Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/04/21/mixology_the_bar_packer.php
Monday, April 21, 2008
One ounce of rye, warm, in a shot glass, chipped.
Serve unadulterated by progress.
We’d been at it hard for around a hundred and fifty years when things about bottomed-out: I’d spent the time buying drinks for level heads, shots of rye at a nickel apiece, and they’d done the same for me in measures of generosity equal and enviable. Jim, sitting down at the bar and not ever really welcome among the regulars (he hadn’t the same pedigree, and was only there through the convenient vacation of his stool by its previous occupant, who was himself rather a libelous boor, and paranoia-prone), felt slighted in our revelry, at the imagined expense of more ‘laudable’ endeavors, too often: he called our rye outdated in its chivalric faith, suggesting its inferiority to his own trendy preference, the appletini. Now, rye’s as simple and honest a drink as is, and an appletini is… well. Four times over Jim pushed his appletini on us, and four times over we held fast to our rye. In consternation Jim called to the barkeep, weathered, wise and august, to disallow our rye (a sore loser, he). Refused this, he threatened with false authority (though his family has investments in the establishment, his dandy-like disposition had put off staff and client alike) to install his own bar men, appletini-ers all, who might only serve that drink to the exclusion of outside preference. The thing soon swelled grossly and more level heads adjourned, in the hopes Jim and his fruity preferences would drink elsewhere the next night and that his successor to that stool might prove more gallant, not averse to a nickel rye if offered in good, if unfashionable, company.