Happy Sunday! This week marked the beginning of Pride Month. To celebrate we invited Shannon Mustipher, the brilliant bartender and author of Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails, to curate a package around the experience of bars and the way they have made space for generous hospitality and belonging throughout Queer history. She asked three storytellers and mixologists to craft cocktails based on three important moments in contemporary Queer history. I want to share these cocktails with you today, as well as the introductory essay by John deBary. Each of these cocktails is brilliant and delicious, and I'm making my liquor store shopping list right after I finish this letter to you! I hope you enjoy these drinks and the way they beautifully honor and evoke these moments in history.
* * *
I launched my career as a bartender more than a decade ago in mixology-minded New York City cocktail spots like PDT and Momofuku. That's where I learned how to mix ingredients in a way that highlights each one individually, while giving rise to an emergent deliciousness that's more than the sum of its parts. Bartending has also shaped my worldview.
I see my identity as a gay man within the framework of a cocktail: I use "gay" to describe myself (an ingredient), and "Queer" to describe the community that I belong to (the cocktail as a whole). In other words, if "Queer" is a Daiquiri, I am the gay rum. To me, the term Queer refers to the emergent community made up of people who don't fit into whatever our society has decided is "normal" with regards to gender identity and sexual orientation. "Queer" is the shorthand I use for the acronymic concoction of LGBTQ identities that I share community with. The experiences of, say, an intersex person might be vastly different from my own, but we are all welcome.
Whoever you may be, Queer or otherwise, the best hospitality experiences — and the drinks that accompany them — make it clear that you are welcome. Generous hospitality makes space for you to be yourself, and for you to enjoy yourself.
This spirit of inclusive welcoming is another element of the bar and hospitality world that drew me in. While the industry is by no means a safe haven for marginalized communities, it does attract a preponderance of people who might not otherwise fit into traditional societal roles. Working in hospitality spaces has been a catalyst to becoming more myself.
Historically this has been the case as well. For decades, bars have been some of the most significant locations in Queer history. That's why we're celebrating Pride this month with three cocktails from three Queer bartenders that represent three significant eras in Queer history: the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s.
Read on to learn more about these cocktails and to get the recipes…
No comments:
Post a Comment