Saving Summer's Trashiest Cocktail: Make Way For The $21 Long Island Ice Tea
11 Madison Park is either a very good restaurant or the absolute best restaurant in New York City. It depends on whom you ask. But don't ask me: I've only had a drink at 11 Madison Park, and that drink was a Long Island Iced Tea. It came in a highball with four perfect cubes of ice and a wedge of lemon. It cost sixteen dollars and tasted just like college.
"I haven't served one of these in six months," the bartender told me. Like his peers at the other fine New York bars and restaurants where I have lately been ordering Long Island Iced Teas, he had repeated my order back to me: "Long Island Iced Tea?" His neck muscles tightened, giving bloom to a gritted smile. That smile said: "The customer is always right." I confirmed the order, and he obligingly prepared it. Later, when we struck up a conversation, he told me the last person to order a Long Island Iced Tea at 11 Madison Park "was definitely not from New York."
There is no cocktail as maligned as the Long Island Iced Tea. Equal parts vodka, gin, white rum, white tequila, and triple sec, plus sour mix and a splash of coke—its reputation is basically on par with rufinol. "I first started taking cocktails seriously, if that's the word I want," David Wondrich, the cocktail writer for Esquire, once said, "when I realized that I couldn't in all good conscience step up to the bar at a place called ‘The Mudd Club' and order something called a ‘Long Island Iced Tea.'"
Wondrich's snobbery is common in New York. "Long Island Iced Tea drinkers need not apply," begins the Zagat entry for the Pegu Club in SoHo. Like everything else, cocktail menus have grown decadent and incomprehensible. Why drink a Manhattan, when you can drink a Manhattan that's been aged in an oak barrel for six weeks? If you like old fashioneds, then wait until you try the smoked old fashioned. Before you know it, you're drinking an Applethy: "horseradish-infused Absolut vodka mixed with green apple juice, carbonated, and served on draft with a slice of apple that has been sliced on a meat slicer and compressed in a vacuum bag with Campari."
What you definitely won't be drinking is a Long Island Iced Tea. "It's traditionally ordered by people looking to get inebriated in a hurry," said Brian Van Flandern, who served exactly three Long Island Iced Teas in his three years as the "head mixologist" at Per Se, where they cost twenty-five dollars apiece. "They don't know what else to order." For a Long Island Iced Tea, you head to Coyote Ugly. "If you're at a nice bar, you order a widow's kiss," the bartender at 11 Madison Park recommended. READ MORE
New York City, May 23, 2013
★★ Clouds were moving and kept on moving, bunching up and loosening and bunching up again. The river went dark and choppy, then turned smoother and silvery as the rain blew in. The clouds still had white in them, even as the drops fell. After the rain–or between the rains, as it turned out–the river was green and mottled with shadows, as sun came through. Then it was deeper green with whitecaps coming across the current. Indoors was humid, but the breeze outside had become fresh. A male kestrel fluttered up and perched on a balcony across the way. By the time the camera could be persuaded to zoom past the windowpane, the little falcon was gone from the viewfinder in the dimming light. Rain came blasting in again, falling in what actually did look like sheets: solid white objects plunging past, flashing in peripheral vision. Again it subsided; people spilled out onto Broadway, warily, to take advantage of the end of the rain, or was it just a pause in the rain? The latter, and it didn't hold quite long enough even to push a stroller up to the Fairway and back.
'Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart,' A Quarter Century Later
Camper Van Beethoven's unlikely major label debut Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart was released 25 years ago today. It is older than some people you know. Soon you will die.
Living Alone In Indonesia
Nina Bhattacharya just finished teaching English in Indonesia on a Fulbright scholarship, and we emailed about it a few weeks ago.
Edith Zimmerman: Was there a moment when you realized that you were making such a huge change to your life? And then just said, "yeah, I'm doing that"? Essentially — what was it like to decide to do this?
Nina Bhattacharya: Oh god, did I agonize about making the commitment. Even though I had been to Indonesia before, my brain could not process the length of time I would be away. Nine months? It seemed unfathomable. While I publicly announced my decision to go almost immediately, it took many long conversations with my parents before I felt certain enough to accept the grant.
I distinctly remember the day when I signed the papers to accept the Fulbright grant. I even made a housemate take my picture as I was signing.
Now I laugh a little when I think about how difficult the decision seemed at the time. The last eight months have flown by, and it’s starting to hit me that I'll have to leave in four weeks. I don’t feel ready to leave just yet. Which is not to say that living here has always been easy, but the decision to come here was one of the best I've ever made. READ MORE
"When you are a young person just out of college, you don’t necessarily want to just read the New York Times or Huffington Post."
—Young persons, is this true?
Mister Softee Jingle Lyrics NOT An Incessant Stream Of Profanity, Apparently
Ugh, so this whole time I have been walking around thinking the words to the Mister Softee jingle went like this:
I am the fucking ice cream man, the man who sells the ice cream
I am the fucking ice cream man, I sell you fucking ice cream
You want some fucking ice cream? Well, I'll tell you what to do
Come by my fucking ice cream truck, I'll sell that shit to you
I am the fucking ice cream man, the man who sells the ice cream
I am the fucking ice cream man, I sell you fucking ice cream
Bitch shit cock piss dick ass balls, fucking ice cream
but as it turns out, they are considerably more pedestrian. I still like mine better, but I would not recommend singing either of them in front of small children. [Via]
"To better understand Star Trek’s allure, I conducted a lengthy online survey of fans during the first three months of 2011, receiving 1,444 completed questionnaires… It wasn’t surprising, for instance, to find that fans often used words such as 'optimism,' 'hopeful' and 'positive' to describe why they like Star Trek, that they praised the franchise’s celebration of science and technology, or that they enjoyed the idea of a society without poverty or racial tension. Many invoked the famously inclusive vision of 'Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations' or cited story lines that engaged social issues or probed philosophical questions. One common refrain was less obvious. For many viewers, it turns out, Star Trek represents the ideal workplace."
Google Takes Half A Day To Get Around To Removing Missing Bridge From Maps
In less than 12 hours, Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA (via @hackernews) maps.google.com/?ll=48.446034,…
— Veronica De Souza (@HeyVeronica) May 24, 2013
The world's biggest Internet company apparently took 12 hours to remove a missing bridge from its maps—maps that are used by millions to navigate. Tech geek society, of course, is apparently claiming this as a victory for amazingness. Except it's still not: Google maps still routes you over the collapsed bridge. Just remember, you were warned about giving one company all your email, documents, photos and everything else!
"The H7N9 bird flu virus can be transmitted not only through close contact but by airborne exposure, a team at the University of Hong Kong found after extensive laboratory experiments." Anything else? "'We also found that the virus can infect pigs, which was not previously known.'"
"Star Trek Into Darkness": What Came Next
—Dr. “Bones” McCoy to Captain James T. Kirk, after reversing Kirk’s death by radiation poisoning with Khan’s super-blood.
Ridiculous, to think it all started over a tribble. A lifeless bundle of fur. I always kept a dead tribble in my Curio of Maladies in those days, for medical reasons, and was especially glad of it when they finally hauled Khan’s body aboard for study after the battle.
Kirk was particularly dead that day; I remember because everyone was crying and the science woman kept all of her clothes on. As is my habit, I injected several of Khan’s more personal fluids (super-fluids, if you’ll pardon the medical terminology) into the tribble to see what would happen.
The tribble returned almost immediately to life. I remember because I thought to myself, “Ah, I seem to have conquered death. Tremendous,” at the time.
As a doctor, this made my job a great deal easier.
As I mentioned before, Kirk was dead—terribly dead—being chock full of radiations and so forth, so I decided he’d make an excellent second test subject for my Home Death Remedy and plugged him with a bit of the super-blood a few minutes later.
(At this point, of course, the resurrected tribble had multiplied itself several hundreds of times and was wreaking absolute havoc on our food stores, but this wasn’t my concern; I’m a doctor, not an animal husbandry expert.)
Everything went perfectly. Kirk recovered beautifully from the things that had made him dead, and wasn’t dead anymore. READ MORE
New York City, May 22, 2013
★★★ Nobody but the toddler was inclined to wake up in the dim morning. It was too humid to feel chilly, but toward noon, the CNN sign over Columbus Circle read 18 degrees lower than the sweltering forecast in the paper. Small schoolchildren out on field trips filled the crosswalk and sidewalk. Air conditioners dripped onto awnings downtown, and anti-fracking activists accosted pedestrians. The afternoon air was beach air, thick and full of glare. In a hot patch of light by a store window, the surface of sun-splashed clothes advertisements briefly seemed to dissolve into the real world. In front of the apartment building, people were sitting out on the stone-block representations of benches, which really serve as parking-space barriers and on which people never sit.
If you are drinking at a TGI Friday's in Jersey you are probably better off sticking with the well brands. Also, if you are drinking at a TGI Friday's in Jersey you probably did something really, really terrible in a previous life, because that is like set-fire-to-an-orphanage karma right there. [Via]
Sure, Let's Shoot A Bunch Of Animals Into Space
Haven't we already figured out what happens to animals if we blast them into space? Isn't sending them up there now just asking for trouble? Like, taking the chance that they will pass through some cosmic gamma rays and come back as super-rodents bent on revenge? I mean, that is my understanding of how space travel works. I could be wrong. Anyway, if nothing else it seems kind of cruel, although I guess it is probably better than living in Russia.
53 More 'Arrested Development' Jokes You Probably Missed
Last year, we released a list of "53 Arrested Development Jokes You Probably Missed," and with the long-awaited new season set to debut on Netflix this Sunday at midnight, what better time to crank out another new list of hidden jokes from the show? Arrested Development is so dense that there are enough subtle gags, callbacks, and references to fill a dozen of these lists. So, if you're cramming the show's first three seasons in before the fourth premieres this weekend, keep an eye out for these sneaky bits of comedy including Oscar Bluth's accidental prison race riot and the Iraqi version of T.G.I. Friday's. READ MORE
Yo, We're Going to D.C. for Tour de Fat
There always comes a time in life when a person has to take a journey. Steve Jobs once said :
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go. I’m going crazy and I’m getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.”
For us here at The Awl Network publishing team, that time comes on June 1st, 2013. I'll be traveling to Washington D.C. with The Awl's philosophical leader and teacher, Michael Macher. A trained photographer (obviously with spacers in his ears) will also be joining us to discover and document the serendipitous joys of Washington D.C. and really, more specifically, New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat.
There's a lot in there. Let's explore: If you didn't already know, New Belgium Brewery is the producer of award winning brews, including their famous American take on the classic Belgian style amber ale, Fat Tire. They've been been kind enough—in partnership with Federated Media (shouts to @Nooch80 and the team)—to support this here web community. When thinking about how best to share the message that New Belgian wants to share with the world (and again, more specifically, indiellectuals like us) we thought sending a crack squad of content producers to check out and report back on the Tour de Fat scene would work best (and also be the most fun because, really, what is life without laughs?).
What exactly is the Tour de Fat? What exactly will we see there? The festival is all about things the Internet is passionate about: It's a celebration of bikes (#bancars) and a fundraiser for local charities. It also features musical acts like Beats Antique and performance acts like The Moth. At some point during the day someone will pledge to give up their car for a year. This festival takes place in 10 different locations throughout the year and in D.C. it will take place on June 1 in Yards Park from 11 – 5 PM. You can check out the full DC schedule here.
If you are in DC (or will be in DC on June 1) and reading this post, perhaps we can share a fine NBB Fat Tire amber ale together? Tweet at Michael and me, please. If things go really swimmingly perhaps we'll even share an appetizer whilst we drink our heady brew.
Is this a journey from which we re-emerge a little differently? We will report back.
This post is brought to you by Fat Tire. Pairs Well With People.
Ditz, Lightweight, Mooncalf, Naïf: The Second-Class Status Of Stevie Nicks
Stephanie Lynn “Stevie” Nicks turns 65 on Sunday. As the lead singer of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist she has written and sung some of the most indelible songs of the rock era.
The band has long since entered the pantheon of Rock Greatness as a “legacy act.” When your local classic-rock station plays “Go Your Own Way” and “Rhiannon” back-to-back on “Two for Tuesday,” do you drum along on your steering wheel? Of course you do! You’re only human!
And yet. While Stevie—I’m going to call her “Stevie” because, like all icons, she invites familiarity while retaining a core of mystery—has enough solo hits to avoid complete dismissal, there’s a troubling willingness among amateur and professional rock critics to explain away her success. They try to credit it to her looks, her mystical image, her boyfriends, her collaborators—anything and anyone except, you know, her.
Robert Cristagau's "Consumer Guide" entry on 1979’s "Tusk" says the album reveals band mate (and one-time boyfriend) Lindsey Buckingham’s production genius—but “shows Stevie Nicks up for the mooncalf she’s always been.”
A 1997 profile of the band in Rolling Stone (a magazine that’s never interviewed a classic rocker it didn’t want to journalistically fellate) by Fred Schruers is dismissive of Nicks’ contributions:
Bart Bull—before he was Michelle Shocked's husband—wrote this in Spin in 1987, while reviewing "Tango in the Night":
I don’t want to turn this into a Lindsey vs. Stevie prizefight. God knows they’ve done enough of that themselves. (Just count the number of times the word “win” and its permutations appear in their songs about each other.) It is not an either/or proposition. People can and do like both. Stevie is certainly the better lyricist, singer, and, I believe, all-around songwriter. Lindsey is a masterful guitarist and visionary producer.
But why is Lindsey forgiven his limitations, but Stevie not forgiven hers? Or perhaps the better question is: Why do Lindsey’s strengths carry more weight than Stevie’s? Why is Lindsey a genius and Stevie a ditz, a precocious naïf? READ MORE
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