent.