The following is an excerpt from Marco Larsen’s critically acclaimed book “DON’T: The Essential Guide to Publicity in New York City”. In this post he gives an introduction to the do’s and don’ts of cocktail etiquette.
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According to the Encyclopedia of New York City, the island’s original, Native American inhabitants affectionately referred to it as manahachtanienk, meaning “general state of inebriation”. Whether they meant themselves or their new, Dutch neighbors over on what we now call Broadway is…hazy in retrospect.
No surprise then that Wall Street was named for a rampart that the more virtuous 17th century citizens of New Amsterdam erected partly to stem the tide of soused English colonists and other stray flotsam attracted by the abundance of pubs in the area. True to its beginnings, New York City to this day boasts more watering holes per block than any other city in the world.
In true form, business, and any other activity, in New York, often involves imbibing. A world-class city filled with world-class drinkers, it’s an intoxicating metropolis in many ways. On the vanguard of everything, commerce to cocktails, in the de facto cultural center of America even its signature cocktail is loaded—with history.
The Manhattan is named after the Manhattan Club, a bastion of upper crust Democrats, and mixed for Samuel J. Tilden, elected Governor of New York in 1874. A presidential hopeful, Tilden was later embroiled in the 19th Century’s greatest election scandal when he won the popular vote against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but was denied the White House based on crafty ballot counting in Florida (sound familiar?).
Fifty years later, when Prohibition reformers straightjacketed America for over a decade, New York responded by debuting 100,000 speakeasies. As the city’s patron saint, Frank Sinatra once put it, “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
Which is more or less, how New Yorkers feel. Moreover, publicity is a profession intricately entwined with fashion, media, and entertainment, and excepting the financial industry, exceeded only by those three fields, in a race to the nearest bar for business meetings and professional events.
The list is long — the messy drunk, the maudlin drunk, the bitter drunk, the overly gregarious drunk, the sleazy drunk, the blabbermouth drunk—and you don’t want on it. If you’ve had any problems in the past managing alcohol’s effects, deal with that before starting in business here.
In New York, more so than other cities, it can be difficult to distinguish between a night on the town cutting loose with friends and one forging bonds with professional associates. For those in marketing and public relations, the distinction is worth nothing. Moreover, in a city where functioning alcoholics and social critics routinely overlap, how and what you drink will classify you. Use this to your advantage. Or at least avoid neglecting it to your detriment.
– By Marco Larsen
Stay tuned for more advice on socializing and cocktails in my next post “DON’T Order Vile Hooch”.
