The world’s in trouble
There’s no communication
An’ everyone can say
What they want to say
It never gets better anyway
So why should I care
‘Bout a bad reputation anyway
--Joan Jett, “Bad Reputation”
There are times to drink, and times not to. If your troubles are suffocating, it’s not a good idea to attempt a bar crawl (bar “hop” is a misnomer) with strangers wielding cameras. If there’s any good to come out of a night of liquored wrecking, it’s that broken things reveal their inner workings. This is the alcoholic’s true “moment of clarity,” when the soft denials we wear like tattoos are washed away by booze, the subtlest of poisons.
Inspired by an infamous bartender bar tour led by Aidan Demarest, Caroline on Crack arranged one for a few Los Angeles cocktail and food bloggers. I was lucky enough to overhear the planning stages of this at a Sporting Life meeting, and finagled an invitation. It was a chance to kick the Examiner's tires and take him for a spin. Aidan was our host, Plymouth Gin, repped by Erick Castro, our sponsor. Additional travelers were: Aaron Tell (The Savory Hunter), E-star LA, Josh Lurie of FoodGPS, Elina Shatkin (LA Weekly), H.C. So (L.A. and O.C. Foodventures), and Lindsay William-Ross (LAist). Others were plucked up and deposited from the venues as well.
First and last stop was the new Spare Room, located on the mezzanine of the Roosevelt Hotel, upstairs from the Library Bar. Its design approximates the private bowling alley in the 1920’s mansion of Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, in There Will Be Blood.
Aidan handed out scorecards for the evening with the mandate to get five drinks at each of the five bars (we’d be seeing the Spare Room twice), write the name of the drink and have the bartender initial the “frame.” The crawl started at 7 p.m., so we were asked to ingest 30 cocktails in seven hours. We had to finish each one, and no sharing. Drink…with extreme prejudice. I did not disobey orders.
The Spare Room’s offerings were:
- A Blogger’s Brew, a.k.a. L.A. Christmas Punch, created by Erick Castro: Plymouth gin, pineapple gum syrup, lemon juice, velvet falernum, bitters, Earl Grey tea, nutmeg and cinnamon
- The Spare Room Snap: Rye whiskey, ginger snap (syrup), nutmeg, lemon
- Evelyn Waugh: Guinness, gin, ginger beer
- Christopher Oaxacan: contained mescal, I know that
The piece de resistance was the cocktail entitled You Drink Our Milkshake: Vodka, coffee liqueur, crème de cacao, cream. Foamy goodness.
All were delightful, though I barely touched the Evelyn Waugh. In about fifteen minutes, I knocked back four full cocktails, each eager to meet the lingering molecules of my cold medicine.
Our ride for the evening was a Starline Trolley that Aidan booked for us. This is one of the open-air vehicles you see toodling tourist gawkers around the Boulevard. Half the trolley is exposed to the elements, half is enclosed. There’s no gate or even a tiny chain at the entrance. Soon our Christmas-colored carriage earned the moniker “Trolley of Death.”
As we departed the Spare Room and headed for stop two, Aidan unpacked a bottle of champagne and with a flourish shot the cork into a Hollywood apartment foyer. He served while standing but without spilling a drop. “I can pour driving the Indy 500,” he said. We flirted with random passerby to come aboard, and dashing darling Naomi Schimek (beverage mistress atFirst & Hope), dressed like Rachael from Blade Runner with matching hair, added to our whooping chorus.
We pulled up to the Big Bar at the Alcove and were greeted by a cheerful Mia Sarazen, still flush with her recent 42Below vodka victory. She made us a Tamarind gin fizz, Aviation, East Side, a Negroni variant, and a wonderful Clover Club with Plymouth, housemade grenadine (using pomegranate molasses), lemon juice and egg white. Small plates of sliders and other appetizers appeared, and we greedily dug in.
More frames were signed on the scorecard before we counted aloud our numbers, which we used to keep track of bodies, and boarded Death Trolley. The night was growing colder. Aidan unleashed PBRs and a bottle of bourbon infused with bacon fat that he called Figgie Smalls; insulation against the next leg of the voyage.
I don’t think open trolleys should be on the Arroyo Seco. Not with beer-slicked floors, wobbling drunks, and un-gated steps to doom. “If you fall off, tuck and roll,” Aidan advised. Somewhere around here my cheek was torched by Naomi’s cigarette-armed gesture. She apologized and kissed the boo-boo, but since I was already three sheets to the wind, I thought it humorously endearing.
It was on this long frosty transit that I had a few words with Aidan, who reminds me of Matthew Perry, about the current Los Angeles cocktail scene. I opined that we might be at the crest of a monster wave of talent and popularity. Top shelf bars are opening at least once a month. New restaurants are hiring beverage directors to bring the same attention and care to the drink menu as renowned chefs do with food. Here, now, right now, Los Angeles is the best place for drinks in the world.
This was the peak from which I fell.
Continued in part two, here. Click the picture on the left for a slideshow of the first half of the evening.
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