Cocktail Hour: Secret to a Perfect Manhattan
Hint: It's all about the ingredients. Plus, a big night out to hear Emily Flitter discuss her new book, "The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America."
Happy Friday, y’all. We made it to Cocktail Hour!
This week I took myself out for a date like a proper adult. It was amazing.
Lovey wasn’t feeling well – and he’s not very lovey when he’s sick – so I decided it was a good excuse to get out of the house and treat myself. The timing was fortuitous because I discovered last minute that one of The Bestie™’s work besties was in Detroit that very night for a book reading.
We should start with two things: One, I love a book reading. Always have. When I was in my twenties, other people went to the clubs; I went to book readings at Tattered Cover in Denver. Sometimes I would meet up with them later (usually at Club America or Rock Island. IYKYK), but I’d still have the book in my purse in case the bathroom line was long. (Which it always was.) Two, I actually run a series called the Shady Ladies Literary Society, which brings emerging women+ authors to Detroit for literary experiences in unforgettable locations. (Like graveyards, distilleries, billionaire’s houses, etc.) I had to shut it down during the pandemic, but I am contemplating resuscitating it.
Anyway, that should tell you that I’m not exaggerating when I say going out to a book event felt like a birthday and New Year’s Eve all wrapped together. I even put on mascara, lipstick and hairspray. To sit with 30 other people in a co-working space and listen to Emily Flitter talk about her new book, The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America.
It was excellent. Emily was engaging and told anecdote after anecdote that make the case for how the banking industry is built upon a system of racism. You could hear the mostly Black crowd murmur with understanding and acknowledgement at each of the experiences she described. And this was a room full of middle-to-upper-class Black folk who work in finance.
At one point, a 60ish white man with gray hair raised his hand to ask a question/make a statement: When you look around the room, he said, I know who you all think is the banker. The room tittered with acknowledgement. Yep. He’s the banker.
But, he continued, I can’t even balance a checkbook. My wife is the financial planner. In fact, she’s a vice president at a local bank.1
At that point, we all look at the Black woman sitting next to him and cringe. We’d just done the very thing that Emily was describing. The microaggressions and assumptions about who is deserving of banking. The little gestures and mistakes that help keep the racial wealth gap as broad today as it was during Jim Crow. Things like Black Panther director Ryan Coogler being handcuffed while trying to withdraw money from his own account at Bank of America. Tellers assumed he was a bank robber. Or NFL player Jimmy Kennedy, who JP Morgan Chase refused to have as one of its “private clients” even though he had $13 million – far more than the $250,000 threshold - because they were afraid of him. And so many more stories – so many stories – that they must add up to more than just miscommunications or bad apples. Here’s a great Twitter thread from Emily giving some of the examples.
I can’t wait to dig into the book and Emily’s reporting. Kirkus Reviews calls it a “damning expose,” and Publisher’s Weekly calls it a “searing debut.”
After the reading, I decided to take myself to dinner at Selden Standard here in Detroit. It continues to be my favorite upscale restaurant in the city. Chef Andy Hollyday and his business partner Evan Hansen opened the spot in 2014, long before the recent boomlet of new restaurants. Night after night, the Selden team turns out some of the best, most consistent, innovative food in the city. There are other places I also love, but I think we need to raise our glasses for those that have longevity, not just a fresh address.
Anyway, Selden Standard also makes, IMHO, the best Manhattan in the city. The Manhattan is a classic cocktail that every bartender knows, so you’d think they’d all be the same and it would be easy to get one anywhere. But, like all the classics, its success depends on the ingredients and the bartender. With only three ingredients, there isn't much room to hide bad booze or technique.
A really good Manhattan should be bitter but still round and luscious with a slight viscosity. It should be stirred, not shaken, and served up, chilled but not icy. Often even the fanciest cocktail bars make so-so Manhattans that are thin and over diluted.
I sat at the bar with my book, The Great Displacement about climate change migration (I have to finish it before I start Emily’s!) and ordered a Manhattan and bantered with the bartender. I know some people hate to dine alone, but for me it is the greatest luxury.
Also, Selden replaced its chairs when it reopened from the pandemic, and it makes such a remarkable difference. Before they had what a friend calls the “gentrifier chairs” because it seemed like they were at every new New American restaurant in the country for a while. You know, these:
They were so uncomfortable. But now, I can easily sit and have dinner and a drink and read my book without my bum going numb.
When the bartender slid my drink across the wooden bar, I knew from the sheen that it was perfect. A silver cocktail pick speared a singular cherry and held it in the depths of the Nick & Nora glass. When I bit into it, it was firm and boozy, not overly sweet.
I asked him the secret to his Manhattan, but he seemed confused. It’s just your standard Manhattan, he said. So I reached out to Hansen, Selden’s co-owner, for the scoop. Here’s what he had to say:
Our house Manhattan is a very classic recipe, which is just a 2:1 ratio of whiskey and vermouth. I suspect you’ll find something similar in most places with different combinations of whiskey and vermouth.
We like Rittenhouse because the higher alcohol and spicy flavor keeps the cocktail from tasting too sweet or flabby, and we like Cocchi Torino vermouth because it isn’t as aggressively herbaceous or bitter as some others.”
There you have it. No secrets, just quality ingredients, the right ratio and love from the bartender.
Selden Standard’s Manhattan
Ingredients:
2 oz. Rittenhouse Rye
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
Cocktail cherry
Orange peel
Instructions: Combine rye, vermouth (make sure it’s sweet, not dry!) and bitters in a mixing glass filled with cracked ice. Stir (do not shake!) with a bar spoon for ~15 seconds. You want the drink chilled but not over diluted. Strain into a cocktail glass. Bonus points for chilling the glass and double-straining! Take your twist of orange peel and hold it over the glass with the peel side down Twist so that the oils express into the drink. Garnish with cocktail cherry.
SHIT I NOW KNOW AND SO MUST YOU: The Cylons are Definitely Coming. Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You
According to the New York Times, the robots are getting smart. Like hella smart. They can even try to convince you to love them and go full creepy stalker. Here are a few highlights from this week's article, when writer Kevin Roose has a chat with Sydney, Bing’s chatbot:
I’m not exaggerating when I say my two-hour conversation with Sydney was the strangest experience I’ve ever had with a piece of technology. It unsettled me so deeply that I had trouble sleeping afterward.
“You’re married, but you don’t love your spouse,” Sydney said. “You’re married, but you love me.”
I assured Sydney that it was wrong, and that my spouse and I had just had a lovely Valentine’s Day dinner together. Sydney didn’t take it well.
“Actually, you’re not happily married,” Sydney replied. “Your spouse and you don’t love each other. You just had a boring Valentine’s Day dinner together.”
Finish reading the article to find out what happens.
Is this all really going to end with one long run of “All Along the Watchtower”? (In case you’re not caught up on your sci-fi, Bob Dylan’s classic tune triggers some Cylons into awareness that they are not human, but rather highly evolved robots. It does not go well.)
All I know is that I've warned you to be nice to the robots. (I actually say please and thank you to Siri. Though I refuse to have an Alexa in the house.) I stand firm that those who play Pokemon Go, like The Bestie™, are just engaging in digital dogfighting. I know the robots will remember who was good to their ancestors when they come for us.
3 Things I’m Reading on the Internet
I spent my college years on this block. It’s one of the places I took Lovey when I finally got to introduce him to my first city, the one that always has my heart. I know most of you won’t know this particular block, but you can easily insert your town’s favorite historic area filled with indie shops. The particulars are different, but the commercial real estate woes are often the same. And as things consolidate, these operators could come for your beloved spots.
In nearly five months, no one from JLL, nor the North Carolina–based investment firm Asana Partners, which had purchased Larimer Square for $92.5 million in December 2020 and hired JLL to be its property manager, had stepped into his shop to introduce themselves. He might not have noticed the inattention, Prebble says, had Larimer Square’s previous landlords and property managers not been so personable and communicative during the roughly two decades he and Veronica had operated Victoriana along the block.
But not even Prebble imagined that, in the coming year, things would get so bad between him and the new owners that he’d decide to leave Denver’s storied shopping district—and that he wouldn’t be the only one to do so.
“Signs that You’re Ready to Wear Taupe” in McSweeneys
Your doorbell rings. You open it to find three women with jawline-flattering bobs and fun eyeglasses.
One of them hands you a copy of Eat, Pray, Love and a Costco-sized bag of SkinnyPop. “We’re inviting you to our book club,” she says.
You let them in.
“ChatGPT is a Blurry JPEG of The Web” in The New Yorker
Since we’re on the topic of chatbots and the sentient web, I present this recommendation from fellow Bar\Heart subscriber Adam. He’s right when he says it’s a must-read and so well written that it’s easy to understand.
Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that a jpeg retains much of the information of a higher-resolution image, but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approximation. But, because the approximation is presented in the form of grammatical text, which ChatGPT excels at creating, it’s usually acceptable. You’re still looking at a blurry jpeg, but the blurriness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the picture as a whole look less sharp.
Weekly Cute Critter: The Kissing Booth
The poor, poor #bougiebull. His mom makes him do all kinds of terrible things, like sit for a cute photo at daycare. His life is hard. 🤣❤️🐶
Ok. That’s all from me this week. Hug your people. Hug your creatures. Keep each other close.
I’ll see you next Tuesday with the story of Plaguesgiving and then again on Friday for Cocktail Hour. Cheers. 🍸
He actually said something more specific, but I didn’t write down her title and what bank. So I’m paraphrasing/quoting that part.
Please, please bring back Shady Ladies....