Lou Has Looked at the Receipt and He Is Not Calm About It
I am going to tell you something and I need you to stay with me because I have been sitting on this for thirty years and I am done sitting.
You walked into a bar last Saturday. You ordered a drink. A classic. Something respectable. And when the bartender slid it across the counter, you handed over twenty-two dollars and you said thank you. You said thank you. To the man who charged you twenty-two dollars for two ounces of liquid and a single large cube of ice.
Ice. I want to talk about the ice. Ice is frozen weather. Weather is free. I checked. Nobody is billing the sky. And yet here you are, financing a glacier for a man who is going to melt it in your drink inside of seven minutes.
But the ice is not even the problem. The ice I could almost respect. The ice has the decency to be a physical object. No, the real line item, the one that has me out here on a bar stool in the parking lot broadcasting to a grocery store that did not ask, is the emotional surcharge. The therapy markup. The invisible fee you paid so that the bartender could tell you about his screenplay.
You did not order a screenplay. You ordered an old fashioned. These are different things.
The Bartender-as-Therapist Markup: A Complete Audit
Here is what happens every time you walk into a bar, and I need you to really hear me on this, because I have done the math and the math is a crime.
You sit down. The bartender looks at you. He decides, in that moment, that you are a person who wants to hear about his feelings. You did not signal this. You sat down and looked at a menu. That is not a therapy intake form. That is a person trying to order a drink.
But he starts talking. About his band. About his roommate situation. About the general injustice of the universe as experienced by a man who owns three quality bitters and a smoking gun and genuinely believes those two things make him an artist. You are nodding. You are being polite. You are a good person, which is your first mistake in this economy.
And then the bill comes. Twenty-two dollars. For the drink that took four minutes to make and twelve minutes to explain. You are paying for all sixteen minutes. You are paying the same rate for the part where he told you about the Portland music scene as for the part where he actually made your drink. That is the therapy markup. It is real. It is not itemized. And there is no discount for having heard any of it.
I have been ripped off in a lot of industries. Thirty years selling pipe, I have seen a markup or two. This is the most brazen operation I have ever encountered and somehow we all keep going back on a Friday.
The Additional Charges Nobody Warned You About
Let us go through the full bill, line by line, since nobody else is going to do it.
- The Base Drink: probably costs the bar between three and five dollars to make. You paid twenty-two. The margin on that is not hospitality. That is a business model built on the assumption that you will not do arithmetic after two of them, and honestly, they are right.
- The Atmosphere Fee: you are paying for the Edison bulbs. The reclaimed wood. The chalkboard menu written in a font that took someone forty-five minutes to perfect. You did not ask for any of this. You asked for somewhere to sit and drink. They gave you a vibe and charged accordingly.
- The Expertise Surcharge: the bartender is a "mixologist." This word exists to justify an extra four dollars per drink. He knows things. He would like you to know that he knows things. The knowing costs extra.
- The Emotional Labor Premium: he listened to your day. You listened to his. Except you tipped him for it and he did not tip you. Somehow this is considered normal. I have been thinking about it since 2009 and I cannot make it make sense.
- The Parking: I do not want to talk about the parking. I am already in a parking lot and I am already upset.
And at the end of all of this, you are expected to add eighteen to twenty percent on top. For the privilege of paying for everything I just listed, you pay extra. That is a gratuity on a crime. You are tipping the getaway driver.
What I Do Instead, and Why It Works, and Why You Should Listen to Me
I want to be clear that I am not against a good old fashioned. I am violently pro old fashioned. I have opinions about the correct bourbon. I have opinions about the bitters ratio. I have opinions about the orange peel and what it should and should not be doing in my glass, and those opinions are correct, and I will share them whether you ask or not, which is the Lou way and always has been.
What I am against is paying twenty-two dollars for someone else's emotional journey and calling it a cocktail experience.
So I did something about it. The drink is called Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams of THC. Real cocktail flavor, bitters, orange, oak, built from the same ingredients and extracts the bartenders use, not syrup, not a shortcut. Classic. Stubborn. Exactly like me. And when you crack it open, nobody explains anything to you. Nobody tells you about their creative project. You just drink it and it works and the evening gets better and you got to keep the twenty-two dollars.
The eight milligrams hit in minutes, by the way. Nano-emulsification, which Herb will explain to you at length if you make the mistake of asking him, means this thing is not an edible that takes an hour and then levels you. It moves like a cocktail. Onset is real. The offset is clean. You stay in the room, socially, the whole time. That is the point. That is what it is designed to do.
I am not going to tell you that the terpene blend is formulated to make you social and loose and, frankly, funnier than you usually are, because then I would sound like Herb, and I refuse. But it is, and you will be, and I was right about it before any of the science confirmed it.
If you want to try the other cans while you are here, nobody is stopping you. Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini is what you drink when you have somewhere to be at eleven. Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan is what you drink when you want to make an entrance and you have already decided you are going to be the most interesting person at the party. The Variety Pack is what you get when you want all of them and you would like a small discount for your loyalty and your good taste, which you deserve.
It is in the fridge right now, if you want to run the numbers yourself.
The Thing I Have Not Said Yet But Will Say Now
Look. I did not invent the problem of the overpriced bar drink. That problem has been running since someone first looked at a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of bitters and thought, I could charge people for this, and a lot. The bartender-as-therapist is just the latest iteration. Next year it will be something else. An ambiance fee. A hydration surcharge. I do not know. They are creative people with a lot of overhead and a chalkboard menu, and they will figure something out.
What I am saying is that a thc cocktail alternative to bar night is not a compromise. It is not a consolation prize for people who cannot get a table. It is the correct economic decision made by a person who has finally done the arithmetic.
You want to understand the full picture, the THC drinks explained thing, the why it feels the way it feels, the whole science that Herb insists on narrating like he personally discovered the molecule: we have a post for that. Read it. Then come back here and admit I was right.
The bar will always be there. Your money does not have to be.
My watch stopped in 2009 and even it knows when you are getting taken.
For adults 21 and older only. Hemp-derived THC. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please check local laws before ordering. Enjoy responsibly.
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