In the 1820s, the Hollow Earth Theory had two powerful advocates. They went to the United States Congress to lobby for a sponsored expedition to the center of the Earth. Congress turned them down, but one president said yes.
Female accomplishments are too often overlooked in our history books, but this photo looks to change that by celebrating one of history's coolest ladies. Read the rest
With the rise of insects popping up on restaurant menus, Coala Valley Farms in Van Nuys, California, will be the second farm in the US (the first is in Ohio) to grow and sell edible crickets.
The old miser slighted : or, the young lasses resolution to marry the young man that she loves, and not be troubled with the groans of gouty
fornicator, for the benefit of his riches, 1688.
Finally got around to watching this last night. It's very nice to look at, in a pinhole camera kind of way, and pleasantly light on dialogue. The soundtrack is lovely. There's a cat.
This gorgeous, haunting fable of a handsome boy, a beautiful undead girl and a car is the year's biggest discovery
The owner of a French bar is facing charges of “manslaughter by willful neglect” after a patron took 56 shots of liquor in one night to break the establishment’s posted record. The 57-year-old drinking champ later died at home of a heart attack, and his daughter says the bar owner had been cheering him on.
If you were a freshman entering college in 2010 and filed a sexual violence complaint with the Department of Education on your very first day, that investigation might still be open four years later.
That’s the finding from a Department of Education report made public on Tuesday by Sens. Barbara Boxer, Kirsten Gillibrand and Tim Kaine (Democrats of California, New York and Virginia, respectively), which revealed a growing backlog in the number of Title IX complaints made to the department.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Education stated that its goal is to resolve all complaints within 180 days, but the average length of an investigation into a sexual violence complaint for higher-education institutions was 1,469 days (or more than four years) for investigations that ended in 2014, the report found. (The average investigation into all types of Title IX complaints for those schools, including sexual violence complaints, was only 206 days for cases closed in 2014, suggesting that complaints not involving sexual violence were wrapped up quickly.)
The OCR gave several reasons for the prolonged investigations.
“[S]exual violence investigations tend to be complex and may involve systemic, campus- and institution-wide issues, in addition to issues pertaining to specific students,” the office wrote in a letter to Boxer, noting that the investigation process for sexual violence complaints includes reviewing the institution’s historical responses to these complaints, interviewing school officials, meeting with individual students and student groups, and reviewing the school’s policies and training protocol. “As such, Title IX sexual violence investigations, on average, take longer to complete than those across other jurisdictions,” the letter said.
The office also said that it closed some of its longest-running investigations in 2014. It didn’t give specifics, but Inside Higher Ed noted that these included two four-year investigations (one at Harvard Law School and one at Ohio State University) and two three-year investigations (one at Princeton University and one at Southern Methodist University).
But the number of lengthy investigations coincides with an uptick in the overall number of complaints made, suggesting that the department may need more resources to handle the increase. In 2014, 102 complaints were filed against higher-ed institutions, compared with 32 in 2013 and nine in 2009. (As of April 8, 2015, the office had received 51 complaints this year.)
Despite the growth in complaints, the OCR’s staffing and budget levels have both decreased significantly over the years, as the office pointed out in its budget request for fiscal year 2016. One chart from the request shows the discrepancy between the office’s level of full-time equivalent positions (FTE)7 and the number of complaints that the office receives:
The OCR requested a budget of $130.7 million for the 2016 fiscal year — a 31 percent increase from its 2015 appropriation, the bulk of which would fund an additional 200 full-time equivalent positions.
“OCR expects that these average [investigation lengths] will decrease as the agency closes out its oldest sexual violence cases and if, as we hope, Congress increases OCR’s appropriation to allow OCR to manage its current and projected caseload,” the office wrote in its letter to Sen. Boxer.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said it was likely that the investigation of a complaint filed in 2010 would still be open four years later. Since the probability of such a delay is not clear, the post has been changed to say the investigation might still be open four years later.
BOSTON — A federal marshal testified Wednesday that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologized shortly after making an obscene gesture in a jail holding cell, deflating the government’s insistence that he remains defiant and unrepentant for helping to carry out the terrorist attack two years ago.
I made a dress out of this last year. I wish I'd stockpiled more of it, though.
15.49 USD
This is 'Summer', Liberty of London 100% cotton Tana Lawn made in England
'Summer' was inspired by landscapes and survey maps. Taken from a hand silk-screen printing by 'Draw in Light'. From the Liberty Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
Lightweight, silky Tana Lawn is perfect for garment making, accessories, or your latest quilting project.
This listing is for 1/2 yard (18 inches) of fabric. Additional fabric purchased will be cut as a continuous length.
overbey, be grateful that I am not coming with you
Greetings from Tokyo! After 48 hours of brutal jetlag (I didn’t realize it was possible to drool and walk into so many fixed objects with such panache) I am fully in the Japanese swing of things. So what did I do as soon as I had a semblance of sanity?
Fabric shopping, of course!
Based on the recommendation of, well, everybody I asked, I hoofed it up to Nippori Fabric Town, which is conveniently on the main circular Yamanote metro line in central Tokyo (talking of which: is there a cleaner and more efficient subway system in the world? I think not).
Step off the train platform and this is what you see….
Naturally, I forgot to print off the Nippori Town Guide I’d previously been studying, but it wasn’t an issue, because pretty much all the stores are on the one street which starts at the station. There are more than 80 stores, but it’s a fairly compact area and much more calm and easy to navigate than the NYC garment district. I loved seeing all the little signs advertising the stores, and particularly loved that plaid carpeted road! The yellow brick road for sewists, I think.
There’s a range of types of stores, from beautifully curated vintage button stores (of which more shortly), to notions shops, lace specialists, upholstery suppliers, leather shops and more. As usual, I was totally overwhelmed.
After wandering up and down the street, my willing accomplice Anthony and I ended up spending most of our time in Tomato, which has multiple locations on the street and floor after floor of droolworthy wares.
Here’s just a taste of what I found: (top left, clockwise) neon checked linen! reversible sweater knits! *pre-quilted* Nani Iro prints! awesome eyelet!
More lovely lightweight linen, Nani Iro, awesome checks, and very soft washed ginghams… I loved how many times fabrics were available in multiple colourways.
And no tour would be complete without the piles and piles and stacks and mountains of whimsical animal fabrics. Truly, Japan is the capital of whimsy. Observe: bear, plug and badger etchings; cheeky foxes; languorous cats; and, to quote the fabric, “more cats”. I really had to restrain myself, due to the rather large gap between my fabric taste and my clothing taste. Trust me, if fabric taste Jenny got her way, I’d be full time cat whimsy, 24-7.
Some more unusual finds included this printed grid “lace” (not sure what else to call it), multi-coloured fake fur, and a large array of lace collars. I totally fell in love with the silk crepe print at the bottom right, until I realized it was $250/meter. At which point it became unrequited love.
The vintage buttons store I mentioned had the most amazing collection of chunky unusual buttons I think I’ve ever seen (naturally, they were whimsically displayed). I think they must have been re-mounted because the packaging was all a bit too perfect, but the range and types of buttons was awesome, and unusually they often had 10 or more of the same button (all my vintage ones are in packs of 5).
After wrestling my kawaii demons to the ground, I did manage to make some awesome, but eminently sensible, purchases.
First up: stripes! The top two are heathered terry – lovely and soft, and reminded me so much of Jen, a classy role model of mine. I also couldn’t resist a simple jersey stripe which was just the right weight, texture and stripe width (all sewists know, critical factors in a Breton). Then, gorgeous midweight linen! These are much more vibrant in real life, and yellow/grey and blue/green are my two favourite colour-combos so I bought 4 yards of each. Skirts and shirtdresses coming up, I think… And then finally, a lightweight seersucker-textured cotton in grey and limey yellow (again a bit brighter in person). I’m pretty certain it’s destined to be a maxi Southport If you ever find yourself in Tokyo, I highly recommend checking out Nippori town, even if you only have an hour to pop into Tomato. Go and stroke all the animal prints for me, please. Then, follow my lead and get a creme patissiere choux bun from Docatur afterwards. You deserve it.
I’m off to Kyoto at the weekend: does anyone have any top tips for sewing shopping there? I’m already looking forward to visiting the handmade needle place! (how does one hand make a needle?! The mind boggles).
These leggings, made in collaboration with the awesome artist ∆lysvn∆mythvst, will add the much needed danger and serenity that your wardrobe is currently lacking. They not only incorporate the awesome power of Crystal Skulls but also vibrate with the powerful clarity of Real Amethyst® as well as the infinite cooling serenity of Lake Ice. Perfect for all those dancy nights as well as meeting your abnormal boyfriend's parents.
This pattern looks gorgeous on dark skin.
The fabric is comfortable and has a nice glimmer to it in the light.
The Small comfortably fits sizes 0-8slim. The Large will fit sizes 10+, 160lbs+
Artist Christopher Marley has created a gorgeous line of mosaics, prisms, and other artistic arrangements made from exotic insects that he’s humanely sourced from around the world. In his newest book Biophilia, Marley seeks to educate his readers around the incredible beauty of nature, while displaying his elaborate works of art.
Christopher Marley’s art expresses his passionate engagement with the beautiful forms of nature. Beginning with insects and moving on to aquatic life, reptiles, birds, plants, and minerals, Marley has used his skills as a designer, conservator, taxidermist, and environmentally responsible collector to make images and mosaics that produce strong, positive emotional responses in viewers. Marley has a brilliant eye for color and pattern in different natural objects, and he expertly captures the deep relationships among them. Biophilia (literally, “love of living things”) is a must-have for nature lovers, designers, artists, craftspeople, and anyone looking for visual inspiration in the arts.
“Orlando” is one of the most remarkable novels of the twentieth century, a post-impressionist masterpiece that also manages to be postmodern and post-feminist avant la lettre. In it, Virginia Woolf tells the tale of a child born into 16th-century Elizabethan aristocracy who undergoes a miraculous sex change while serving as ambassador in Constantinople, only to finally reappear after eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual dalliances as a thirty-six-year old woman motoring through London in the Roaring Twenties. Abolishing fixed coordinates of time and space, genders and desires, Woolf frees Orlando from social convention and divulges some fundamental things about the ambivalence of existence. Independent of gender, time and history, “Orlando”, in the opinion of British author and critic Jeanette Winterson, suggests that committing to a single identity is an awful waste of half a life.
Fittingly then, this musical interpretation of the book is a split album, tracks alternating between con_cetta, an Italian gentleman who has assumed a feminine nom-de-musique, and countrywoman Marie e le Rose, who has chosen to record under the most generic of names. “Orlando” is an opulent, sensual novel, reveling in detail: “Chairs and tables, however richly gilt and carved, sofas, resting on lions’ paws with swans’ necks curving under them, beds even of the softest swansdown are not by themselves enough. People sitting in them, people lying in them improve them amazingly.”Orlando the “soundtrack” addresses us as if bemused by such headiness, with a deadpan meekness that masks secret correspondences – as Woolf did with a novel that was largely composed as a lover´s biography of bohemian aristocratVita Sackville-West.
Though the novel was written in great haste, Orlando the album is genteel, ambient parlor music, opening on a minor key, with guest Davide Lo Iacono trying to urge a faint smile out of the piano and a glockenspiel tickling the crystal clear air. Clear air that becomes infested with vinyl run-off crackle as MonoLogue sits down at the keyboard to perform a piece that evolves from proper Victorian decorum to the youthful energy of a new way of seeing and hearing. The duo´s pieces mesh seamlessly and interpose cleverly; the painstakingly balanced building blocks of MonoLogue´s piano on “Thirst for Knowledge (Flesh)” interlocking perfectly with the billowing curtain of “Ecce Homo” by con_cetta. “Procrastination of a Construction” opens with a music box tinkling out the last notes of “You Light Up My Life” before embarking on a lengthy magic carpet ride through curved air. Her colleague replies with “Woe and Lamentation”, equally light but grasping at fragments like the last looping wisps of fleeing memories. Like the novel, the album is lush in texture, whole cloth of abstracted emotions and associations in whose folds to get lost.
Time Released Sound comes by its name honestly – the availability of each new release is announced with the striking of a specific hour of the clock on a specific day – its latest, for example, “Sunday morning, May 11th, at 9AM, California time”. Each release is issued as a limited, fanciful art edition, usually accompanied by a run of handsome digipaks for us regular working stiffs.
On pensait n’avoir jamais croisé la route de Francesco Giannico avant la compilation publiée par son propre label, Oak Editions, en juin dernier. Or, notre discothèque contenait un CDr 3″ paru en 2011 sur Twisted Tree Line qui était, en réalité, la première sortie de l’Italien. Après avoir remis la main sur cet EP, on peut donc reprendre le cours de la discographie du musicien (qui s’était, dans l’intervalle, enrichie de deux albums partagés et d’un long-format solo) avec Metrophony, proposition qu’accueille Time Released Sound et sur laquelle Giannico est parti d’enregistrements des sons de deux lignes de métro romaines. Enrichis d’apports instrumentaux (guitare, piano, violon, synthés), ces samples constituent un morceau unique de quarante minutes de field recordings bruissants et complexes.
Aussi surprenant que cela puisse paraître, les instruments se marient parfaitement aux bruits urbains : fermetures de portes automatiques et déliés de guitare (vers la fin du premier quart d’heure) ou plus loin bribes de conversations à peine audibles et jeu de la batterie (autour de vingt-cinq minutes). Alors qu’on pouvait redouter une forme de monotonie du propos, sur la durée du disque-morceau, l’ensemble est déroulé avec intérêt, comme si l’on progressait sur les lignes de métro aux côtés de Francesco Giannico. L’oscillation discrète des nappes agit ainsi comme une forme de bercement tandis que les sons captés sur place viennent parfois secouer l’auditeur ou le ramener à la surface. Quand le parcours s’achève, il est presque trop tôt et nous nous disons alors que nous suivrons assurément l’Italien à l’avenir et que son nom ne devrait plus quitter notre mémoire.
The city of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development has filed legislation (sponsored by Mattapan's State Rep. Russell Holmes) that would allow the MBTA to sell land along its rail lines to developers at discounted rates, according to Scott Van Voorhis at the Globe. A second proposal would allow the city to offer property tax incentives to developers in order to encourage them to build housing affordable to those with low and/or moderate incomes.
How Well Does ‘Daredevil’ Handle Disability Issues?
When the 13 episodes of season one of Daredevil went live on Netflix on April 10, Daredevil/Matthew Murdock, played by Charlie Cox, instantly became the most prominent disabled character in media.
The online community of disability activists was certainly excited. (I am a member. My son has Down syndrome and I often write about disability-related stories for mass media.) A friend of mine in England had watched ten episodes before I even got out of bed on the 10th. Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, organized a viewing and live-tweeted episode one under the hashtag #daredevilDVP.
But before people could even parse the quality of the episodes, the decision by Netflix not to provide audio commentary became a problem. Many blind people follow television through specially added audio descriptions of scenes and actions. The issue swept through social media. Manyarticles commented on the irony of a show entirely based around a blind main character being inaccessible for the blind. An online petition was launched . After a few days, Netflix made the wise decision not only to add audio commentary to Daredevil (available as of last Tuesday), but the company also promised to add audio descriptions to lots more of its programming. Regardless of whether or not Daredevil will defeat Kingpin (Vincent D'Onofrio), he’s already won a victory for accessibility.
Before Jerry Thomas there lived these five American bar pioneers.
In 1862, Jerry Thomas famously published the first bartender’s guide. Sailor, Forty-Niner, artist, theatrical impresario, diamond-flashing sport-about-town—indeed, sport-about-America—and, of course, master mixologist, "the Professor," as he is known, was the most famous bartender of his day and an establishing bar figure for the future. But he wasn’t America’s first celebrity bartender, nor did he invent that art.
Unfortunately, the men—and, it’s important to recognize, women—who came before him; the ones who built the institution of the American bar as we have come to know it, with its individually-made iced drinks built on demand; its shaking and stirring and artful pouring and garnishing, have long been cast into shadow by the brilliance of Thomas’ star. But that doesn’t mean that they were entirely unheralded, or that their achievements are forever lost. Here, based upon the research I conducted for the revised second edition of Imbibe!, my tribute to Jerry Thomas and his drinks, are thumbnail sketches of five true pioneers of the American bar. If any of them had written a book, we would all be drinking differently now.
C
ato Alexander ran the sportiest roadhouse in America for well over thirty years, supervising both the kitchen and the bar, in the process winning a reputation, to quote Tyrone Power (the Irish actor, not his descendant the movie star), as "foremost amongst cullers of mint . . . for julep" and "second to no man as a compounder of cock-tail"—the two foundational drinks of the American school of drinking. Indeed, he was the first man to become famous for making them, and a host of other drinks besides.
Alexander was born in New York in 1780. During his youth he worked at an inn there, and frequently waited on George Washington, helping him on and off his horse—something he would talk about for the rest of his days. That was when he was a slave. In 1799, he was one of the few who gained freedom when New York passed its deeply compromised "Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery." After that he kept working in hotels and inns for another decade or so and then opened his own place, out in the country at the four-mile marker on Harlem Road. (Today, that’s on 54th St., just east of 2nd Avenue.) The location was a shrewd one: Cato’s Tavern was a ten-minute gallop out of New York City, then occupying just the southern tip of Manhattan, and it soon became the natural resort of all the city’s fast young men. They would race their carriages up there, drink his famous gin cocktails, brandy juleps and punches, eat his famous game and curried oysters, and then race on back (sometimes with disastrous results). For the next thirty years, Cato’s was one of the most fashionable resorts in America. "Who has not heard of Cato Alexander?" one New York newspaper wrote in 1835. "Not to know Cato’s is not to know the world."
Dark-complected, broad-shouldered and sturdy, Alexander was both hospitable and dignified, and, though illiterate, was, as New York historian Benson Lossing wrote, "greatly respected by all who came in contact with him." Or almost all: from time to time he had to deal with drunken gangs of racist thugs attempting to break up his establishment, but he appears to have been tough enough to survive them and even stand them off. What he couldn’t stand off was his own clientele: "some of his customers," as Lossing noted, "borrowed considerable sums of money from him and forgot to refund." Indeed, one of his obituaries reported that, according to Alexander, "he lost $100,000 in these friendly loans to the ‘fast men’ of his day." His business could not withstand that—few indeed at the time could have—and finally, in the mid-1840s, he was forced to close. Alexander’s last act was to keep a humble oyster-and-beefsteak saloon at 556 Broadway, down in the heart of the city. "I have not so splendid a restaurant as I could wish," he told a reporter. But he still provided, as the reporter noted, "the best of everything." That was in the early 1850s, and it only lasted a year. He died in poverty in 1858, aged 77.
If New Yorkers knew Cato, everyone knew Orsamus Willard. A true Yankee, "Willard of the City Hotel," as he became known (he never used his first name), enjoyed for over a quarter-century a transatlantic reputation as the world’s premiere mixer of American drinks. "The name of this remarkable personage," the British traveler Charles Augustus Murray wrote in 1839, "is familiar to every American, and to every foreigner who has visited the States."
Orsamus Willard ...enjoyed for over a quarter-century a transatlantic reputation as the world’s premiere mixer of American drinks.
Willard was born in 1792 in the farming community of Harvard, Massachusetts, some 60 miles west-northwest of Boston. In 1813, after a poorly-paid stint as a schoolteacher in nearby Lunenburg, he took himself down to New York and found a job as office boy at the City Hotel, on Broadway just above Trinity Church. It was the city’s, and the country’s, finest hotel. Within a couple of years, Willard was presiding over the hotel’s bar, a job for which he was ideally suited. He was genial and hard-working, which were common enough things, but also ambidextrous and possessed of a photographic memory, which were not. He never forgot a customer’s name or preferences, would do anything for a guest, and was often checking in guests (at the time, hotel clerk and bartender were one and the same job) and answering queries about anything under the sun, all the while busily mixing drinks with both hands.
About those drinks. In 1817, as Willard later told the story, a Virginian came into his bar, then mostly famous for its Whiskey Punch by the glass, and showed him the latest thing in mixology: an iced Mint Julep. (The drink, a Virginia staple since before the Revolution, had been traditionally made without ice, but in 1817 the mighty American ice industry was leaping out of its starting blocks and suddenly cheap ice in summer was an American reality.) Willard was impressed and made the drink his own.
It caught on. A dozen years later, another British traveler observed that the hotel’s "bar manager"—Willard—"by his acknowledged skill in mixing mint julep, & c., is said to be a most valuable appendage to the concern." So valuable, in fact, that the hotel’s manager, Chester Jennings, had years before made him a partner in the business. Willard didn’t just make Juleps, of course, although (as Murray noted) in making them he "was allowed to be the first master of this art in the known world." His Gin Cocktail, Apple Toddy and "Extra-Extra Peach Brandy Punch" all had their adherents as well.
In 1836, Willard and Jennings retired, and Willard went home to Harvard where he set himself up as a gentleman farmer. In 1843, however, their successor at the hotel failed and they were lured back. The New York Dramatic Mirror sent a man to look in:
All was right with the world: Willard was in his place behind the bar, a little fatter than of old and somewhat gray with cabbage-growing, but his wonderful memory of names and faces seemed in full vigour; and, what with the tone of voice, the dexterity of furnishing drinks, the off-hand welcome to every comer-in, and the mechanical answering of questions and calling to servants, he seemed to have begun precisely where he left off, and his little episode of farming must seem to him scarcely better than a dream.
In 1848, however, Willard went back to living the dream, returning to Massachusetts to raise prize cows and many children. The "Napoleon of Bar-Keepers," as he had been known, died in 1876 and is buried on a peaceful hillside not far from his house, which had room numbers on every door, just like the City Hotel.
The Raines Law Room's modern day Sherry Cobbler by Nick Solares.
Martha King, also a New Yorker, was born in 1802 and raised in the trade. Her father, David, kept a popular porter-house at the corner of Wall St., just a block from the City Hotel. In 1808, give or take a year or two, David King hired a young man recently arrived from across the pond. William Niblo was Irish, or Scottish, or Scotch-Irish; nobody was ever sure. He was also enterprising, and after spending a few years working for King he struck off on his own to open the Bank Coffee-House on Pine St., just a few blocks to the east. In 1819, Martha married him. William was a charming and genial host with a great many ideas, many of them good. Martha, however, was not only as experienced in the trade as he was, she also had a brain made by Pitney-Bowes, the firm, commanding dignity of a bird colonel and the hands of Audrey Saunders.
In 1828, with Martha’s strong support, William opened Niblo’s Garden in what is today Soho but what was then a leafy suburb outside of town. The walled garden offered seating in cool, shaded bowers, country breezes, fountains, soft lantern-light among the trees, music and refreshments. In charge of dispensing those refreshments, from behind the large bar at one end of the garden, was Martha King Niblo. As the British traveler John Brougham wrote in 1842, she "mixed all the drinks—and knew how," going on to add that "a sherry cobbler from her dainty hand was something specially inviting and created an involuntary relish for that seductive and not altogether innocent beverage." The Sherry Cobbler was the sensation of the late 1830s, a simple mix of wine, sugar, ice and slices of citrus or citrus peel, lanced with a straw. It first appears in print in New York in 1837, but the drink may be older than that. If indeed, as one New York paper noted, "many of the fanciful admixtures which have since become notorious were first passed over the bar at Niblo’s Garden," it’s quite possible that the Cobbler was one of them, and that Mrs. Niblo was, if not its creator, at least its midwife. Sadly, she died in 1851. William Niblo never remarried, and visited her mausoleum in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery every day for the rest of his life.
Another Yankee like Willard, Peter Bent Brigham was born in Vermont in 1807 and was living on his own in Boston by 1825. After scuffling for a few years as a grocer’s clerk and a streetcorner lobster-vendor, in 1828 he opened a little oyster shop in part of the city’s Concert Hall, a block-sized building at the very heart of downtown. By 1836, he had saved the enormous sum of $15,000 and took the lease on the whole building. In 1842, he opened a new "Oyster Saloon" (indeed he popularized the term) on the ground floor of the Concert Hall, "fitted up in a style of splendour unequalled in the Union," as his advertisements claimed. Here there were not only oysters of all kinds, brought in from as far as New York, but also "other Refreshments," which were served both in the large "gentlemen’s gorgeous and neat saloon" (as one patron called it) and the smaller "Ladies’ Saloon" around the corner.
About these "refreshments." Before Brigham’s Oyster Saloon, American bartending at its fanciest really only stretched to a dozen or so drinks. Cocktail (spirits, sugar, bitters, water or ice), Julep (spirits, sugar, mint, ice), Sling (spirits, sugar, water), Hailstorm (the same, with ice), Toddy (the same, but with hot water), Apple Toddy (the same, but with a baked apple muddled in), Flip (hot ale, rum, sugar and eggs), Egg Nog (spirits, sugar, milk, eggs) a couple of Punches (spirits, sugar, citrus and water or ice), Cobbler (see above), and one or two miscellaneous drinks that popped up from time to time. Then Brigham introduced his new drinks list. At least eighteen mixed drinks, including six different kinds of punch, plus such oddities as "Tippe na Pecco," "Tip and Ty," "Fiscal Agent" and "Wormwood Floater." When Charles Jewett, a prominent Prohibitionist, criticized the list in print, Brigham responded by adding a "Jewett’s Fancy." By the end of 1843, the list had stretched to encompass eleven kinds of Julep (including such elaborations as "Capped Julep" and "Race Horse Julep"), five Cobblers and seventeen "Fancy Drinks."
American drinking would never be the same. By the end of 1843 the national media, such as it was, had discovered the list and introduced it into the echo chamber, or the nineteenth-century version of it, as an example of the decadence of American mores. At east, that was the intention. What actually happened is that any other bar with pretensions to swank quickly introduced its own list of Fancy Drinks. No longer could you discern what was in a drink by hearing its name. It’s only a few steps from "Moral Suasion" to "Zombie," "Cosmopolitan" or "Penicillin." We don’t know if Brigham himself was responsible for the mixology at his bar. Not until the 1870s would journalists pry into the actual workings of a bar as a matter of course. But he was certainly a hands-on manager, attending to every detail of his business, and a ceaseless fighter against Prohibitionism, so it’s inconceivable that he was not at the least involved in naming the drinks, several of which were direct hits against the drys. By the time Brigham sold the Concert Hall in 1869, he was deeply invested in local real estate, which made him a fortune. He left it to charity, endowing a hospital. Today, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital is one of the most famous and respected in America.
... Santini’s gifts as a mixologist were strong enough for Jerry Thomas to include three of his recipes in his 1862 book, the only contemporary saloonkeeper to whom he accorded that honor ...
Joseph Santini was an Italian, born in 1818 or thereabouts. So much we know. But was he a Swiss Italian, a Corsican Italian, a Sardinian Italian or some other sort of Italian? What sources there are all suggest different things. His descendants say he was from the Austrian city of Trieste. Passenger records indicate that he sailed from there but came from Switzerland, which his easy fluency in French supports—although that also supports the assertion one newspaper made upon his death that he was Corsican. In any case, our first glimpse of him is in New Orleans in 1841, when he was head barkeeper for Philippe Alvarez, a fellow Italian (despite his Franco-Spanish name) who managed the French Quarter's splendid bar at the St. Louis Hotel. In 1842, he opened his own hotel on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, complete with a bar "furnished with the choicest Liquors." (He also kept his job at the St Louis at least through the end of 1843, when the Gazette de Baton Rouge found him behind the bar there.)
The hotel was just practice. His next enterprise, the "Jewel of the South," a saloon he opened in February, 1855, on Gravier St. across from the famous St. Charles Hotel, was anything but. One of the most elaborate such establishments in the country, the Jewel would become a New Orleans icon and set the tone for fancy drinking in the South. We don’t know, at this remove, how much time Santini actually spent behind the Jewel's bar. He may have mostly given direction while his head bartenders, first Joseph Stella and then George Ittmann, took charge of the actual mixing.
In any case, Santini’s gifts as a mixologist were strong enough for Jerry Thomas to include three of his recipes in his 1862 book, the only contemporary saloonkeeper to whom he accorded that honor (among them was the nectareous and immortal Brandy Crusta, an epicurean variation on the simple Cocktail). That, coupled with the claim in the book’s introduction that connects Thomas with "one of the most recherché saloons in New Orleans," suggests that Thomas had perhaps collected the recipes firsthand, working behind the stick at the Jewel. In any case, Santini did not need Thomas’s aegis to achieve lasting success. A far better businessman, Santini got comfortably rich, invested his money wisely and, in 1868, signed his saloon over to the "attentive and scientific mixologist" Ittmann. He continued to run a retail and wholesale liquor business, but for the most part he devoted himself to Masonic affairs, in which he had been intimately versed for much of his life, and to philanthropy, for which he was widely celebrated. He died in 1874, while traveling in the French Pyrenees. His drinks, at least, live on. Indeed, there is no better liquid representation of Creole New Orleans than a well-made Brandy Crusta.
Image 1, Jerry Thomas at Thomas Bros Saloon, New York, 1860 courtesy of David Wondrich; Image 3, Orsamus Willard's gravestone courtesy of David Wondrich; Image 6, a Sherry Cobbler from Imbibe!; Image 7, Peter Bent Brigham; Image 8, a Brandy Crusta from Imbibe!
A wrenching and beautifully argued essay by Virginia Eubanks describes the inevitable consequences of letting secret, unaccountable algorithms decide who is eligible for welfare.
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Super Opinionated.
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A wrenching and beautifully argued essay by Virginia Eubanks describes the inevitable consequences of letting secret, unaccountable algorithms decide who is eligible for welfare.
Read the rest