Lou's Official Complaint That the Bar Just Charged You for the Venue (And the Venue Is a Room With Chairs in It)

Lou's Official Complaint That the Bar Just Charged You for the Venue (And the Venue Is a Room With Chairs in It)

I have been to a lot of bars. Thirty years selling pipe, you end up in a lot of bars. I have opinions. I have reviewed the bill from last Saturday night, and I am filing a formal complaint, right now, in writing, for the public record.

The bar charged my friend Gary seventeen dollars for an old fashioned. That is not the complaint. Seventeen dollars for a well-made old fashioned, fine, I live in the world, I accept this. The complaint is what you get for seventeen dollars. You get the old fashioned. You also get the privilege of sitting in the building where the old fashioned was made. The building. Which is a room. With chairs in it. That is the product. That is the full offering. A room, some chairs, and a bartender who has a four-syllable word for what he does for a living.

I looked it up. They call it a "curated drinking environment." I am not making that up. Gary showed me the website. Curated. The chairs are curated. The exposed brick is curated. The Edison bulb that is too dim to read the menu by, curated. You are paying, in real American money, for someone to have arranged the chairs in a way that feels intentional. Gary paid forty-two dollars for two drinks and the privilege of sitting in someone else's intentional chairs for an hour. Gary is a grown adult with a mortgage and a dining room table. Gary has chairs. Gary did not need to rent chairs.

The Itemized Receipt, Which Nobody Asked for but Is Getting Anyway

I have broken it down. This is what you are buying when you go to a bar for a thc cocktail at home level of comfort but in a building someone else owns:

• The drink: maybe four dollars in ingredients, and I am being generous.
• The "craft": the bartender has a waxed mustache and a class he took online. Six dollars.
• The ice: weather. Frozen weather. You are purchasing weather by the cube. This is legal, somehow.
• The ambient noise: someone else's Spotify playlist, turned up just high enough that you have to lean in and repeat yourself. This is not atmosphere. This is a mild hearing test.
• The parking: not included. That is a separate transaction with a separate stranger.
• The privilege of sitting down: the rest of the seventeen dollars. You paid for the right to occupy a chair. A chair that was there before you arrived and will be there after you leave. The chair does not know you. The chair owes you nothing.

And after all of that, after the curated chair and the weather-ice and the man with the mustache, you tip twenty percent. On the chair. You tipped on the chair.

What Happens When You Make the Thc Cocktail at Home

Here is the alternative. Are you ready? It is complicated, so pay attention.

You open the fridge.

That is it. That is the whole thing. You open the fridge, and inside the fridge, waiting for you without a reservation or a two-drink minimum, is Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams of THC. A real old fashioned, real bitters, real orange, real oak, no alcohol, no hangover, and absolutely no waxed mustache involved in its production. It shipped to your house. Your house, which you own, or rent, either way you are already paying for it. The room is included. The chairs are yours. You curated them yourself and you did not charge anybody for the experience.

You want to make a thc cocktail at home, this is how you do it. You buy the can. You sit in your chair. You drink it. Nobody announces the garnish. Nobody tells you what the bitters are "doing." Nobody brings you a small dish of mixed nuts and adds it to the bill as a "snack program." You just drink the drink, in your room, like a person with common sense.

And if the old fashioned is not your thing, which is fine, I do not judge, I just note it and move on, then there is the Variety Pack. Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini for the people who need to stay sharp. Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan for the people who prefer something with an entrance. Herb's Very Manly Peach Bellini for the people Herb is always trying to convert. All of them 8mg THC. All of them in your fridge, at your place, in your chair, which you are not paying extra for.

A Note on the Walk Home

You know what else you don't do when you make a thc cocktail at home? You don't walk home. You don't call a car. You don't stand outside the curated environment at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday in weather that is, I remind you, free, waiting for a stranger to come get you in exchange for more money. You are already home. You were home the whole time. You just didn't know you were allowed to be.

The fridge is ten feet away. The chair you're sitting in right now is already paid for. Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned is in there right now if you want to run the experiment yourself.

Gary has been advised. He is looking into it.

Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned contains 8mg hemp-derived THC per can. For adults 21 and older only. Not available in all states. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.