THE BON VIVANT COCKTAILS, OUR MAN-ABOUT-TOWN DISCOVERS, ARE NOT JUST FOR THE RICH, OR EVEN THE PRETEND RICH by Michael White
I
20
didn’t pull up a stool to a proper bar—by which I mean one whose stock-in-trade is cocktails, and whose staff is formally schooled in the art of same— until my early 30s. A variety of reasons contributed to this delayed milestone, including having been raised in a nearteetotal household, in a small city whose population overwhelmingly prefers beer, coupled with early teenage drinking experiences (usually at a suburban house party or in some miserable pitch-black field) of the sort that seem contrived to ensure one never wants to drink again.
initiated my awareness of how class distinction would play a role in my professional life.
But mostly, it was because I spent my 20s dirt poor. Food and rent were much higher priorities than what I perceived to be the rarefied luxury of a Negroni or a Boulevardier or, God forbid, a basic gin martini.
Having always been cripplingly selfconscious, my awakening to this dynamic was immediate and, figuratively if not literally, sobering. Consequently, I found myself repeatedly cultivating a rapport with the other person in the room I recognized as being of similar socioeconomic stock: the bartender. Partly because I have limitless admiration for what they do, but also because I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that we would get each other.
So, when the sudden onset of an abovethe-poverty-threshold salary led to me requesting my first Manhattan (I’d heard they were good), the result was revelatory—and not only because I learned in that moment that Manhattans are, in fact, very good. I’d also unwittingly
Journalists who write about lifestyle and entertainment, as I do, eventually come to realize that they are, essentially, interlopers—at best, politely tolerated gatecrashers. Our profession grants us access to people and environments that otherwise would be closed to us. We’re tidied-up working stiffs dispatched to report from the playgrounds of the rich and beautiful.
J-S (Jean-Sebastien) Dupuis chuckles when I tell him this. The product of a
