If you haven’t already, take a beat to sit with Anderson .Paak’s reflection on protesting during lockdown. With lyrics singing through the movement’s causes and demands — including the right to protest without being attacked by the police — his video illustrates the quiet moments between marches: comforting loved ones, getting late-night food with friends, walking home in silence. In its muted, intimate space, it reframes the protest narrative, centering the lens not on the demonstrations themselves but on the Black lives that they’re advocating for. Watch here.
We’ll bring this around to the above momentarily. For now: The bar is in existential crisis. Historically, a watering hole is a space where you go to decompress, connect with community, and feel taken care of. Now, with inside space closed to the public, drinking joints are having to figure out how to keep serving enough to pay their employees and their rent. Kara Newman just wrote in Punch about the fancy to-go programs bars are developing to keep themselves afloat: they’re selling bottled cocktails, cocktails in bags, cocktail kits, full bottles of liquor, and all kinds of branded merch. They’re offering online mixing tutorials and playlists, taking orders through text and instagram. But for many places, those innovations might not be enough to offset what was already an unsustainable business model. Bars have long struggled with thin margins and expensive leases, which together give way to underpaid labor. BUT, fast-forward to the next phase of reality, when a bunch of businesses have closed, people are used to drinking at home, and some forward-thinking bars nix their space to offer take-out only. If owners no longer have to pay for all that sitting room, that potentially clears the way to make more profits— enough to compensate employees and, dare I say, even offer them healthcare. There will be some pain between now and then as many old faves fall by the wayside, but now is the time to think outside the box.
The to-go cocktail thing was not always a possibility in New York— our legislators just passed a special take-out booze provision in March to keep bars and restaurants going during the pandemic. But the city already had a strong bottled cocktail tradition in nutcrackers, the sweet, home-batched drinks sold illegally out of coolers at beaches and parks in the summer. In this weekend’s New York Times, I wrote about how the new law allows businesses to craft a legal life raft out of the enterprise that’s historically been used to police nutcracker sellers, largely Black and brown entrepreneurs from low-income neighborhoods. (Does that ring a bell?) Give it a read and a share, if you like.
If you’ve bookmarked the article for later, one thing you should know, especially if you’re in New York, is that pretty much all the nutcracker vendors now sell through instagram, and deliver to wherever you are. You should be able to find plenty in your neighborhood with a quick search, but to get you going, here are the sellers mentioned in the article: @oyays (based in Jamaica, Queens, delivers all over), @squeezysips (Soundview, Bronx, delivers in BX and Manhattan), @dayandnightcocktails (not a classic nutcracker vendor, actually, but a fancy drink service run by the head bartenders from Amor y Amargo and Gabriel Kreuther. Delivers in and around Bushwick, Crown Heights and Bed Stuy). Chin chin.
