today's speakeasies

The speakeasy of today has little in common with those of the Prohibition era, but the allure of the illicit remains.

Bar? What Bar?
By WILLIAM GRIMES
June 3, 2009

ON a nondescript block in Williamsburg, not far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a new bar and restaurant called Rye opened last week.

Try to find it.

There’s no sign out front. The facade, an artfully casual assemblage of old wooden slats, gives the place a boarded-up, abandoned look. It does have a street number, painted discreetly on a glass panel above the front doors, but that’s it. Like a suspect in a lineup, it seems to shrink back when observed.

There are a lot of bars like this right now. They can be found all over the United States, skulking in the shadows. Obtrusively furtive, they represent one of the strangest exercises in nostalgia ever to grip the public, an infatuation with the good old days of Prohibition.

Their name is legion: the Varnish in Los Angeles; Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco; Speakeasy in Cleveland; the Violet Hour in Chicago; Manifesto in Kansas City, Mo.; Tavern Law in Seattle (scheduled to open later this month). Everywhere, it seems, fancy cocktails are being shaken in murky surroundings.

New York has fallen hard for this fad. Sasha Petraske, the cocktail artist behind Milk & Honey, has just opened Dutch Kills on a bleak commercial strip in Long Island City, Queens. A small sign that says “BAR” is the only tip-off to its existence.

At the Hideout, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, aspiring customers ring the bell at a forbidding-looking garage door and then stand there as a pair of eyes scrutinize them through a 1920s-style peephole.

The ultimate in speakeasy mystification takes place at PDT (Please Don’t Tell) on St. Marks Place in the East Village. Patrons have to enter through Crif Dogs, the hip hot dog place, then step into a phone booth and identify themselves by speaking into the receiver. A buzzer opens a secret door, revealing a strange, twilight world where artisanal cocktails are consumed under the watchful eyes of a stuffed jackelope and raccoon, and a bear wearing a bowler hat.

Whoopee!

“Speakeasy is a funny term, since the business is legal,” said Eric Alperin, a partner and head bartender at the Varnish. “What people are referring to is the allure, almost like an opium den.”

Brian Sheehy, an owner of Bourbon & Branch, agreed. “People have an affection for this period of American history, and they want the mystery,” he said. To enhance the backroom ambience, Bourbon & Branch assigns customers a password, to be spoken into an intercom, when they make a reservation. Once inside the bar, customers are expected to abide by house rules. “Speak easy,” is one of them, enforced by bartenders when necessary.

Password or no password, deluxe or down-low, all these bars have something in common. None of them really resemble an actual speakeasy from the 1920s, although Bourbon & Branch, oddly enough, sits on top of one, reached through a trap door leading to the basement.

A little history, please.

Prohibition, which took effect in January 1920 and finally ended in December 1933, was the worst cocktail era in the history of the United States, for obvious reasons. Half the liquor was homemade or adulterated, forcing the great classic drinks of the early 20th century to exit the stage. In their places appeared cocktails designed to mask poor ingredients, like rye and ginger ale, or the Alexander, a repellent mixture of gin, crème de cacao and cream.

“The basic raw materials then available, and I use the term raw advisedly, made it imperative that they be polished or doctored or decorated,” Frank Shay wrote in a 1934 Esquire article bidding farewell to the Great Experiment. “Also it was essential that their rougher edges be smoothed down in order that they might pass to their true goal without too great distress to the drinker.”

The Alexander merited a place of honor on Esquire’s list of “the pansies,” the worst drinks of the Prohibition era. These included long-forgotten abominations like the Sweetheart, the Fluffy Ruffles, the Pom Pom and the Cream Fizz.

Real cocktails fled the country, along with a lot of professional bartenders, who took up residence at American bars in Havana, London and Paris. In these civilized outposts, the serious work of cocktail invention continued, reflected in books like “The Savoy Cocktail Book,” while Americans made do with “Wet Drinks for Dry People,” subtitled “A Book of Drinks Based on the Ordinary Home Supplies.”

Bad-tasting cocktails were the least of it. Some of the drinks could kill. During the 1926 holiday season in New York, 47 people died after drinking poisoned liquor, bringing that year’s body count to 741.

“This ‘speakeasy’ business must be the most independent and prosperous business in the world, especially in New York, for no other industry in the world could afford to kill its customers off like that,” Will Rogers wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 1928. “They must run an undertaking business on the side.”

Extract of Jamaica ginger, a patent medicine with a high alcohol content, found favor with a certain class of drinker. Unfortunately, “jake,” as it was called, contained a neurotoxin that caused its devotees to lose the use of their hands and feet. All things considered, it required a certain amount of nerve to lift a glass to the lips in the otherwise fabulous Jazz Age.

Not surprisingly, bars like the Violet Hour — unmarked, with a lone bulb outside to indicate, with a faint glow, when drinks are being served inside — do not specialize in Prohibition cocktails, only in a Prohibition vibe. Virtually every new wave speakeasy makes a point of showcasing purist cocktails made with fresh fruit juices, house-infused liquors, recherché bitters and hand-chipped ice. The ethos lies somewhere between 1890 and 1910, the golden age of cocktails.

You get the drift at Rye, where the abbreviated list of signature drinks includes a rye old-fashioned with orange and Angostura bitters and Demerara sugar, and an “improved” tequila cocktail with maraschino, bitters and a dash of absinthe. This is not the sort of cocktail that Americans were drinking in 1925.

Likewise the décor. The rough floorboards, dark wood and stamped-tin ceiling, not to mention the Cinerama-scale mahogany bar, screams 1910. So does the interior at the undeniably impressive Hotel Delano bar, on the other side of Williamsburg, which, like so many of the nouvelle speakeasies, is visually a good old-fashioned pre-Prohibition saloon.

The Raines Law Room, in Chelsea, puts the issue front and center with its name, an allusion to the prohibition that came before Prohibition. The Raines Law, passed by the New York State Legislature in 1896, banned the sale of liquor on Sundays, except at hotels, where guests could be served drinks during meals. Overnight, hundreds of bars put a few beds and chairs in their upstairs rooms, called themselves hotels, and kept a few plates of nominal food at hand to put in front of drinking customers. One of the great artifacts of the Gay 90s was the Raines Law sandwich, a desiccated slice of ham between two slices of stale bread that no customer ever touched. As a pivot point for nostalgia, the Raines Law seems like an odd choice.

Speakeasy time travel, in other words, is vague, the images dreamy. At the Violet Hour, patrons pass through the boarded-up facade to enter a lush interior with saturated colors, heavy fabrics and ornate chandeliers. In the Back Room, on the Lower East Side, the drinks are served in teacups, a pointless exercise in deception. At Speakeasy, in Cleveland, which really does go the extra mile down the nostalgia highway by distilling its own gin, a chandelier over a basement stairwell indicates the way to passers-by on the sidewalk. “When it’s on, the speakeasy is open,” said Sam McNulty, the owner.

The reality of Prohibition was quite otherwise. “A speakeasy could be a table, a bottle and two chairs, or it could be ‘21,’ ” said Daniel Okrent, whose book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” is to be published by Scribner next year. “Most were closer to the lower end. They were dives where you drank bad liquor from a bottle with a counterfeit label and woke up with a headache in the morning.”

In the early years of Prohibition, when agents pursued enforcement with some zeal, patrons needed passcards or passwords, but corruption and inertia took over fairly quickly. In “Manhattan Oases,” Al Hirschfeld’s 1932 cartoon survey of New York speakeasies, a fake cigar store called the Dixie is ridiculed as “one of those quaint, old-fashioned places (circa 1925), which still think it needs a false front.”

Everywhere else, the speaking was anything but easy. In cities like New York, San Francisco, Detroit and New Orleans, the game ended almost before it started, and bars operated with the merest pretense of discretion. “The secret aspect in New York was over by 1928 or 1929,” Mr. Okrent said. “To run a speakeasy you just bribed the local cop. There was not a lot of secrecy.”

It is true, though, that illegal liquor added a certain excitement to nightlife. On this score, Rye and Dutch Kills and the Violet Hour and all the rest have their finger on something genuine. In an age when virtually nothing is hidden or forbidden, the idea of a secret hideaway takes on an undeniable allure.

The flappers of 1920 felt it, too. When mild-mannered Asaph Holliday, the put-upon protagonist of Elmer Davis’s Prohibition satire, “Friends of Mr. Sweeney,” ventures into a series of Manhattan speakeasies by accident, he discovers a world strange to his middle-aged eyes. Night spots that he would have considered nothing special when he was young are now regarded as thrilling. “Mr. Holliday realized at last why a nation tolerated the Volstead Act,” the narrator writes. “It made any place at all that contained liquor look like a wild cafe.”

Make it illegal, and they will come. If the authorities will not oblige, make it feel illegal. Nothing quite hits the spot like a martini in a ceramic mug.

attire for the thinking woman

I hate the trampy-is-trendy look because I think it's ho-rrific.

Working on a college campus means that I get an eyeful of the latest in women's undergarment fashion on a daily basis. I see the color, outline, and (often) the detailing on the thong, panty, or g-string du jour ... I'm a complete stranger and these girls have all of their wares out on display. It makes me very uncomfortable -- not because I'm a prude, but because I wonder if they're even thinking about what it is that they're literally buying into.

I'm also not a fan of the color pink (the infantilization of women -- especially by women -- pisses me off), and I've hated the Victoria's Secret "PINK" line (and Juicy Couture) since, well forever. It's not just that butts are used as billboards by teens and twenty-somethings, it's that PINK is slang for vagina. Say it with me, people: va-gi-na. That just doesn't have the same marketing ring now, does it?

Attire for the thinking woman
Aaryn Belfer
March 1st, 2008

Every time I see a thirteen year old girl clunking through an airport or a mall in Ugg boots and a matching velour tracksuit with the word PINK embroidered across her tender young buttocks in collegiate-style lettering, I can’t help but think there is something distastefully wrong with the message. So, I had a good guffaw-coffee-through-the-nose-hole moment today when I read that the CEO of Victoria’s Secret feels that her company has “gotten off our heritage” (wha…?…the woman needs to look up the definition of the word) by becoming “too sexy.”

The company, according to her, needs a return to their intended ideal of ultra-feminine and I have to agree, since there are a lot of things more feminine than women (of all ages) browsing the aisles of Costco, clad in Victoria’s Secret PUSSY PINK line? When I see that young girl obliviously advertising her vagina across her backside as she boards a Southwest flight to Scottsdale, smacking her bubble gum, holding her In Style magazine and squeezing the oversized teddy bear tucked under her arm, I don’t instantly associate her with ultra-feminine. Of course, it could be that the Uggs cancel out the feminine quota of the tush lettering.

In aiming for the über-femme, I think the CEO should take a more direct approach; a more educational, empowering, PSA sort of angle. I suggest she go straight-up blatant on the consumer with her ass-messages and begin offering a line with choices like LABIA, MONS, PUBIS, VULVA and CLITORIS. Maybe that’s too clinical for some, but I’d wear those pants long before I ever shook my milkshake with a euphemism for my lady bits plastered on it. Because those other words? Those words are ultra-feminine.

ho-rrific

I was talking to Jackie, one of our student employees today. Jackie's cute, fashion-forward, and puts a lot of time into her look.

Unprompted, she mentioned "Sunset Tan," a VH1 reality show that takes place in a tanning salon and exemplifies everything that is wrong with our society. The show's pilot included what Jackie referred to as a "bimbo mom" who took in her 10-year old daughter for a tanning package. The girl kept saying she wanted to look like Lindsay Lohan, and the mom was supporting it. Jackie was outraged by the fact that the mom was "okay with her 10-year old looking like a cracked-out tramp."

I've got to say that I'm with Jackie on this one. Setting aside the whole tanning of a minor (which is ridiculous to me and could be its own blog post), it's a fine line between trendy and trampy. Hopefully, my kids won't feel the need to be — or dress — either way.

fashion: The language of style.
Lolita's Closet: Unbearably trampy back-to-school clothes.
By Emily Yoffe
Posted Friday, Aug. 24, 2007, at 12:32 PM ET

My 11-year-old daughter and I just did her back-to-school shopping. Shopping for a 'tween is a little like being a presidential candidate—you try to find some middle ground in a world of clamorous extremes. I want her clothes to reflect the fact that she's still a girl, but I'm willing to let her hint at the young woman she is about to become. What I don't want her to bring home from the mall are clothes—and there are plenty of them—that inspire this sort of paroxysm: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."

Fortunately, my daughter shares my goals: She wants to look stylish while still sweet, trendy but not trampy. The designers at Limited Too, a shrine to 'tween fashion, and I differ on how to achieve this. The chain, which has about 570 stores in the United States, sells clothes to girls ages 7 to 12. According to a Limited Too spokesman, Robert Atkinson, the company was instrumental in creating the 'tween fashion category 20 years ago. This year, 'tweens of both sexes are expected to account for $13 billion of apparel sales.

Limited Too was awash in shimmer; virtually every item was encrusted with rhinestones or sparkling with glitter. Most of these clothes provided sufficient coverage, but my daughter doesn't like ostentation, so we looked through the T-shirts for something more subdued. There we discovered what I have come to think of as Nitwit Wear. These are T-shirts with slogans such as: "I Left My Brain in My Locker," "I Only Shop on Days that End in Y," and "Spoiled and Proud of It." (At least you only want to shake your head at these. Making you believe in corporal punishment is the Happy Bunny line of clothing, available online and at various department stores, which features phrases such as "Wow you're ugly," and "It's cute how stupid you are.") It's a comfort to know that if your child can't come up with her own insolent remarks, clothing manufacturers are there to help.

Moving through the store, I wondered if insolence was preferable to suggestiveness. I reached my limit at what Limited Too sold to go under their clothing: a line of padded, underwire push-up bras for girls with nothing of their own to pad or push up. Maybe it's a sign of progress. Back when I was a girl, those unsatisfied with the speed of their development were forced to turn to balled-up Kleenex.

Adult fashion trends eventually work their way to the 'tween set. Low-rise jeans have been ubiquitous for so long that they seem to have settled in immovably like a warm air mass in August. My daughter hates them because when you sit down or bend over, they expose your underpants. Women have solved—or compounded—this problem by wearing skimpy, provocative underwear. A few years ago, Abercrombie, the 'tween division of Abercrombie & Fitch, got in trouble for marketing thong underpants—with phrases such as "eye candy" printed on them—to prepubescent girls. Now scanty panties for girls are standard. At Limited Too there were pairs with rhinestone hearts or printed with cheeky sayings such as "Buy It Now! Tell Dad Later!"

Down the corridor was Abercrombie itself, whose guiding fashion principle seemed to be to print or appliqué the word Abercrombie in the largest letters possible on as much of the clothing as possible. Some clothing didn't have enough fabric to support a logo. A pair of shorts was the equivalent of a jeans G-string. Its microskirts would have gotten my daughter sent home from school. We fled. On our way to our next destination, I tried to avert her eyes from the Victoria's Secret window, where their clothing was emblazoned with the words "University of Pink." (I don't want to know that school's most popular major.)

Hypersexualized clothing is not necessarily skimpy. Macy's sells the line by Kimora Lee Simmons, the ex of hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, called Baby Phat. "This is gross," my daughter said, holding up a T-shirt. There was nothing provocative about the cut of the shirt, but embroidered in pink across the chest were the words "Baby Phat" under the large, stylized logo of a cat. My daughter doesn't understand the references this logo is clearly meant to evoke, but she instinctively knew wearing this shirt would be so wrong.

Because department stores have to appeal to many types of consumer, over the years we've had great success with their in-house brands and nondesigner labels, which are usually reasonably priced and decent. At Macy's, my daughter was drawn to the tops in its Greendog line. Like the low-rise jean, the baby doll top has migrated to 'tweens. My daughter found one that was cute but not sexy, made out of blue sweatshirt material ($17) that she immediately layered with a pink, lace-trimmed tank top ($3.50—I'm not kidding). She also picked up two versions of a Greendog deeply scooped tee with a contrasting band of fabric at the neckline ($10 each).

At Lord & Taylor, she found a girlish yet sophisticated gray and black polka-dot empire-waist dress. It was $40 and perfect for a party or piano recital. The store also had that Brigadoon-like item: pants that were high-waisted enough to keep her underwear choices to herself ($30).

Department stores are where you can also find the junior versions of chichi adult labels at chichi prices. Nordstrom in particular was full of these offerings. There is no way I'm buying my daughter a $74 Lilly Pulitzer sweatshirt. Nor am I shelling out for Ralph Lauren—for her or myself. And I'm certainly not buying her anything by Juicy Couture. The single most repulsive item we saw on our expedition was something on the Juicy carousel that looked like a book. It was titled "A Week in the Life of a Juicy Drama Queen." Open it, and you find a set of days-of-the-week underpants for the prepubescent ($58). A close runner-up was the girls' gym bag ($175), which declared "Juicy and Happy." I don't understand what mother wants to advertise her child's sexuality by letting her proclaim she's juicy. If I have to choose between Baby Phat and Juicy Couture, I choose mandatory school uniforms.

Sensitized by such clothing, a mother has to be careful not to overreact. I appreciated the fact that at Old Navy there was nothing come-hither about its clothing—its baby doll tops were sloppy, not sexy. And the prices! T-shirts were two for $10. But when I tried to push some on my daughter, she shook her head. "How can they make a plain T-shirt look bad?" It was at Old Navy that we found the most hideous piece of clothing of our trip: a mud-colored top that recalled the smocks worn by lavatory attendants ($10).

And unless you can actually say to your daughter, "That would be perfect to wear at the club," Talbots Kids, a spinoff of the preppy, sensible women's line, might not be for you. With clothes for infants through 'tweens, it's the place to train your kids in the finer points of WASP style while they're still in training pants (although no miniature martini shakers are available in the accessories department). The store was bright, airy, and empty—the two saleswomen were thrilled to see us. I hoped to find some pants that didn't sit below my daughter's hip bone. Talbots had them, and I showed her a pair in navy blue. My daughter shook her head. "They're like nautical pants. They're so ugly." Then I held up a pair of beige polyester pants that looked reasonable to me.

"Mom, I'm 11!" she said. "I'm not Harriet Miers!"

She (child of Washington that she is) had given me a useful parameter of 'tween fashion. While you don't want your daughter to look like Britney Spears, she doesn't want to look like a failed Supreme Court nominee from the Bush administration. In between those two poles, if you have patience and good arch support, you can find enough nice stuff.

time for a new 'do?

One more reason to admire Cleopatra — she wasn't conventionally attractive, but her entire persona captivated her subjects and admirers:

Her beauty was not in and for itself incomparable, nor such to strike the person who was just looking at her; but her conversation had an irresistible charm; and from the one side her appearance, together with the seduction of her speech, and from the other her character, which pervaded her actions in an inexplicable way when meeting people, was utterly spellbinding. -Plutarch

Frankly, I'm more interested in a woman who didn't rely on her looks to seduce Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. I think it's fascinating that she was clever, irresistibly charming, spoke persuasively, and used her coiffure (in an odd pre-Stalin, but not as calculating, cult of personality manner) to gain credibility and inspire trends. (Of course, the fact that she was the queen of her own empire probably gave her a leg up in the romance department. That she seduced her own brother in order to be the queen makes me a bit itchy.)
Cleopatra Worked Her Power Hair
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
March 17, 2006— Egyptian queen Cleopatra used her hairstyles in calculated ways to enhance her power and fame, according to a book published recently by a Yale art history and classics professor.
Statues, coins and other existing depictions of the queen suggest Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) wore at least three hairstyles, according to Diana Kleiner. The first, a "traveling" do that mimicked the hair of a Macedonian Greek queen, involved sectioning the hair into curls, which were then often pulled away from the face and gathered into a bun at the back.
The next was a coiffure resembling a melon, and the third was the regal Cleopatra in her royal Egyptian headdress, complete with a rearing cobra made of precious metal.
Cleopatra did not invent any of these styles, but she used them to her advantage, Kleiner indicated in her book "Cleopatra and Rome."
"From the time of (Egyptian King) Ptolemy I, the Ptolemaic queens wore the 'melon hairstyle' with its segmented sections resembling a melon or gourd," Kleiner told Discovery News. "When Cleopatra followed suit, she was more traditionalist than trendsetter. These same Ptolemaic queens were also depicted in art with the usual Egyptian wigged headdress that had its origins in Pharaonic times. Cleopatra did as well, so again she followed tradition and did not innovate when it came to hair."
"But," Kleiner added, "Cleopatra appears to have worn different coiffures in different circumstances, playing to her audience, so to speak, in life and in art."
Kleiner explained that when the queen was in her homeland, her likely objective was to look like a traditional Egyptian ruler — since she was in fact Greek — and to legitimize the Ptolemaic dynasty by linking it to the time of the Pharaohs. A group of Egyptian statues recently has been linked to Cleopatra, although the identification cannot be proved since there are no accompanying inscriptions.
"These show her with the customary Egyptian wig and the triple uraeus (rearing cobra)," she said. "This Egyptian coiffure is the one we most often associate with Cleopatra today. Think Elizabeth Taylor!"
The uraeus was associated with a cobra goddess Wadjyt, the sun god Ra and the goddess Hathor, so wearing it signified that the individual had taken on the attributes of a divinity.
Cleopatra also probably often wore the melon hairstyle in Egypt, where she had many slaves to attend to her appearance, including some that were responsible for maintaining the royal wigs.
The Egyptian queen extensively traveled, and did so in style. Not unlike film depictions, Cleopatra would arrive via elegant barge with her attendants catering to her every need.
In Rome, Kleiner believes Cleopatra wore her "Hellenistic traveling coiffure" in places where it would be seen and "gossiped about at cocktail parties." At about the same time, Kleiner notes the melon hairstyle turns up in Roman portraiture, which suggests Roman women admired Cleopatra and attempted to copy her.
Roman leaders Octavian and Antony both seduced the Egyptian queen. Kleiner theorizes that Octavia, Antony's wife, invented a hairstyle called "the nodus" to compete with Cleopatra. The nodus featured a roll over the forehead that Kleiner suggests mimicked Cleopatra's well-known rearing cobra ornament. The nodus was the height of Roman fashion in the 30s B.C., just before Cleopatra's death by suicide at the age of 39.
Karl Galinsky, distinguished professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin, told Discovery News that he agrees Cleopatra wore different looks, including calculated hairstyles.
Galinsky said, "Hairstyles weren't just left to Supercuts; they conveyed a message — Alexander's portraits are a great example — and therefore Cleopatra may well have had different hair days in different countries. Sure, most of the motivation may have been political, but isn't it fun for any woman to engage in such reinventions periodically?"