Lou's Official Report on the Bar Tab: A Full Audit
I have the receipt right here. I am looking at it. I am going to tell you what I see, and I want you to stay calm, because one of us has to.
The bar just charged you forty-two dollars for two old fashioneds. Two. I counted. Forty-two dollars for two glasses of whiskey, a sugar cube, and some bitters, which have been the same bitters since 1824 and cost about eleven dollars a bottle at the grocery store. I know because I have bought them. I did not need a vest to sell them to me.
So I sat down with the receipt. I did the math. And I am here to report that you are not paying for a cocktail. You are paying for a lifestyle. Specifically, somebody else's lifestyle. And I am going to walk you through it line by line because nobody else will, and I have been waiting thirty years to give this particular talk.
The Itemized Breakdown of What You Actually Paid For
First: the tattoos. Full sleeves. Both arms. Listen, I am not against tattoos. A man can do what he wants with his arms. But those tattoos cost somewhere between three and eight thousand dollars, and I am telling you, you financed them. Every time the bar just charged you eighteen dollars for a drink that costs four dollars to make, a little bit of that spread went directly into a forearm dragon. You are a patron of the arts. You did not sign up for that.
Second: the haircut. It is called a "fade" and it costs sixty dollars every three weeks and it requires forty-five minutes of maintenance every morning involving two different products, one of which smells like a cedar forest had an argument with a barbershop. You paid for that too. It is baked into the cocktail. Nobody will tell you this. I am telling you this.
Third: the garnish. Somebody put a smoked rosemary sprig in my old fashioned and handed it to me like a hero. I should have called the police. You do not garnish an old fashioned with a lit piece of shrubbery. You do not improve it. You do not smoke it, freeze-dry it, torch it, or suspend it in a sphere of flavored ice that took four hours to make. You sit down, you shut up, and you drink what works. The rosemary sprig costs the bar forty cents and they charged me for the theater of it. I did not want the theater. I wanted the drink.
Fourth: the ice. Large-format artisanal ice. ICE. That is frozen weather. I am not bankrolling a charity for the sky. A Kold-Draft machine and a serrated knife does not constitute craftsmanship. It constitutes a bar that bought a Kold-Draft machine and owns a serrated knife. You paid three dollars of that forty-two for frozen weather, shaped into a cube, by a man with a dragon on his arm.
Fifth, and this one I want you to really sit with: the music. There is a DJ. Not a good DJ. A person with a laptop and a very serious expression who is doing something to the music that the music did not ask for. That person costs two hundred dollars a night and you are splitting that two hundred dollars with everyone else in the room, none of whom asked for this either.
The Part Where I Tell You What a Cocktail Actually Is
A cocktail is whiskey, bitters, sugar, and an orange peel. That is an old fashioned. It has been an old fashioned since before your bartender's grandfather was born. It does not need a story. It does not need a provenance card. It does not need to be "deconstructed" or "elevated" or served in a glass that looks like a chemistry beaker from a high school that got a grant.
I have had this argument for thirty years. I sold pipe. I know what something is worth. I know what markup looks like. And I am telling you that the bar just charged you for everything except the actual cocktail.
Now. I want to tell you what I do instead, and I want you to pay attention because I am only going to say this once and then I am going to go back to being furious about the receipt.
I keep Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned in the fridge. Four-pack, sixteen ninety-nine. Eight milligrams of THC per can. Real bitters, real orange, real oak, real cocktail flavor built from scratch, not from a syrup, not from a bag, not from anything a man with sleeve tattoos had to torch in front of you to justify the price. No sleeves required. No dragon on any arm involved in the making of this drink. No DJ. No serrated ice knife. No theater.
Just the old fashioned. The way it was supposed to be. Damn right.
The Math, Stated Plainly, Because Apparently Someone Has to Do It
Four cans at sixteen ninety-nine is four dollars and twenty-five cents a drink. Eight milligrams of THC per can, which is the sweet spot: strong enough to take the edge off, light enough that you are still a functioning adult who can have a conversation. Fast onset because of the nano-emulsification, which is a word Herb likes to say at dinner parties and I tolerate because he is usually right about the chemistry even when he is wrong about everything else.
Compare that to forty-two dollars for two drinks at a bar where the music sounds like a laptop falling down stairs and the garnish is on fire.
I did the math. The math is not close.
If you want to explore your other options, because I am a reasonable man and I believe in the full menu, we also carry Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini for the people who need the coffee and the THC at the same time, and Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan for the people who want something that makes an entrance without costing you a bartender's car payment. If you cannot make up your mind, which is a separate problem I cannot solve for you, there is always The Variety Pack, which gives you all four and lets you work it out at home, where nobody is charging you for the ambient lighting.
The Conclusion of the Audit, Filed Officially
I am not saying bars are bad. I am saying you should know what you are paying for. You are paying for real estate on a busy street, a staff that went to a two-week cocktail certification course, ice that was cut by hand for reasons nobody can fully explain, and a garnish that is currently on fire in my old fashioned, which I did not order and will not be paying for a second time.
The tattoos are nice. I am sure the dragon means something. That is between the bartender and the dragon. It is not between me and my drink.
Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned is in the fridge right now. Sixteen ninety-nine for four. Eight milligrams. No sleeves. No theater. No rosemary on fire. You know where to find it.
I am going to go sit down. I am still holding the receipt. I want you to know that.
For 21+ adults only. Hemp-derived THC. Legal where sold. This product has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please enjoy responsibly and consult the laws in your state before purchasing.
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