Category: history
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Is the Anti-“Frisco” Movement Racist?
On one of my Bar and Cocktail History tours, a guest asked (or rather suggested) that the whole “Don’t Call it Frisco” thing is specifically anti-Black. I hadn’t thought about it, and decided to investigate. People have been trained on “Don’t Call it Frisco” much in the way that they’re trained to say that shaking…
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August 18th Talk: Around the World with the Gin & Tonic
I’m giving this talk as part of Nerd Nite at the Rickshaw Stop. Around the World with the Gin & TonicBy: Camper English The history of the G&T includes the history of malaria (prevented and cured by quinine in tonic), the Black Death (repelled by juniper), Jesuit missionaries in Peru, the swamps of Rome, the…
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The Old Fashioned and the Champagne Cocktail are the Same Drink
Well, more or less. In my latest for Food & Wine, I trace the origin of both drinks and how they each deviated from the original Cocktail. Read it here.
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103 Things to Drink in San Francisco, 1855
I am reading the 1855 book Land of Gold, Reality Versus Fiction by Hinton Helper. You can find it online here. It talks a lot of smack about San Francisco and I love it. San Francisco was a brand new city in 1848 when gold was discovered in Sacramento, but by 1855 the population was…
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Did the Original Cocktail Sauce Contain Angostura Bitters?
I am researching Prohibition and a search for “cocktails” in the San Francisco Chronicle turned up a story from 1920 on the origin of the “oyster cocktail” that I think is what today we call “cocktail sauce” that is used more on the shrimp cocktail. (I am a 30+ year vegetarian so I could be…
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50 Year Time Capsule from the Transamerica Pyramid
There’s a new exhibit at the Transamerica Pyramid from a time capsule buried 50 years ago. I checked it out. The building was completed in 1972- the time capsule is from 1974. Before that, from 1853-1959, it was the Montgomery Block that hosted the Bank Exchange Saloon. The Bank Exchange was the home of the…
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The Only Good Alcohol is Made from Wine
I’ve read in other sources that when grain distillation became available in the 1400s and 1500s, it was viewed as a far less healthy alcohol than that distilled from grape wine. The sources I’m thinking of were from Germany, at a time when distilled spirits were still technically medicinal, even if people were dipping into…
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Esquire’s Best and Worst Cocktails of 1934
Esquire magazine printed an article with the Ten Best Cocktails of 1934 – the year after Prohibition was repealed. They included at the end a list of the Worst cocktails as well. Esquire’s link to the story is here, but it requires a subscription to view. DiffordsGuide has the list of best and…