JdBLetter Vol. 32 - Celebration/Admonition
Jim Meehan’s latest, The Bartender’s Pantry, is the perfect mix of celebration and admonition
I’m going to start this newsletter with a detour into one of the best shows airing currently: Industry. For those of you that don’t know, Industry feels like the lovechild of Billions and Gossip Girl with a side helping of Skins. It follows the lives of young finance professionals in London and is vaguely futuristic and hugely entertaining and the music supervisor, Nathan Micay, has great taste.
I could go on and on about this show and about how a key character from season two is played by the main character from Cher’s Believe music video but where this connects to my erstwhile boss and forever mentor Jim Meehan’s latest book The Bartender’s Pantry is the running theme of season three that posits that ESG as an investment strategy is basically bullshit. I don’t want to get into too many spoilers for this season but running through the episodes is a tension between characters who think that ESG investing is ultimately good business (ie. it will maximize return for their clients) and others who think it’s a useless fad and the only goal of investing is to make as much money as you possibly can as quickly as you can.
The Bartender’s Pantry, written by Jim Meehan with Emma Janzen featuring design work by Bart Sasso, is certainly one of the best cocktail books of 2024. Even without reading it, the strength of Jim’s first two, The PDT Cocktail Book and Meehan’s Manual, (plus the strength of Emma’s CV) would make labeling any this work excellent a foregone conclusion. The book is structured around the many ancillary ingredients that bartenders have access to in service of their drinkmaking: milk, sugar, tea, and so on.
Each chapter is lovingly devoted to the diverse manifestations of the ingredient and the creative ways that bartenders can leverage them in drinks. (And yes, I do mean bartenders. The book is very much written to the person who spends their professional life behind the bar.) The Bartender’s Pantry sits among—while standing above—the many cocktail books that provide useful information about the many components available to the modern bartender alongside instructions (recipes) for how to use those ingredients to make joy-inducing cocktails, but I was struck by the shadow the book cast over each ingredient it featured.
“There is no ethical consumption in capitalism” has become a quippy social media slogan used to critique the exploitative and extractive eco-political system in which we all must survive. Although the phrase is a blunt instrument, it perfectly describes the subtext of The Bartender’s Pantry. Take, for instance, the chapter on sugar. In it, we learn about sugar as a culinary ingredient and then are brought along to consider sugar as a not only a product of colonialism, slavery, economic imperialism but also a key factor in our widening obesity crisis.
I interviewed Jim for a recent episode of my podcast, Drink What You Want, and we spoke at length about his new book and how—at least as far as he and I are concerned—the era of guzzling artisanal Daiquiris is over. Instead of trying to make drinks cheaper (or healthier) so we can continue at the same pace, we should instead be focusing on quality instead of quantity. One drink, regardless of the harmfulness of its ingredients to one’s health or its environmental impact, is most likely better than four drinks made with ingredients that purport an elevated virtue. (But also, hey, alcohol is probably really bad for you! But you probably already knew this!)
I am reminded of an incident many years ago where it was discovered that a certain rum producer used sugar cane that was harvested by people who experienced elevated levels of dehydration-related kidney disease. A prominent bartender took to the internet to register his displeasure with the brand and posted a photo of dozens of bottles of the rum poured out in his bar’s sink. I shared this news with a colleague and she connected me with her sister who worked with an NGO that supported Nicaraguan sugar cane farmers and she shared with me something startling. The farmers in question were being diagnosed with this kidney disease BECAUSE they are relatively better off than other sugar cane farmers. They had access to medical care that was able to diagnose the disease therefore “raising” the levels of the disease found in this population. The disease was also exacerbated by cigarette smoking, which was a sign that these farmers had enough disposable income to spend on cigarettes. The performative action of dumping gallons of rum (that was already paid for) was good to raise awareness of the issue but was likely pointed at the wrong target. And my stance on destroying a consumable product that you’re already paid for in the name of virtue is that it is silly and if anything a betrayal of the work already performed. [And for this newsletter I did some digging and found some updates to this story—we should definitely be pressuring sugar cane producers to improve working conditions.]
When it comes to the supply chain, the story is always much more complicated than it first appears and trying to consume your way out of a consumption crisis is inherently self-defeating. Plastic recycling, carbon credits, “better for you” alcohol, even the idea of an individual “carbon footprint” are at worst literal gambits run by fossil fuel producers to throw us off their scent and at best are marginal improvements that do little to disrupt the underlying systems that are causing so much harm.
The only way out of this mess is to consume less, and The Bartender’s Pantry is a blueprint for how to do that. Like the characters on Industry who think they can invest their way out of a climate crisis while still taking private jets, the answer is to opt out of as much harm as we can. We need to be aware of the harms that our consumption causes and with that recognition, make better choices. Under our current economic system the only goal of publicly traded companies is to maximize shareholder value, and the way most companies do this is by selling a product for the highest possible price while reducing the costs associated with making that product. Environmental damage, poverty, and declining public health are negative externalities that offload the costs onto those a) not responsible and b) not as able to adapt.
It is paralytically overwhelming to consider one’s personal role overhauling our economic and political systems in order to reduce inequality and give humanity a chance to survive the climate crisis. And one of the more insidious aspects of neoliberalism is how it individualizes our problems and downplays the importance of collective impact. For instance, asking New Yorkers to turn off their ACs during peak times when Times Square is blazing and empty office buildings are lit 24-7.
But!
I do think there are things we can do. My suggestion would be to get involved in local and state politics and work to get socialists, or at least candidates that prioritize collective action towards climate justice, elected. I know that individually reducing our consumption will not save the planet while billionaires casually crisscross the globe in private jets. But when it comes to consumption—particularly a substance as harmful as alcohol—the macro choice to consume less also has an extremely local effect on our bodies in the form of improved health (and probably also finances).
The message of The Bartender’s Pantry is quality, not quantity. We should always keep in mind the true impact of our actions, however distantly they may be felt. Recognizing and honoring the work that went in to creating the things that promote joy in our lives can deepen our pleasure and enhance our health. It might seem helpless, but we have to start somewhere.
Ok so what else is going on…
-Youngmi’s memoir is coming out in November and you should a) preorder it and b) buy a ticket to one of the many events she has scheduled. The one in New York on November 14th I will be interviewing her and also making drinks for the afterparty! The Q&A is free, RSVP HERE.
And I started writing for Fast Company and my first piece was about liquor giant Brown-Forman walking back their DEI commitments and also pulling out of HRC’s Corporate Equity Index. Read it HERE.
I also interview Dave Arnold about his new bar, Bar Contra. Check it out HERE. Also for Punch I have a piece about the very obscure and puzzlingly named Bonsai Margarita. Read it HERE.
Catch up on my various podcasts, Drink What You Want and Giving Up.
And lastly, thank you to everyone who left reviews for Drink What You Want! It really means a lot.
And I have watched this roughly 5,000 times since it came out last week.
Now here’s a picture of my cats
JdBLetter Vol. 29 - Sometimes Your Grandfather is Wrong
Some JdB backstory before we begin: I am a grandchild of Prof. Wm. Theodore de Bary, one of the leading—western—scholars of East Asia. His obituary is an accurate depiction of his life and I will not summarize it here, except to say that he was a key figure in the Columbia student uprising of 1968.
The second bit of backstory is that I, like my father, cousins, and aunts, attended Columbia for my undergraduate education from 2001 to 2005. (I moved in about a week before, 9/11, fun fact). Growing up, my attendance at Columbia felt almost inevitable, some of my earliest memories are of being dragged to a football game or some kind of event on campus. My grandfather was an imposing presence in my family and much about him was revered to the point of being mythological. How he came to study East Asia (he was in the navy during WWII), his deep knowledge and affection for Confucius, his passion for preserving the college’s core curriculum, and his role in the 1968 student uprisings, were all pseudo-legends among my large extended family.
me and my grandfather at my college graduation in 2005
Growing up, I don’t recall much specifics spoken with regards to my grandfather’s role in the 1968 uprising, but what I gathered was that he, as a young faculty member, was instrumental in maintaining order when students occupied buildings on campus and disrupted classes before being violently ejected by the NYPD. Our conversations were vague enough that I even thought for a while that my grandfather literally ran the school for a while when in fact he simply was the leader of the faculty group that mediated relations between the student protestors and the administration. The student protestors were never spoken about in a favorable light, we never really engaged with the substance of their demands; our conversations always felt like we were discussing some ne’er-do-wells who just wanted to cause a ruckus.
The truth of the 1968 protests is more complicated and more interesting than what I learned via half-heard and not-well-remembered family conversations. In the spring of 1968, after learning of Columbia’s involvement with a Department of Defense weapons research think tank as well as the university’s plan to build a private gym inside of Morningside Heights, a group of students known as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) joined forces with the Student Afro Society (SAS) in a series of protests. After the administration attempted to quell the protests, the group occupied Hamilton Hall, the site of the college’s administrative offices as well as where many classes are held.
The SAS was opposed to the university gym because it was racially segregated. Columbia’s campus is at the top of the park, which is a huge slope down from Morningside Heights to Harlem. The school planned to have an entrance for students at the top of the building and an entrance at the bottom for members of the predominantly black neighborhood, who would have minimal access to the gym. It was colloquially referred to as “Gym Crow.” Meanwhile the SDS’s goalsincluded not only cancellation of the gym but also had a broader goal of ending the university’s involvement with the military—they had been successful in ending some ROTC activities on campus prior to the 1968 protests. At some point during the occupation, the SDS, which was mostly white students, was asked to leave by the SAS, which was of course made up of Black students.
In an interview recorded shortly after the student occupation, my grandfather spoke disparagingly about the SDS. Implicit in his statement is that he views the SDS as merely a force for disruption and intimidation of the administration. He speaks dismissively about the SDS’s “general aim of creating a socialist society” and does not directly address the legitimacy (or morality of) the SDS and SAS’s goals of demilitarizing the campus and ending a racist construction process. At one point the interviewer asks my grandfather if he believes that Columbia was the target of outside forces hoping disrupt life on Ivy League campuses.
WAIT WHY DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
Oh, because it’s a xerox copy of what happened this week on Columbia’s campus in 2024—56 years to the literal day. Of course, certain key details are different: there is no construction project to oppose and the university’s investment in Israel isn’t quite the same as its involvement in Department of Defense think tanks and on-campus military recruiting. But there is an eerie similarity to the demands of the students today and the demands of the students in 1968. There were no encampments in 1968 but the occupation of Hamilton Hall in both instances was preceded by campus protests met with increasing opposition from the university administration.
On Tuesday night, the Columbia administration invited the NYPD to enter campus to end the occupation, and the images are startlingly similar. (Although it does not appear that an officer “accidentally” shot their gun inside of a school building 1968 like they did Tuesday night.)
In 2008, on the 40th anniversary of the uprising, my grandfather, writing for Columbia Magazine, laid out who he thought were the “real heroes” of 1968: those who opposed the SDS/SAS and the faculty who worked to restore order. He even goes to far as to say that the protests violated the university population’s constitutional right to free assembly. He denounces the SDS/SAS’s tactics and yet makes no mention of the underlying goals of the movement: to end the Vietnam War and stop construction of a racist building (yes, buildings can be racist—“structural racism” includes physical structures).
But the protests disrupted classes, so they’re the real bad guys. Okay.
My grandfather was a towering academic and I owe a great deal to him. He has been right about a lot of things but he was wrong about this. Protests aren’t supposed to be “civil.” They’re not supposed to center the comfort of those who thrive within and work to maintain the status quo. The ironic thing about my grandfather’s prioritization of civility above moral convictions is that he participated in the East Asian theater of WWII, which was generally regarded as one of the most violent and life-ending wars in human history. He was an intelligence officer, but still, he was in the navy all the same.
The funny thing about the protests in 1968? They got what they wanted. The gym was cancelled, the ROTC was kicked off campus and the university withdrew from the DoD think tank. If they were so wrong and misguided, why did this happen?
Since 1968 Columbia has a long history of divestment from morally reprehensible endeavors And I acknowledge the irony of Columbia retroactively lionizing the 1968 student protestors while violently cracking down on students doing the same thing today.
Yes, I believe that what the Israeli government is doing to Gaza is morally reprehensible and completely unjustified. I believe that what the Israeli government has been doing for decades is morally reprehensible and without justification. I believe that the west sees Israel as a proxy for—and outpost of—imperial white supremacist hegemony in the middle east and this is a belief I have held for a long time. I want to be clear that I am not talking about Jewish people or even the Israeli population at large. If anything these actions makes them less safe. (And for the record I feel pretty much the same way about the United States—it is textbook evil empire and I live within and am a product of the deep imperial core—and yet I do not hate all Americans and I only hate myself for unrelated personal reasons.)
I do not believe that the central animating force of these student protests is antisemitism. Of course in any mass movement you will find a wide collection of people and I’m sure many people who oppose the Israeli government’s genocidal rampages against Palestinians hold viewpoints I find objectionable. That’s fine. A movement to end American involvement in Israeli apartheid requires that we only agree on that one issue. I consider myself a part of a different cohort of people who oppose our country’s fascination with terrorizing trans people. I recruit a different cohort of people to improve the quality of life for workers in the restaurant industry. This is how mass movements work.
Also, I do not think that the students today are simply caught up in some trendy fad. Do you know how hard it is to get people to do things? It takes a lot of motivation for someone to disrupt their own life and live in a tent. I think that seeing the ongoing massacre of tens of thousands of people in Palestine and American institutions’ support of it is a pretty valid thing to be life-alteringly furious about.
The student protestors at Columbia were right in 1968 as they were in 1985, 2006, 2008, and 2024. And the administration was wrong in 1968 and they are wrong in 2024.
Protest is the last resort of the unheard.
me when i realise I’m a product of the imperial core
JdBLetter Vol. 25 - Solstice Sling
Hello! Welcome back to my newsletter where until the end of the year I’ll actually be featuring content that is relevant to my professional background—drinks!
Earlier in the year I developed four large format holiday drinks for a client and we didn’t end up using them, so I am repurposing that work here because I think the drinks are really good and you should make them for your friends and tell me what you think.
But first! A few little tidbits:
Saved by the Bellini was featured in some year-end round-ups, namely Forbes’s Holiday Gift Guide and Epicurious’s Best Cookbooks of 2023. And two recipes from SBTB were also featured in Epicurious’s 64 Recipes from the Best Cookbooks of 2023.
I try to avoid amaz*n whenever possible but, Saved by the Bellini is like, 60% off right now.
I hope you’re enjoying Giving Up. Episode 8 dropped this week and we’re going to put out two more episodes before we take a mid-season break and come back in 2024 with maybe the exact same shtick as the first half of the season or maybe we’ll make some changes! What do you think?? I can guarantee the volume levels will be normal from now on. (also i fixed the earlier episodes if you want to go back and listen again without having to adjust your volume every 39 seconds lol) Subscribe on Apple or Spotify and leave us a review!
Speaking of podcasts, the Recipe Club Season 3 Finale came out now and you definitely want to listen!!!
OK drink time!
Solstice Sling
I recently had the chance to visit a perfume development lab and explore with the chemists there the similarities between developing iconic fragrances and creating delicious drinks. During my time there, one of the chemists explained to me the concept of “accords,” clusters of two or more individual scents that are then combined to form the overall fragrance—similar to how musical chords work to create songs. Naturally, I find this an extremely useful framework for thinking about drinks. Many cocktails are based around tried-and-true combinations of flavors: such as rum and lime, rye and sweet vermouth, gin and cucumber, to name a few.
One of my favorite cocktails is the Singapore Sling, which contains a host of ingredients including gin, lime, Bénédictine liqueur, and notably for the purposes of this drink here, one of my favorite flavor pairings: the combination of rich Cherry Heering and fresh pineapple juice. When coming up with an autumnal large format drinks I started with this combination, and then linked it to Scotch whisky by way of the Blood and Sand, another cocktail that features Cherry Heering. The keystone ingredient here is the sorrel, an aromatically complex infusion of hibiscus, clove, ginger, and cinnamon that is a staple of Caribbean holiday beverages. Most sorrel recipes call for some kind of sweetening agent, but in this case, I leave it out so that the pineapple and Cherry Heering can provide the sweetness. Any leftover sorrel I like to splash with a little honey and soda water for a nice harvest-inflected pick-me-up.
A final note on the salt here: it won’t make your drink noticeably salty, but it acts as a counterbalance to some of the bitterness from the spices in the sorrel.
Serves 6-8 people
12 ounces sparkling water, chilled
12 ounces sorrel, see recipe below
9 ounces mildly smoky blended Scotch whisky, I used Compass Box Glasgow Blend
9 ounces fresh pineapple juice
4 1/2 ounces Cherry Heering liqueur
Large pinch of salt
Combine all ingredients in a festive punch bowl with 3-4 large ice cubes and stir to combine and chill. To serve, ladle into individual glasses of your choosing.
For Sorrel
Yields about two cups
3 cups filtered water
2 cups dried hibiscus (sorrel) flowers
1/2 lb. ginger, washed and roughly chopped
1 tbsp whole cloves
1 long stick cinnamon, broken into small pieces
Combine all ingredients in a small pot and bring to just steaming over medium heat. Cover and reduce heat, and let steep for 30 minutes. Remove heat and leave covered until completely cool. Transfer entire mixture to an airtight container and let steep in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours. Strain and use immediately or transfer to a clean container where it will keep in the refrigerator for two weeks or in the freezer for three months.
JdBLetter Vol. 24 - Maple Reviver
Okay friends! Here it is, the first of four large-format drinks as promised.
But first! My friends Alex and Youngmi and I started a podcast about what it’s like to be an aging millennial and it’s funny and insightful and mildly informative and I think you should listen to it. Subscribe on Apple or Spotify.
Non-alcoholic cocktails are tough. Alcohol is a great base for flavor and has a tingly, vibrant texture—not to mention people tend to enjoy the way that alcohol makes them feel. There’s also a diverse and huge selection of spirits to choose from that are not only delicious, but also reliable as ingredients, ie. if you pick up a random bottle of rum, chances are it will serve well in cocktails that call for rum.
This is all to say that when it comes time to put together an alcohol-free drink that is as interesting, complex, crave-able, as a traditional Daiquiri or Old Fashioned, there are some hurdles to overcome. When crafting these types of drinks, my first thought is to create a drink that’s densely packed with flavor, with every ingredient pulling its weight. There’s also been a very welcome trend in the past few years of an increased interest in bottled non-alcoholic potions like spirit substitutes (whiskey, gin, etc.) and other liquids that use bases like verjus, the juice of unripe wine grapes, to recreate the look and feel of things like wine and vermouth. Unexpected combinations also help to up-regulate the sophistication of non-alcoholic drinks, which can slide into “fancy soda” territory all too easily.
These strategies all come together in this autumnal and slightly caffeinated large-format cocktail. Kally is an aforementioned verjus-based drink that features toasted fennel for deep complexity. Adding that to gin, cranberry, maple, and coffee might sound like an unholy combination, but the relative brightness of the cold brew concentrate provides an interesting accompaniment to the fruit flavors while also supplying some bitterness, depth, and richness. And at this point (late 2023) there is enough consistency across non-alcoholic gin brands that you can use your favorite here, but if you don’t have one, I used Monday. (You can also use traditional gin!)
Maple Reviver
Serves 8-10
1 750mL bottle Kally Berry Fennel
8 ounces non-alcoholic gin
6 ounces cold brew coffee concentrate (I make my own, but you can buy it)
6 ounces Cheeky Cocktails cranberry syrup
2 ounces dark maple syrup
Garnish: dried cranberries and rosemary springs
Combine all ingredients in a pitcher and stir to combine. Add ice to pitcher if desired. Serve by pouring into ice-filled tall water or Collins glasses. Garnish with four dried cranberries on a pick and a rosemary sprig, and serve with a reusable straw.
JdBLetter Vol. 23 - Light and Fluffy
My last newsletter prompted more than a handful of you to reach out in genuine concern for my wellbeing and I realized that I maybe laid it on a little bit too thick. Yes I am filled with a constant feeling of existential worthlessness and a paralyzing fear of frailty and death, but isn’t that just how everyone feels all the time??
So this time I thought I’d lighten things up a bit this time lol
BUT FIRST. Promo: If somehow any of you have escaped my onslaught of posts about this, I am doing one final “stop” on my Saved by the Bellini book tour. It’s next Wednesday October 11th in Brooklyn and it is a FREE drag show by the legendary and iconic and gorgeous drag collective, Switch n’ Play. The event is generously sponsored by Chambord and if you haven’t seen a Switch n’ Play show, they are literally life-altering experiences and you owe it to yourself to make it to this show, since it’s free, and we’ll be serving drinks from Saved by the Bellini and I will have signed copies and it will just be generally awesome and life-affirming.
And now I want to talk about music.
Anyone upon whom I have inflicted my tastes in music knows that one of my favorite forms of music is vaguely (extremely) fagotty disco synth pop made by women. Tove Lo, Madonna, Robyn, Björk, Slayyyter, Kylie, Carly RaeJepsen, Goldfrapp, Ava Max, Jessie Ware, Mel 4Ever…inject it into my veins.
But there is one such artist who does not get nearly as much play as she so obviously (to me) deserves: bisexual megababe Bonnie McKee.
I first heard her track “American Girl” during a Monét X Change show at the Laurie Beechman theater a few years ago and was like WHAT IS THIS SHIMMERING SORCERY?? If you’ve ever seen a show at this place, there is literally zero cell phone service so I actually had to write down what lyrics I could understand in my notes app and then google the lyrics later in order to find out who this was.
Bonnie McKee’s most visible work was what she did for Katy Perry. She wrote some of Katy’s biggest hits: California Girls, Teenage Dream, Roar, and a few others. She’s also done work for other artists like Kesha and Britney. The coolest thing about this is that she actually ended up working for Katy Perry after meeting her while waiting to sell her clothes at a vintage place in LA. They were both starving artists, and mutual fans, and yada yada yada, joint slayage. I just love how that story illustrates how much of what we define as “success” is reliant on happenstance and being in the right place at the right time (and having the capacity to take advantage of those chance encounters).
Her latest single is Hot City and the video is pretty great. It’s actually a song she wrote about ten years ago but it was stuck in legal limbo so she re-recorded them so she could own the masters.
Turns out she’s also been sober for the past ELEVEN YEARS and she once vandalized a music exec’s car in an attempt to get out of her record contract. These are all fun facts contained in this great interview with her that popped up randomly on my Youtube and I actually watched the whole thing beginning to end. She mostly self-funds her work, which is really impressive, plus she’s amazing at Tiktok.
So there it is. See you Wednesday.
JdBLetter Vol. 22 - Warning: this newsletter contains words
The frailties of old age creep in like cold air from an open window. At first it’s barely perceptible, then you feel it around your exposed ankles until it flushes through your lower arms and into your chest with alarming suddenness. Before you know it, you’re left shivering, only in the case of the window you can close it, with age, there is only one direction this can go.
This is all to say that I’ve been feeling particularly fragile these days. I got sick—like for real, have-to-sleep-all-day-for-three-days-fever-chills-and-eventually-a-bacterial-lung-infection sick. I had to cancel work, I had to cancel mine and Youngmi’s trivia night (NEW DATE! September 22nd). It was the first time I’d been really sick in years, maybe even a decade. (Ok last year I had covid and monkeypox in fairly quick succession but the Covid I barely experienced symptoms (thanks Paxlovid!) and with the Monkeypox I could still go about my life, it’s just that it felt like someone was trying to shove a morning star up my ass 24/7, a sensation that was only made bearable by a few dozen Percocet.)
I know it’s trite to be like, “I’m 40 and now my life is over and my body is a desiccated husk of what it once was,” but here we are, at least for now. This feeling is dovetailing with something I’ve been thinking a lot about since I read adrienne marie brown’s excellent Pleasure Activism: the ways in which I engage with healing in my life.
I had originally purchased a copy of Emergent Strategy, an earlier work of hers, but it languished on my nightstand next to the biography of the Stolichnaya family that I 100% swear to god will definitely read eventually. I’m not sure exactly what moved me to request Pleasure Activism from the NYPL, but when I picked it up, I could not put it down until I was finished—I actually stopped to re-read huge portions of it, which is not something I regularly do.
The book is a series of essays, mostly written by brown, along with a few transcripts of conversations that feature the performative exuberance of a great podcast. The general thrust of the work is—and I am simplifying greatly here—that our bodies are hardwired to experience pleasure,and that the experience and promotion of pleasure should be a central motivating goal in social justice movements.
Throughout the book, brown connects pleasure to healing in a very natural and obvious way. Healing enables our ability to experience pleasure and pleasure can be deeply healing. Pleasure Activism urges the reader to think about how they can find, support, create and participate in communities of care, which I think is neat!
The book affected me in a lot of ways, and I urge anyone reading this to pick up a copy. (It’s one of those rare books like Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun or The Collected Novels of Charles Wright, that made me want to buy 20 copies just to have and give out.) First, it made me totally rethink the novel that I have been threatening to write for years now that I’ve written about 10,000 words of worldbuilding but no actual narrative (LOL).
Second, and more relevantly to this newsletter, it made me think about what ways the activities in my life intersect with healing. (I cringe to think how much not-healing I was responsible for during my time as a very effective bartender…) My grandfather, who was for the most part very grumpy and disinterested in my presence always made a toast every holiday to “people in need of healing” which I always thought was nice and I’m now thinking about how the work I do promotes healing in others especially since most of the work I do these days is helping people find more delicious ways to ingest a harmful substance. (Drinking alcohol, like every activity in life, involves some risk, and for the most part, people are able to engage with it safely. And that’s that on that.)
All this is to say that my acute feelings of physical frailty (age) are combining with a bit of an existential crisis in terms of what I “do.” Am I just going to be over here writing my silly little articles about drinks and occasionally trolling the trolls on social media for the rest of my life? By the age of 40 most people who’ve “done it” have done what they’ve done, and I’m over here feeling like I’m just getting started, but also that it’s already over?
I do wholeheartedly believe that experiencing joy in the form of deliciousness IS healing, so the work I do creating recipes and teaching people how to better enjoy things does fit into this desire, but it’s not enough. What’s bigger and more impactful on people’s lives? (Am I even talented enough to do anything bigger?) Is it creating art? teaching yoga? running for office? becoming a therapist? These are all actual things I’ve considered doing at various points and to various degrees of seriousness lol.
TL; DR: I feel death creeping in, and what am I supposed to do with my time to make the world a better place, and am I even capable of doing it?
Ok if you’ve made it through whatever that was, thank you. Now onto some updates:
September 22nd: Y2K Trivia Night with Youngmi Mayer at Parkside Lounge. Doors at 6:30, show at 7. Reply to this to RSVP!
October 11th: I’m putting on a 90s-themed DRAG SHOW with Switch N Play that’s basically just an excuse to have another book party and serve people Chambord cocktails
November 6th: Save the date for RWCF’s first fundraiser in NYC in over two years. More details to come!
Aside from an article I did for Full Pour that’s not out online yet don’t really have a lot of writing in the pipeline, but the Watermelon episode of Recipe Club was perhaps one of my favorite episodes of the show and easily my favorite recipe I’ve ever had to make for the show—it dethroned Lomo Saltado…
What else? Been reading a fair amount these days and really enjoyed Children of Time/Children of Ruin/Children of Memory, which is kind of a fusion of Three Body Problem and Semiosis and is probably one of the coolest explorations of what non-human consciousness and the societies built upon them would be like if any existed. Also loved Babel, which is a vaguely steampunk alternative-history 1830s Oxford England with a little bit of magic and a very hit-you-over-the-head allegory for colonialism and imperialism. Currently reading the Matthew Perry memoir because it’s always nice to hear about people who are bigger hot messes than I am.
Until next time!
JdBLetter Vol. 21 - Season 7 episode 25, All Good Things…
If you somehow escaped seeing it, I wrote an article for Eater that came out last week about the demise of Proteau, my short-lived non-alcoholic drink brand. I had been wanting to write a kind of “tell-all” for a while now and was grateful for my friends at Eater for giving me the space to write this. It ended up being more of a musing on the how the idea of failure shows up in people’s lives than a salacious expose of how predatory the team representing my investor was and how much money I was forced to spend unnecessarily on things like getting trademark clearance from an obscure Portuguese wine producer named “Protos” just on the off chance they would send us a cease and desist. Read it HERE.
And this brings me to another thing that’s ending: my Tip These Queens series for Thrillist. Since the end of 2020, I have been interviewing gender-expansive nightlife performers (ie. drag, cabaret, musicians) and in total I have published 23(!) interviews, some with some very big names like Peppermint, Alaska, Jinkx Monsoon, and Nicky Doll.
For those of you who are not steeped in The Media, Thrillist was acquired by Vox at the end of 2021 (laying off a little more than 3% of that workforce in the process) and then Vox laid off 7% of its workforce earlier this year. (I wonder if executive compensation was reduced by 7%, but I doubt it!) Amidst all of this, Thrillist was taken from a general lifestyle/drinks/travel site to strictly travel. We tried to make it work by incorporating more local content in my interviews and making each one about the place where the subject currently lived, and I am really grateful to my editors for their effort. Ultimately that was not sustainable and a few weeks ago I got an email from my editor that they would no longer be able to publish the series.
So what now?
I have been trying to identify another outlet that might be interested in an ongoing series profiling performers like the ones I have been following for the past two-plus years. Drag and other gender-expansive performers are a huge cultural asset and don’t get nearly the amount of media coverage and just plain documentation of their existence as (I think) they deserve, although Maddy Morphosis is doing an amazing job of it, so are Meatball and Big Dipper. So if you know of anyone who’d want to pick up this series, please let me know.
Barring that, I’m thinking about starting my own substack where I would continue to interview performers and also publish a weekly calendar of drag/cabaret/etc. events. I would also want to publish the “director’s cut” of many of my past Thrillist interviews because my word count was only about 1000 words and in many cases the transcripts of the interviews are over twice that, so there is a lot of good stuff out there that’s never seen the light of day. Would you want to read those?
Also, all episodes of my Saved by the Bellini podcast are out now!
JdBLetter Vol. 20 - I Really Should Do These More Often
Hi!
Hope you all have been well. My last newsletter was pretty epic and I cannot promise you another one on that same level.
So, here is a run-of-the-mill work update newsletter. Groundbreaking!!
The big news is that I started my own podcast. Well, miniseries at least. The kind people at Heritage Radio Network generously allowed me to record a seven episode series that’s a behind-the-scenes look at Saved by the Bellini.
It’s called… Saved by the Bellini: The Podcast and I interview people who were involved in the book in some way: whether it’s my editor, various bar icons, or even people more obliquely related to the book like Brian Raftery, who wrote a book about 1999 being the best film year ever that’s one of my all-time favorite books.
Speaking of podcasts. Recipe Club is in full swing and you can get caught up here.
And if you somehow missed the Bon Appetit article(s) that made everyone mad. The Yoo-Hoo and Absinthe one is here, and the Gatorade and Chartreuse one is here. I also wrote about the Naked & Famous, one of my favorite Aperol cocktails.
My interview series for Thrillist has survived the Vox layoffs in a slightly different format but it continues nonetheless. I most recently interviewed Sherry Vine and she was amazing and iconic.
I also wrote about Queer-owned drink brands for Food Network.
What else! My friend Kiki Aranita featured Saved by the Bellini in her piece about 90s nostalgia sweeping the food world. And I went back on the TASTE podcast.
And now here’s a picture of our cat Tetris.
JdBLetter Vol. 19 - Bary-Barry Millenaire
One of the first casualties of the Covid pandemic for me was my 2020 family reunion. I’m a part of a large and well-organized family known as the Bary-Barry Family (Famille Bary-Barry if you’re nasty) and 2020 was to be our thousand-year reunion. We are able to trace our common lineage back to someone named Odon (or Othon, or Odo) Bary who was born in the town of Bary in 1020. Every three years since the early 1980s, my family has gathered in a meaningful location for a 4-day reunion that is one part party, one part group vacation and one part history lesson. There have been about a dozen reunions so far and, thanks in large part to my parents, I have been to most of them.
The last pre-Covid reunion was in Oudshourn South Africa, hosted by my South African relatives, which far outnumber any other nationality in our family. Our reunions are like the Olympics, where a certain contingent of the family elects to “host” the following reunion each time. At the end of the 2016 reunion it was decided that we would break our every-three-year tradition and hold off until May 2020 so that we could have a true millennial reunion in the Belgian town that carries our namesake, Barry.
Barry Belgium is no longer a legal entity. It is now a neighborhood of the French Belgian city of Tournai, which is known for a haphazard Roman/Gothic cathedral and a massive quarry. In the years leading up to the reunion, the relative who volunteered to host the reunion, Basile, had been diligently communicating with us about the various plans and costs of the reunion. Michael and I had booked our flights (JFK->Brussels) and hotels well in advance and eagerly awaited our first international trip since 2016.
Well, obviously that didn’t happen. We instead spent a good amount of time communicating with Delta and our hotels to get refunds (everyone was very nice about it) and the family decided that we would hold off until 2021, and then 2022, and then, ultimately 2023. When it came time to re-book everything, our whims had shifted so we decided to bookend the Belgium trip with a few days in Amsterdam, a city I had never been to but Michael had dated an Amsterdamer (is that what they’re called??) so he had a bit of familiarity with the city and since we’d need to take a train to Ghent regardless, it seemed like a better option than Brussels, which looks nice but honestly a bit boring (sorry, it’s just what people tell me.)
The flight was a red eye but we arrived in Amsterdam pretty bright and bushy tailed, all things considered. The train from Schipol to downtown Amsterdam is amazing and puts the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Rube Goldberg of an “Air Train” to absolute shame. We had a few hours to kill before our room was ready so we dropped our bags and wandered around. Those of you know me even just a little will not be surprised at all to hear that my first stop was a pharmacy to buy so much European skincare that the cashier asked me “do you want ALL of this?” (The Dutch are very direct). My second stop was a head shop to buy psylocibin “truffles,” which are legal through some loophole which is too arcane to go into here.
We thought it would be nice to microdose and take a canal cruise, so once we got back to our hotel I looked up the dosage on the shrooms I bought and decided to take a little more than half of what the literature claimed was a “mild” amount. Well, reader, it was not mild. I took about half of what I had portioned out before the open-eyed visuals kicked in and I was legitimately tripping. I told Michael to stop eating and headed out for an uneasy walk to the canal cruise. By the time I sat down on the boat I was honestly fine and it made for a wonderful little cruise experience, even though I definitely was not planning on tripping on mushrooms (semi) by accident on my first day of my first international vacation in seven years.
Oh well.
semi-on shrooms and fully on a canal
The rest of our time in Amsterdam was spent thrift store clothes shopping (It’s amazing there), eating my first official Lomo Saltado, and having dinner with Michael’s ex and his (very fuckable) husband.
The train to Ghent took about 3 hours from Amsterdam and it might as well been a different planet. In Amsterdam everyone was tall, chic-ly dressed, 99.98% white and everyone spoke English everywhere, also the food was pretty mid, except for the Lomo Saltado, which was fantastic.
In Ghent everyone spoke Flemish and literally zero signs had English or French or German or any other language from a neighboring country, there was a bit more diversity of people (it’s still Europe though) and the food was markedly better. We got a little lost on the tram from the train station to the hotel because Flemish is kinda close to German and I took three years of German in high school and hoped for the best.
The first event of the reunion was a welcome reception on Thursday night at a theater in downtown Ghent that also apparently does cocktail parties. This was the first time seeing a lot of my relatives in seven if not ten-plus years so it was really special. During the night, one of my relatives, Eric, who organized the 2010 reunion in Versailles where we got to tour Madame Du Barry’s private apartment, came up to me and….let’s say strongly suggested that I should host the next reunion in New York City in 2026. More on that later.
The rhythm of every reunion I’ve ever been to has been that the Thursday night event is pretty light and then there is a full day Friday, and Saturday is the Big Day, which has been interpreted various ways over the decades. Friday morning’s activity was a gentle boat tour of Ghent conducted by a guy who looked like the child of Lee Pace and John Lennon.
The boat tour was followed by a lunch at a brewery where Michael and I had an extensive conversation with one of my French cousins who is a self-employed massage therapist about worker solidarity in the context of the strikes happening in France over the retirement age. I think we hold up France as this worker rights utopia (which it is) but it is not without issues; it seems that a lot of the protections for workers do not extend to freelancers and small business owners. There does not seem to be this fetish for individualism that we have here that values entrepreneurship since a lot of worker protections do not extend to the self-employed. America is still very bad though.
Another thing that I picked up on is that the nobiliary particle, (ie. when you see a “de” or “von” etc. before someone’s surname) is sort of seen as a bad thing in France and kids are actually bullied for it, which makes sense considering their history. My cousin noticed it when she took her husband’s name after marriage and noticed a change in the tenor of certain interactions.
Fun fact about Ghent is that coffee shops open at 9 am, which is insane to me. One morning I went down to the front desk of our hotel at around 6:45 and asked where I could get coffee and they seemed legitimately stumped—as if no one had ever asked this question before. I had to beg the staff of the restaurant to brew me a pot of coffee and it turns out that the restaurant is a pretty legit cocktail bar by night and they had a copy of Brad Parson’s AMARO, in which I have one picture and two recipes and while the coffee was brewing I pulled up the page with my picture and said “hey this is me” which is something I never do but I thought it would be nice to know that the person making the coffee was helping out a fellow hospitality worker. I also tipped her ten euros so relax.
Another fun fact about Belgium and Holland is that cash is basically illegal. I pulled out 100 euros at the beginning of the trip for like tips or whatever and I legitimately struggled to use it. I have never seen so many “No cash” signs in my life. Complete opposite of here where you can get a 4.9873% discount if you use cash lol.
Back to the reunion. The big day was Saturday and we all piled into a tour bus to drive to Barry, Belgium. There were about 80 of us this time which is actually a pretty low turnout for one of these reunions. I’ve been to ones in South Africa that have had hundreds.
Barry is no longer a legal entity and has been absorbed by Tournai. Tournai is also in the French-speaking part of Belgium and it’s basically France. I didn’t see a lick of Flemish anywhere. Wild. We were met by the Deputy Mayor of Tournai (the actual Mayor was pulled away on urgent Tournai-related business, apparently.) and they unveiled a plaque commemorating the thousand-year anniversary of the family that looked like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This was the second time the family had “officially” visited Barry, the first time was in 1983 and the man who organized that reunion, who I don’t think was actually related to us, presented some materials from that reunion including photos (my parents were there) and related correspondence. There was also a photo of the 1986 reunion which was in Bayeux—my first.
Oh, there were also news crews there and I was interviewed twice but I don’t think I made it to any actual broadcast. We then toured an elementary school where we were confronted with what looked like months of work on the part of these kids (their teachers) to present a history of the town. Odon Barry was born in the town and was one of William the Conqueror’s knights during the invasion of Wales and was actually given a castle, Manorbier,where we toured during our 2001 reunion that my dad planned (it was a great reunion) . The town was also under Nazi occupation and the liberation of the town and release of POWs in 1944 is celebrated on September 3.
I will never get over the fact that I can trace my family history back a thousand years. Since I grew up going to these reunions it just seemed totally normal to me. And, well, it’s very not normal. I don’t know anyone else who’s family comes even close. We have a coat of arms and a family slogan (“Boutez en Avant” which means push ahead in French.)
I can’t find it now but there is a full family tree where I can go from me, all the way back to Odon, which is insane and the most aristocratic shit I can imagine.
The final night of the reunion is the “gala” which is technically black tie but there is no way in hell I was schlepping a fucking tux to Belgium to wear for 5 hours. So, we did our own thing and one of my French cousins lamented that it must be nice to not have to worry about what your parents though about how you dressed and, yeah when you’re 40 it’s fairly easy to disregard any parental disapproval, of which I don’t think there is any for me.
This is what is known as “Belgian Black Tie”
During the gala I sat next to one of my German cousins, who I’m actually fairly closely related to; we are both members of the Second Bavarian Branch of the family. My great grandfather was Wilhelm von Bary and he was kicked out of Germany by the Kaiser and changed the nobiliary particle from “von” to “de.” There are French branches, Argentine branches (they left Germany long before WWII just for the record) and the South African branch which is actually made of up thousands of Barrys who were descendant from a bunch of siblings who came down from England in the 1800s. There is also a very cool British Barry, James Barry, who performed the first C-Section in South Africa and we would probably call him a trans man today. Happy Pride!)
In many respects, the most important event of each reunion is the Family Council where the location of the next reunion is decided—like the Olympics. Because my French cousin Eric pitched me as the host for the 2026 reunion in NYC, this was my first official council meeting, and I had a vote. The discussion centered around bringing new people ie. the younger generation into the fold. When NYC was brought up as the location of the next reunion, there were some concerns about affordability but those were quieted by the appeal of NYC as a way to bring in more people due to its status as a global metropolis. Plus, there are tons of family members in the States that have not really been able to go to reunions, which except for one in DeBary, Florida (yes) have all been in far flung locations like Germany, Argentina, France, and South Africa. So NYC won the vote and I (along with Michael and a few other helpful American cousins) will be planning the next reunion in May of 2026. If you know any fun things that 100+ people can do together in NYC, please send recommendations my way.
Wow, congratulations to all four of you for reading until the end. Thank you!
Here’s some stuff I did since my last newsletter:
I’m a Bartender and Yes, I Use Gatorade in Cocktails
A Pizza-Flavored Cocktail? Hear Me Out
'Drag Is Freedom': Texas-Born NYC Drag Queen Julie J on Fighting Anti-Trans Hate in the South
Recipe Club Season 3: BBQ Sauce
And if you’re planning to go to Bar Convent Brooklyn this year, I have a 25% off discount code because I’m on the education committee and I’ll be there all day on the 13th! Say Hi!
And also if you’re a spirits brand (or non-alc, CBD, THC, etc.) I am a judge on the LA Spirits awards the deadline to enter is Monday. Do it!!!!
JdBLetter Vol. 18 - It’s OUT
If by some unlikely algorithmic happenstance you missed it, my second cocktail book, Saved by the Bellini & other ‘90s-Inspired Cocktails, came out this week. I must say that this release date was orders of magnitude more auspicious than my last, which was June 2, 2020, (ie. “Blackout Tuesday,” (ie. an absurd festival of performative allyship and moral grandstanding).
Anyway, the book launch went off without a hitch and I even had a cute launch party on Monday night. Really grateful to those who showed up! I felt very famous that night and this was in no small part due to the fact that I casually handed a copy of my book to Este Haim on my way out of dinner at Kiki’s afterwards. Alana Haim also introduced herself to me which, like, yeah, I know who you are lol. (For those of you not aware of Haim, Now I’m In It is one of my favorite songs/videos of the last five years—although I can’t really seem to figure out where the video lands in terms of its take on problematic alcohol consumption.)
I’m working on a few more events to support the book that are all like, 92% confirmed so for now I’ll just issue some save the dates:
NYC – May 25
NYC – June 12
LA – June 29
Washington DC – July 15
I was also on a bunch of podcasts to (mostly) talk about the book: Bartender at Large, VinePair’s Cocktail College, Cooking Issues and TASTE (although I’m not sure when that episode is going up).
And if you want to check out some recipes, Epicurious posted the recipes for Flannel Factor and Barbie Girl, and my past three Food52 videos have been Saved by the Bellini-related:
And lastly! I’ve partnered with Cheeky Cocktails on producing a limited-edition syrup, Ultragrenadine. It’s one of the fancy syrups I call for in my book, and it’s a little bit of a project, so if you’d rather not fire up your stove and track down some saffron, Cheeky’s got you covered! Plus, you can use it in any classic cocktail recipe that calls for regular grenadine.
JdBLetter Vol. 17 - They Can’t All Be Bangers
I was updating my website this morning and realized that I haven’t yet put out a newsletter in all of 2023, so this is my effort to remedy that. I have a longer and perhaps more interesting newsletter in the works that details my time working at the CCRB in the context of their report on the 2020 protests, but I have not had the wherewithal to actually write it (or read the full report if I’m being totally honest). Rather than let that writer’s block block me from writing anything, here’s a perfunctory newsletter where I share some recent work:
I have two new pieces for Food Network. One on some of my favorite rums, and another on some of my favorite non-alc rum substitutes. The opening paragraphs to the latter ended up as more of a manifesto for the validity of non-alc spirits—a counterpoint to this rather grouchypants article by the guy that invented Bailey’s.
I’ve also come out with two drink videos for Food52 so far this year. One is a non-alc Radler riff and another is for the Dark Phoenix, the first in a series of recipes pulled straight out of Saved by the Bellini, which you should pre-order now if you haven’t already.
I interviewed Jinkx! Fucking! Monsoon!—in person, no less! And she was a dream and a doll and we reminisced about the time we kissed on the mouth at the Laurie Beechman Theater in 2013 lol.
In other news, I was quoted in Jaya Saxena’s brilliant piece about Four Loko.
And I’m also doing more consulting! Also in Brooklyn! This time it’s for the dreamy Eric See and his new location for the acclaimed New Mexican spot, Ursula. Having a chaotic and unpredictable professional life can be taxing at times but when you have to research hyperspecific New Mexico slang for work, it’s all worth it. You gotta watch this video about “Shit Burqueños Say” and part 2.
What else? I was on the Taste podcast in early January and loved how the conversation turned out. And another January convo I loved was with Julia Bainbridge all about the awkward nuances of Dry January.
JdBLetter Vol. 16 - Time is meaningless but useful
Here we are, the end of the year. I wish I had some trenchant missive to share with you all as we conclude this year’s activities and move on to the next’s, but I don’t, really!
I do think it’s kind of hilarious that in a year where I published over 30 written pieces, 12 cocktail videos, 11 episodes of Recipe Club, judged a spirits competition, shut down a drinks company, and wrote a whole-ass book, I still feel like kind of a slacker. I think there is a really fine line between holding yourself accountable to the type of person you want to be and indulging in unhelpful negative self-talk.
In addition to doing whatever it is I consider work I also spent a lot of time on Youtube watching music videos, particularly those from Utada Hikaru’s new album, so do yourself a favor and check them out.
Michael and I also said goodbye to our cat Felix, and hello to two new cats, Freda and Tetris. We found them via the Brooklyn Cat Cafe and I would highly recommend them to anyone who’s looking to adopt a cat.
I’m not even going to bother with my predictions for next year, as pretty much every year for as long as I can remember has rolled out in completely unexpected ways. When I was growing up, my mom clipped out this New Yorker cartoon to put on a bulletin board in our kitchen, and I think about it all the time. In a subconscious way this has informed many of my life choices:
I don’t know if in the 90s, when I looked at this comic, I would have ever imagined that mildly-retired bartender/writer/video guy/male lipstick advocate/temporary entrepreneur would be the job I ended up with. So, I’m not going to predict much about next year.
I will say though that 2023 will take me to at least one restaurant, Cafe Mars, where I’m working with the chefs Paul and Jorge on the cocktail program and the vibe is stylish, unhinged minimalism that those of you familiar with my personality and aesthetic will most certainly recognize. And they are definitely hiring!
Beyond that, I might have two or three other restaurant consulting clients in the pipeline, which is cool! I probably won’t ever return to active bartending again (old) but calling the shots from the sidelines is something I’m definitely comfortable with now that I’m 40.
And burying the lede here somewhat but my next book, Saved By The Bellini, comes out on April 25th. If somehow you are one of the 309 people who are subscribed to this newsletter but have not pre-ordered the book, please fix that as soon as you are able. Pre orders are a great way for buyers at smaller book stores to see what books to buy, so the bigger numbers at the main online retailers signal more confidence that the book will sell when it comes out, plus you GET the book when it comes out. I’m not making predictions but I do anticipate the rollout will be quite different from Drink What You Want, which came out on June 2, 2020…
That’s all I got for now! Recently many of you have asked about my skincare routine, so instead of writing it out over and over, I recorded a video: here is a very rudimentary skincare video where I detail my AM routine. PM routine will come out some time before the end of 2023 lol.
Happy New Year!
JdBLetter Vol. 15 - Void is the Precondition for Creation
So, I quit Twitter. I think for good this time! Of course, the cricket bat that broke the camel’s back was the completed acquisition by Apartheid Clyde aka Phoney Stark aka Elon “Proud Transphobe” Musk, but the process of emotionally disconnecting from this one particular social media platform was a long time coming.
To be honest, I probably spent about three hours per day (at least) on twitter, which is a lot. I knew that there were far better uses of my time than endlessly scrolling a firehouse of outrage and firing off half-baked missives out to the ether, but I did it anyway, which I’m pretty sure meets the clinical criteria for addiction. To mitigate the negative impacts on my social media addiction I used various tools like app blockers and even unplugging my wifi router. (It’s how I wrote my first book—in 20-minute, wifi-less chunks.) But last week I signed out and deleted the app.
I also recently read three books that really underscored how my quality of life could be better without the constant interruptions, anger, fear, shame and envy that comes from chronic social media use. The first was Hungry, by Eve Turow-Paul, then The Shame Machine, by Cathy O’Neil, and then Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari.
Hungry is a fascinating, deeply-sourced book that explores with the intersection of food culture, social media, mental health (isolation and loneliness particularly), and our disconnection from meaningful work. Another interesting aspect of the book is that it came out right at the beginning of the pandemic so it feels like it was written a century ago, even though it describes a world that is almost identical to ours is, ie. 2019. And if anything, the pandemic accelerated everything that she describes in the book, so it’s oddly prescient.
The Shame Machine is a relatively quick read that lays out the idea that social media (and by extension capitalism) thrive on shame and how many platforms are literally designed to maximize our shame, so that we spend more. And by spend, I mean literally spend money on products (weight loss, skincare, clothing) or spend time on the platforms, which in turn generates revenue for the platform.
Finally, and my clear favorite of the three is Stolen Focus, which is delightfully readable and strikes an amazing balance of personal narrative (he goes to Provincetown and lives without the internet for three months and instead reads books and checks out hot guys) and top-shelf journalism that finds him crisscrossing the globe to deeply probe the idea that our lack of attention is actually a public health crisis in the same vein as smoking, obesity, and structural oppression, and that our decimated attention spans are not an inevitable consequence of modernization and there are real ways to push back. It’s gloom-and-doom but also robustly optimistic and motivating.
So, yeah, twitter was (on balance) bad for me so I stopped. I think the main reason is that by continuing to spend time on the site and provide product (ie content to sell to advertisers) to the platform, I would be complicit in whatever oppressive bullshit the new owner has planned, and I’d rather not be a part of that. I will miss it. I do grieve for the moments where I can fire off a quick question and get an answer, or post something deranged and have it go semi-viral. I will also miss keeping up to date with people who I enjoy hearing from.
I have gotten work from my twitter posts, but I wonder—as I did in my very first newsletter—if I took the total time spent on twitter and instead spent it on developing pitches, writing recipes, and networking individually, I would find more success than via the casino of social media.
That said, I am loving all the pieces that are coming out about what a jackass musk is, like, this one, this one, and this one.
For now, you can find me on Tumblr (they’re allowing nudity again), Instagram, and Mastadon (which I am trying out but not sold 100% on yet.)
And who knows, maybe we’ll nationalize twitter and I can come back. But in the meantime there is a twitter-shaped void in my life that I hope I can create my way out of.
Speaking of creating, my creation, Proteau, is going away at the end of the year. If you want to read all about why, please click here. And a purchase is super helpful as the company still has bills to pay!
And speaking of buying things, my next book, Saved By The Bellini is officially available for pre order! It will be released on April 25, 2023 and presale numbers are a great way to signal to my publisher that there is excitement for the book. And everyone should be excited because the book is very good…if I do say so myself.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like. (And remember that every image is a link, so please click on all of them.)
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 14 - Performative Vulnerability
Well look who it is
When I went to go write this I thought it had been like six months since my last missive but it was really only May 27th that I last decided to inflict your inboxes with something like this, which isn’t bad. (The reality is always somehow never as bad as the anxiety fantasy John.)
Those of you who follow me on Instagram (thank you) and look at my stories (thank you) might have noticed that on Monday I got a LOT of comments on a video from people whose entire mindsets seemed to have been shaped by misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.
People just could not deal with a man wearing lipstick PINK lipstick and felt the need to say something about it instead of just going about their day of, I don’t know making their children’s lives miserable or crying while masturbating or whatever the hell these loser people do all day when they’re not needlessly commenting on things on the internet that have no bearing on their lives but rustle their jimmies nonetheless.
Some of the comments were pretty bad! I won’t repeat them but I’m pretty sure if you’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes you’ve seen something similar.
The thing is though, if I had to be honest, I kind of loved it.
For some reason this kind of stuff does not bother me in the slightest. It’s perhaps the Scorpio in me but my overwhelming reaction is pity. Like how silently sad and chronically painful must it be to live in a mind like that? Meanwhile, someone asked me about the “horrendous” carbon footprint of a fucking pineapple in one of my videos and it sent me into an emotional spiral that I am still working my way out of. (My current sanity-maintaining hypothesis is that it was a joke…)
So I screenshotted the comment section and posted it to my stories and away we went. I could have ignored it, but I honestly couldn’t afford not to capitalize on the outrage. Our current internet is fueled by quick ever-escalating hits of arousal, and nothing is more arousing that disgust, anger, humour, righteous indignation, and coming to other people’s defense. Pretty soon the comment section was flooded with friends (and total strangers) saying really nice things about me! Meanwhile the views on the video skyrocketed (275k+) and since Monday I picked up about 500 new followers: my follower count increased by over 10% in half a week.
This is what I’m talking about when I say I kinda loved it.
A lot of the really bad comments got taken down (I reported a few) and by Tuesday the video was plastered with people calling themselves “JdB stans” and other supportive comments about my lipstick (Chanel), and t-shirt (Gildan, Legos, and hot glue). I also got a bunch of DMs from queer people thanking me. This is the one that struck me the most:
I hope you take a little bit of pride seeing the gender line loosen around expression in the younger gen knowing how much work you’ve put into clearing space by just being you. I can’t imagine the weight of being in the public eye while being tru to yourself.
Not to be too grandiose but this concept of clearing space is really important to me. I look the way I look partly because I really don’t know how to look any other way, but also because it’s fun for me to stick my neck out. By any reasonable account I won the DNA/Zip Code lottery so if me looking like a huge genderfuck faggot on the internet (and on the street) makes it easier for someone else, then there is almost a moral imperative to push as far as I can. And to the people who commented that I only look like this for the attention…yes, but also I pretty much look exactly the same way in real life as I do in these videos—I pretty much just roll up to the studio in my street clothes lmfao.
Which brings me to possibly one of the best pieces of writing I’ve read in a really long time: this Defector piece by Kelsey McKinney about Sydney Sweeney. I have been in the bag for her since her eerily innocent performance in season 2 or whatever of Handmaid’s Tale. She is by all accounts one of the hottest (in all dimensions) actresses in Hollywood right now but even she is crushing under the weight of our economic framework wherein the top 1% are swindling the rest of us out of 99% of the surplus value of our labor. This means that unlike already-absurdly wealthy stars like Maya Hawke and Dakota Johnson (who I both adore) she can’t afford not to be online and posting ads multiple times per week.
Every so often you see some story about some celebrity “quitting” social media as if it is some moral choice when really they’re doing it because they can. Syndey Sweeney HAS to post sponcon on her insta because she does not have generational wealth to fall back on, nor does she get paid the same as the studio executives whose entire livelihoods depend on her labor. She can’t “quit” Instagram because it’s how she makes her money and who knows how long her current run will last. She’s a freelancer—just like me and I’m sure like many of you reading this. We have to say yes to everything because you never know if tomorrow will bring an awesome opportunity or crickets from your current clients. And regrettably, social media following is inextricably linked to opportunities for people whose professional profiles rely on visibility.
So I’m lucky that I happen to “kind of love it” when I get a lot of negative attention from people on the internet showing themselves to be miserable small souls, because can’t afford not to.
I just updated the fuck out of my website, so if you want to check out all my recent writing, and recent media, the pages are screamingly up to date. Also go watch all my youtube videos and leave a nice comment.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 13 - So There’s This Newsletter…
There are most likely few things more tiresome than someone using their newsletter to berate themselves for not writing enough newsletters, but I will just say quickly that I had a suspicion that my late-2021 habit of publishing weekly newsletters was just a passing mania, and I was mostly right.
Turns out it’s a lot of work to push out a newsletter every week??? And in the beginning last Fall, I felt like doing one once per week. That was sustainable until it wasn’t, and here we are.
The benefit of not doing one of these for nine weeks is that there is no shortage of things to talk about.
I think probably the most exciting one is that I got a recipe published in the June/July issue of Bon Appetit. It’s a spiced mango-peach ginger shrub-slash-syrup. It was a pretty ambitious concept (for me, at least) and I wanted to create something that was kind of a hassle, but could be sandbagged and used over time across a few different applications.
A fun BTS fact here is that I had to significantly retool this recipe after cross-testing This was initially somewhat ego-bruising but the result was actually so much better than I could have produced alone. The crux of it was my equipment: I had a sieve that was able to strain to a certain fine-ness that was hard to replicate outside of the confines of my own kitchen, and the syrup did not integrate well with other ingredients. (A needed reminder that instructions need to be replicable and accessible.) To fix this we applied heat to the fruit before blending. (Also I hilariously developed this recipe in March using the least-flavorful fresh peaches you could possibly imagine.)
I’m really heat-averse when it comes to making syrups. Mostly from a flavor perspective but also I am impatient and undisciplined (my last newsletter was April 8) and I don’t like waiting for things to heat up and also be vulnerable to overcooking and ruining a batch of whatever it is I’m making. This is why I am a staunch blender advocate. However turning this into a stovetop situation was an improvement in every way: flavor, texture, prep time—it did wonders to extract every last milligram of flavor out of my lifeless winter peaches.
Go read it. Make the syrup and tell me what drinks you make with it because I really wanted this to be a universal donor that would hold up against a lot of different ideas.
I went on my friend Youngmi’s Hairy Butthole (lol) to talk about my mother’s death and how poorly I dealt with it. Listen HERE.
And on a lighter note, I was a guest on In Yo Mouth, where I spoke to the host Michael Muñoz about being gay and working in hospitality and I gave a (perhaps unnecessarily) exasperated answer when asked what “pride” meant to me. Whoops! Listen HERE.
My latest for Food52 is all about a large-format El Diablo and I got castigated in the comments on youtube not for wearing lipstick but for being rough with carbonated ingredients. And… they have a point. I was pouring and stirring with a bit of dramatic flair for the camera, but it’s always been my understanding that you pour heavy/thick ingredients INTO the bubbly ones because it lessens contact with the dissolved solids that bring the CO2 out of suspension. This is why you drop the sugar cube in the champagne for a champagne cocktail instead of pouring the Champagne onto the sugar cube. I could be wrong.
And here’s where I talk about bisexual dirtbag queen, Tove Lo, who is an absurdly amazing Swedish (of course) artist who has been serving consistent jams for like a decade. I first heard a remix of Stay High and actually watched the video for the first time just now and it tows this fine that she always does where it’s a mix of ragey, wild druggy sadness that I love about her.
Watch Hey You Got Drugs, Bitches, Are You Gonna Tell Him, I Really Don’t Like u (ft. Kylie Minogue) and then No One Dies From Love—in that order.
And then check out this video from her and Years & Years where she serves cvnty Padmé Amidala realness.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 12 - Remember me?
Remember this?? (Remember US???)
The last time I did one of these it was January 28th.
So much has happened since then and now it feels like an entire decade has elapsed: our 16-year-old cat Felix died, I wrote an entire cocktail book, we got TWO NEW CATS, our balcony pigeons had two squabs. And yet despite this massive passage of time, season 14 of drag still has three more episodes until the finale. (Although I’m not complaining, I think this season has one of the strongest overall casts of the franchise.)
This is Tetris
Kinda hard to make out but this is a picture of the two baby pigeons on our balcony.
And speaking of seasons, another thing that’s happened since late January is we started recording Recipe Club SEASON TWO. Structurally, it’s a bit different from last season where we just picked recipes from the ether, unbeknownst to their authors. This time around we are asking for submissions, which we will then run through during each show. Basically: send us your recipes, and each episode we’ll choose one, make it, and talk about it.
Which recipes should I send, you ask? Well you have to listen to the draft episode HERE to find out which ingredients we’re going with this season. And you can send your submissions to thefixer@majordomomedia.com and hope for the best. Also you should join the Discord server HERE; most of the recipe club action happens in the #recipe-clubhouse channel.
(As an aside, I have to say that I’m still a little iffy on the idea of being on a Spotify-funded podcast given that they platform anti-vax anti-trans podcasters like J*e R*gan, but I realize how little me refusing to participate would move the needle, and the only person who it would harm is myself.)
Writing a book super fast definitely exhausted me, but I still had a few pieces come out in the past few weeks. The one that I’m most happy about is this interview I did with musician Michete. When I first started doing interviews for Thrillist, I started by focusing on drag queens who were also bartenders, which I found a bit limiting for a monthly series, so we expanded to the focus to include Queer/LGBTQIA+ performers in general.
have been a follower of Michete for a couple years now and was actually super nervous to interview her as the first non-explictly “Drag” performer of the series. Well, she ended up being really nice and funny! And sadly due to word count limits, some of our conversation had to be left out, but you can read the results HERE.
Also, please check out my latest videos for Food52! My March installment is all about the iconic Penicillin cocktail (plus some glimpses into my recipe development for the upcoming book).
April’s is a super breezy lavender situation that also has a little bonus videowhere I show you how to make an origami lilly which is a great substitute for an edible orchid when you want to garnish a drink with a flower.
Let’s close out with some music videos? I think I’ve alluded to Rina Sawayama before but I recently re-fell in love with her thanks to Brazillian Drag artist Pablo Vittar’s Follow Me video.
For those of you who need a refresher on Rina Sawayama, check out her incredible anti-consumerist anthem XS, which also gave us one of the best recorded live performances of a song I’ve come across in a long time.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 11 - Mental Clutter Is My Passion
Mental Clutter Is My Passion
I don’t think I’m that unique in this, but my mind is like a clown car. Most likely it is a feature of undiagnosed/untreated ADHD but I also just accept that it’s just The Way I Am (I got up to water plants twice while I was writing this sentence.) I’m also one of those people that gets regularly asked “how” I sleep because I have so much going on at any given time. (Quite well, actually, I did CBT-I in 2019 and it changed my life.)
I enjoy solitude. I am never alone with my thoughts and I often notice them having lively conversations, which keeps me perpetually entertained. The two semi-conflicting thoughts that are having the most audible discussion right now are between Mallory O’Meara’s excellent Girly Drinks, and my latest piece for Thrillist: “What’s It Like Being a Sober Bartender?” (Which is itself a riff on another piece I wrote wayyyy back in 2018 for Liquor.com: “Sober Bartenders Say They Feel Great. But Does Not Drinking Hurt Their Business?”)
I’ve written a bit on the absurdity of gender and cocktails, so I was excited to pick up O’Meara’s book, and after an excruciating waitlist at the NYPL, I got it in my hands a few weeks ago and I’m about a third of the way through. (There is a joke here about a guy reading 97 pages of a 380 page book and feeling qualified to write about it in a newsletter, but I divest).
One of the main points of the book—aside from how enthusiastically women have been written out of the history of alcohol—is that the policing of women’s production and enjoyment of alcohol is yet another example of patriarchal control over women’s minds and bodies. The book sees drunkenness (or public/liberated enjoyment of alcohol) as an extension of bodily autonomy. Drinking is a feminist act. This I agree with one hundred percent. As someone who believes in abolition, decarceration, and full bodily rights to all, I love how O’Meara uses the control of alcohol as a vector into understanding how society uses systems of oppression to consolidate (hoard) power. I’ve also scanned the index and she does get to queer people towards the back third of the book. This is quite possibly one of the best drinks books I’ve read in a really long time. Not only is it fascinating, it’s also kind of hilarious. Eg. “See, one of the things you have to understand about drinking during the medieval era was that everything was gross.”
But as someone who has experienced varying levels of alcohol use disorder at various times in my life, I couldn’t help but wonder, what if the opposite was true? What if consumption of alcohol (particularly during the horrors of late stage capitalism) be more of an endorsement of an oppressive system than a bucking of it? When I spoke to the bartenders for my Thrillist piece, I noticed that all of them faced some level of systemic oppression, be it due to gender, race, or sexuality, and being sober felt somewhat like an added layer. People drink to fit in, and in the bar world drinking is a great way to get ahead: late nights with brand reps and owners, drinking shots bought by regulars. Not drinking while working in bars is HARD, but it almost feels like a way to opt out of a capitalist system that causes a great deal of harm to marginalized communities, both in its production and consumption. I Before you say it: I have Quit Like A Woman on my library queue right now.
The cop-out is to say that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, and call it a day, which is what I’m doing because I have to get back to writing my book before my editor kills me in a drone strike.
I will leave you with this picture of me when I was cat-sitting for my friend and I took my shirt off because she has cool mirrors.
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 10 - Saved by the Bellini
‘sletter weather
Two weeks ago I announced my second book, Saved By The Bellini, which, as the name implies, is a pun-based book of cocktails dedicated to 90s pop culture that is just the right amount of gimmicky and credible. (As I said in my first book, life is all about balance.)
In response, a bunch of people sent me messages of congratulation garnished with wonder at how I was able to find the time to write another book. Well, I….haven’t had the time! I just announced the plan to write the book, now I actually have to get writing because it’s due really, really soon. This is in contrast to Drink What You Want where the kernel of the idea emerged in 2016 and the book did not hit shelves until June 2020.
This tight turnaround is mostly thanks to the fact that I am no longer a first-time writer so the process is much more streamlined. Going into DWYW I had mostly no idea what I was going to say about drinks other than that I wanted to say something and it took a LOT of revising to get to the focused message I ended up with. My first draft was 56,000 words and I had to cut over 18,000 to make it publishable. Like, literally the entire thesis of the book did not come until maybe a week before the final draft was due and I was seriously considering scrapping my entire manuscript and starting over.
For SBTB I’m not trying to educate people on the grand unified field theoryof cocktails. I already did that—and quite well if I do say so myself. Now I’m trying to write a book that cravenly appeals to millennial nostalgia for the last “real” decade of human existence (before we got shunted to the simulation) by picking out cute items from the 90s and creating ~modern~ cocktails that connect to them in some way. Eg. an alcohol-free cocktail based on my fourth grade love of En Vogue called Free Your Mind. See, this book writes itself!
Another bonus to this book writing cycle is that I’m working with the same editor. When I was meeting with various publishers for DWYW, there was a theme of feedback that the overall tone of the proposal was “too much” and that I kind of needed to tone down the “voice” and let my expertise speak for itself. Amanda was the only one who said the opposite. She is a significant reason for DWYW being so sassy and snappy and I expect nothing less this time around.
And it’s too soon to say who’s doing them, but the illustrations are going to be out of control. And a third of the recipes will be zero-proof/non-alc.
The best way to stay up to date with all my writing progress is by not unsubscribing to this newsletter. (I had my first unsub last week and I might need to start therapy again to deal with the emotional fallout.)
This is fun…
I was just made aware that a piece I wrote for the Food Network on Bourbon is (as of 11am today) the number one trending story on Apple News. I am always cautious of wading into “spirits expert” territory because spirits nerds are extremely persnickety but so far I have not been dragged by r/Bourbon so that’s some comfort.
I’ve actually be quietly cranking out stories for Food Network for a few months now and you can check them all out HERE.
And speaking of the 90s…
I am now able to reasonably justify all the time I spend on Youtube watching music videos as “book research” and woo boy let me tell you I have been making the most of it.
I was a big Z-100 kid in the 90s and I LOVED Dutch vocalist Amber’s “This Is Your Night” but I had not seen the music video until about 4 days ago and I have watched it 21831 times since then (I am watching it as I write this.)
There is a lot to love about this video: the red suit, the text projected on the dancers, the dancers themselves, but really I can’t get the shot of her in the water out of my head. There is this single-shot shift from full-color to monochrome that I know they did with lighting (there is no way they did it digitally in 1996) that I think is so cool and I would like for someone to explain it to me and also help me recreate it.
(And maybe it’s because of La Bouche and Real McCoy but I always thought Amber was Black??)
And this is from 2010 but Alphabeat’s Hole In My Heart FEELS more 90s than 90s music? What is it about northern Europeans and balls-out pop music that I crave?
And last week someone responded “not enough thirst traps” so I will leave you with this, a ‘sletter exclusive:
Thanks for reading! Please forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 9 - A Bigger Splash
I fucking love rollercoasters. When I was five I chickened out of Space Mountain at Disney World for some reason (indoor coasters have rancid vibes) but aside from that, I have not been able to get enough. I haven’t been to Cedar Point, one of the best coaster parks in the world, but I’ve been on a shit ton of coasters, and I think I’ve been to Six Flags Great Adventure at least 15 times. One summer in college I did so many whippets while also on ecstasy in an unventilated car in the parking lot there that I travelled to another dimension 40,000 years in the future (and past simultaneously) and telepathically communicated with two unknowable consciousnesses for a while and a part of me has remained there ever since (brain damage).
I haven’t been to a coaster park in a while, mostly due to the pandemic, however, I did pick up a fun pandemic-era diversion: roller coaster enthusiast YouTube. Specifically, ElToroRyan. One day in June or July 2020, the algorithm fed me this video on Kingda Ka as part of his “Problematic Roller Coaster” series. And….I was so blown away by the level of technical detail this guy is able to supply. These videos are LONG and they are inexplicably spellbinding. There is this uneasy balance of mundanity and extravagance that I find, well, thrilling.
He gets his namesake from the ride El Toro, one of my favorite coasters. (Which actually had a partial derailment recently???) Riding the ride in 2006 is what made this guy want to be a roller coaster operator and he actually worked on the ride 10 years later, which explains why he’s able to rattle off such arcane terms as “block zones” “airtime hill” “gigacoaster” and “break run” with such fascinating fluency.
Seriously, if you have a day or two to kill, I urge you to check out the videos I’ve linked to. Or watch this one about this badass wooden coaster in Ohio called The Beast, or why they had to redesign this coaster at the last minute so it didn’t make people black out, or watch this and plan a trip with me to Indiana.
Anyway.
Here’s some other stuff that happened this week:
I was on two really great podcasts!
First was April Wachtel’s excellent Movers & Shakers Podcast. April’s full time job is running the cocktail ingredient startup Cheeky Cocktails, but every so often she finds the time to interview people who are doing what they do to change the beverage industry. Even though we’ve been friends for quite a while, I was struck by how thoughtful and generous a listener she was. I’m sure part of it has to do with our pre-existing friendship and closeness, but the amount of homework she did in order to ask the right questions to illicit what would be most meaningful for her listeners was masterful. I definitely picked up a few pointers for my own interviewing technique. Listen HERE.
Next up, I joined Wine Enthusiast editors Emily Saladino and Dylan Garret to wax philosophical about the state of Non-Alc/Zero-Proof drinking and it was a lot of fun just like shooting the shit and trying to get a feel for how zero-proof drinks are gaining acceptance. Listen HERE.
Speaking of interviews... My first Drag interview for Thrillist of 2022 came out and it was with Junior Mintt, a wonderful gem of a person. One of the bittersweet things about these interviews is that I have to leave so much out in order for the interview to make sense. My transcripts are usually 5000-7000 words and I usually get it down to about 1200. I went on and on with her about our shared love of Star Trek and even made semi-serious plans to go to London to watch the premiere of the Voyager documentary. (Junior I’m still down!) But I had to carve out the highlights, which still left for a delightful interview, which you can read HERE.
Also I was in the New York Times, along with some dear friends, Lynnetteand Lauren, featured in a “Mocktail” roundup for the style section. I contributed a recipe from Drink What You Want, along with a photo, so I guess I can say I’m a New York Times published photographer now???
In other news, it’s not because of this piece, but I don’t hate the word “mocktail” any more. I know that some people despise it, but I’m just over the drama. It’s fine.
Not a music video per se, but I came across this performance video of Underworld’s Jumbo and it’s a reaffirmation of them being the best band and this being the best song. This is what my summer 1999 sounded like.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB
JdBLetter Vol. 8 - Survival Is Not Endorsement
Survival within a system does not equate endorsement of that system—nor does it invalidate all critiques of that system.
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2022, which happens to be happening during January, or as many like to now call it “Dry January.” (Although I have seen people refer to it as “Soberuary” and whatever midlevel agency creative came up with that needs to be reassigned—no offense. (ok maybe yes offense.)) Dry January is supposed to be the month where people stop drinking for 31 days in an attempt to atone for the overindulgences of the previous, more festive months. As someone who has enjoyed dry periods of varying duration over the past decade, I can say it’s a noble effort. Drinking alcohol is a risky activity. We like to comfort ourselves by saying that small amounts of alcohol can have heart-health benefits (mostly untrue). Wine has resveratrol! Beer has electrolytes. Okay….sure. Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the USA, not to mention “second-hand drinking” that causes harm like car crashes, interpersonal violence, and property damage.
So yeah, taking four+ weeks off from alcohol? Great idea. I love it. When I stop drinking for long periods of time, pretty much everything in my life gets better: my anxiety baseline plummets, my sleep is of course way better, my sense of smell goes through the roof, and I am at my most creative and unhinged on social media when I am stone, okay-to-operate-heavy-machinery sober. (Like, if I ever go quiet on twitter or Instagram for more than a day or two, something’s up.)
What gets me is this increasingly prevalent marketing idea that we need to consume ourselves out of a problem that we’ve caused by our own overconsumption. It feels like buying something you don’t need at all and justifying why you bought it by saying “it was on sale!” As if 20% off is somehow better than the 100% off you get by not buying something. Or when some consumer product claims to be zero-waste, or carbon neutral/negative or donate a percentage of nebulously-defined “proceeds” to a given charity. Incrementalism is a valid way of accomplishing big goals and there are real benefits to doing things slightly better, but it’s really just marketing. People spend money on things because they believe that the thing will benefit them in some way, and “feeling good” about the purchase is a very powerful—and real—benefit. But is this really just mollifying us against making more challenging changes with more significant impacts?
(This also reminds me of a visit a few years ago to Los Angeles during a drought where many restaurants proudly proclaimed that they were only providing water upon request as a way to conserve water without any seeming awareness that one kilogram of beef costs 15,000 liters of water to produce, or one glass of wine needs 120 liters to produce. But saying you only give tap water to those that ask for it is considerably more obvious and allows you to *feel* like you’re doing something without actually having to make a meaningful change. (And lol everyone asks for water anyway.))
For zero-proof drink makers like myself, Dry January is our Black Friday. In January of 2021 my shopify sales were twice the normal average. This month already sales have been great and I’ve got press inquiries keeping me busy. In order to survive, I need the craven marketing concept known as Dry January.
This all reminds me of the “Mister Gotcha” comic by Matt Bors where some unhelpful douchebag pops out at people who dare to advocate for a slightly better way of doing things. Yes, I need Dry January in order to build a successful business and keep Proteau existing in the world, but at the same time I don’t think the answer is to suffocate our out-of-control desires with added layers of material consumption. Maybe instead we consider what true sobriety might mean and duck dive into the waves of life’s despairs and meaninglessnesses instead of retreating to the comforting shores of hyperconsumption.
That said, I did an awesome Dry January cocktail for Food52 and you should check it out. The video is HERE.
And speaking of zero-proof drinks, Proteau’s equity crowdfunding campaign is accepting reservations so you can be a part of growing the brand. Check out the full deal page HERE.
Additional Dry January Content:
I was on Josh Gandee’s No Proof podcast the other day and it was a great conversation, check it out here:
And if you’re craving additional Dry January tidbits, you should take a look at Wirecutter’s guide from 2021 about the best non-alcoholic drinks on the market, I am quoted as an expert and Ludlow Red and Rivington Spritz are both highlighted. Read it HERE.
Also, if you haven’t checked it out, my dear friend Julia Bainbridge’s Good Drinks is an excellent primer on the current state of non-alcoholic mixology. (Also my book has a cute lil chapter dedicated to non-alc cocktails too.)
In other news, I am completely overtaken by the Weeknd’s new album that came out last Friday. I’ve loved The Weeknd since the beginning but he just keeps getting better and better. To me, it’s perfect pop.
Take My Breath gives me chills still even though I’ve listened to it 500 times and the darkly hilarious irony of a song like this coming out during a respiratory pandemic is….not lost on me. Gasoline is another standout on the album and the video just came out today.
Aside from the music, I love how he does so much modifying of his face for each album’s era. The most obvious referent is Aphex Twin, but part of it also feels very Drag—really stupid in an extremely intelligent and well-executed way.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to forward this to someone you like.
Love,
-JdB