Photo by Zanastardust/Flickr CC
With the double whammy of Michael Jackson and John Hughes passing, one gets the feeling that '80s pop icons are becoming endangered. These are sad times, but Madonna's wedding dress, the Rubik's Cube, and Tom Cruise as Brian Flanagan from Cocktail: The Movie I'm sure, are all on notice.
I don't wish any of these things gone. I'm a child the '80s. I have fond memories of pop culture icons. There are, however, some '80s icons that deserve, at least, a down payment on the farm. For one, I'd be willing to turn over my memories of Optimus Prime if they'd stop making those awful Transformers movies and admit that they've done irreparable harm to the franchise. But I digress.
No '80s icon deserves to be swept into the dustbin of history more than those tragic fluorescent-colored cocktails served in angular "martini" glasses mimicking women's shoulder pads of the era. They are glaring, neon reminders of the decade's penchant for style over substance. Come to think of it, here are a few more markers of drinking in the '80s that deserve to take the slow ride on a trash barge:
1. Calling Everything a Martini
The '80s ushered in the age of calling everything served in an angular glass with a stem a martini. If you're reading this then I presume you're over 21, which tells me that you know who is the president of the United States, how to drive a car, and have registered for selective service. Add to that list of key markers of adulthood the recognition that a martini is a very specific drink containing gin (or vodka) and vermouth.
2. The Long Island Iced Tea
The Long Island Iced Tea is delicious, but the premise is absurd: take all the white liquors and mix them with two ingredients that essentially mask the flavors. I also liked "Pop Rocks," but I'm more than happy to see them fall away for other, better candies. I once had someone come in and ask for a Long Island Iced Tea without ice, sour, or coke. That was the day my enthusiasm for this tea tipple faded. RIP LIT.
3. Blue-"Flavored" Drinks
I'd be more than happy to see Blue Curacao flourish behind bars if it wasn't for the absurd amount of blue drinks. I can even tolerate the Blue Hawaiian; it's the Blue Martini, Blue Motorcycle, and so on. Blue is a rare color found in food for a reason and, in my belief, should be rare in the drink world too.
4. Flair Bartending
The athleticism in flair bartending is amazing. I'm very impressed. When a bartender incorporates a little flair in their daily routine, cool. Bartending must necessarily involve showmanship, but flair bartending itself is all about the sport and little about the quality of drinks. Want good drinks? That has nothing to do with flipping a bottle. Sorry to spoil your "cocktails and dreams."
5. Crude but Corny Shot Names
We've already reviewed drink names, but some of the '80s shots just slid right off the tracks and went from a bad pun to worse. Red-Headed Sluts, Purple Hooters, Sex on the Beach; collectively this category is called "stripper shots." It's funny to talk about, but the minute you order one, your fond memories of the '80s will recede in a panic of, "What the hell did I just drink?" If you want a shot, I recommend the many different flavors of whiskey: bourbon, rye, and scotch, for example.
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Well, I bartended in NYC from 1978 to 1993, so I feel like I can speak with authority on '80s bartending trends--and I don't even know what you mean by "those tragic fluorescent-colored cocktails served in angular 'martini' glasses mimicking women's shoulder pads."
The drink that caused me the most grief in the '80s was the frozen strawberry daiquiri (make one, and suddenly the orders are pouring in from all over). The drinks with the stupidest names were Harvey Wallbanger and Sex on the Beach. There was a late flair for Negronis. But mostly, bartending in the '80s was incredibly straightforward. Vodka-based drinks were huge. Martinis were martinis (although people seemed to think the default was vodka, rather than gin). Appletinis, cosmopolitans, and mojitos weren't even twinkles in a daddy bartender's eye. I never made a blue drink in 15 years. And we all laughed our ASSES off at Tom Cruise in Cocktail: do you see how much booze is flying out of the pourers every time he flips a bottle? No self-respecting profit-loving bar owner in the world would allow that crap.
Most of the stuff you describe was absolutely after I left bartending in '93. So cut the '80s some slack, eh?
Seconding Karen! As a bartender for most of the nineties, I've made more appletinis, lemon drops (lemon martinis), chocolate martinis, cosmopolitans, midori drinks and rum drinks with silly names than I can shake a shaker at.
You've got to rethink this post, perhaps putting it aside until one of the Indigo Girls or Sarah Jessica Parker passes on. You are talking about the nineties. The late nineties, really, along with Sex and the City in 1998.
All these dumbass trends evolved while I was at the height of my game.
I'm not a bartender but I've done a fair amount of drinking and the "tini" craze did not hit until much later than the 80's. In fact, sometime around 1994 I decided that I wanted to perfect the martini (the proper kind with gin)but I had trouble finding martini glasses. A few years later they were everywhere.
I worked the bar in Chicago in the kind of place commodity traders hung out in after work. We could have only stocked Dewars, Absolut, and Miller Lt. and no one would've noticed. I share Karen's disdain for the the strawberry daiquiri so I was both out of strawberries and stuck with a broken blender every day I spent behind the bar.
The "tini" fad hit Philadelphia in approximately 1993. How old is the author?
As a bartender and a columnist that writes about drink trends I have to agree with the other posts that most of what Mr. Brown is describing is drink fashion through the late 90s. And unfortunately, I'm not quite sure all of these trends are over - such as the popularity of the cocktail glass (martini glass) or calling everything a martini. And quite honestly, I think we can all agree that the word martini has taken on a new meaning to encompass all of these neon-colored drinks in stemmed triangular glasses. But thank you for the post about flair bartending, I love to watch these guys and gals who can do trick after trick behind the bar but I have yet to find one that can make a palatable drink. And the vulgar shot names, it always amazes me when Conservative Connie will come to a busy bar shouting one vulgarity after another because it is the name of a 2 oz pink shot, but otherwise she wouldn't even mumble these words in an empty room.
http://www.qmixalot.blogspot.com/
I thought I would enjoy reading this article and I was doing just that until I read that it was presumed that I, the reader, should have registered for selective service. I meet all of the other "presumptions," too bad that Derek Brown does not also presume that women read his articles, and instead chose to exclude half of the population from his "markers of adulthood."
Sevenlumina, I hadn't thought out the implications of the way I phrased that particular statement as I was mostly referring to my own markers of adulthood. I certainly hope that half the population continues to read my posts, although I'd be satisfied if you would continue to read them. My apology!
Ok, ok. I certainly did wrap some 90's trends into a convenient metaphor, and while the LIT and some questionably-named drinks still haunt the 80's (along with "frozen daiquiris"), I may have gone too far with the Blue Martini. That was more of a 90's phenomena. One of the great writers on martinis, Lowell Edmunds, acknowledges as much in his excellent book "Martini, Straight Up."
Although I do ask you to consider that the Cosmo, which I find no fault with when made well, did appear in the mid-80s long before "Sex in the City." Flair bartending also has some practitioners, such as Toby Ellis, who make great drinks. I suppose my rant, taken in the right vein, is simply an attack on some of the worst elements that sank cocktail culture and the preceding decades all have a contributed a little to craft bartending's demise.
For those of you who were stalwarts of good drinking during the 80's and 90's and sadly watched it decline, I applaud your enthusiasm and I promise to write a post correcting some of my overstatements.
I'm a gin martini purist so even Vodka isn't Kosher. Speaking of which, when did the "bacon martini" come to be?
RIP Kenneth Bacon, I shall drink a proper martini in your honor.
Hmm, the 80s aren't the best decade for me in terms of accurate recall. But I remember the Long Island iced teas, and the disastrous effect they could have. (Wasn't that the point?) Also plenty of wine coolers in the early 80s, and then in the later 80s gin & tonics and Miller Lite.
When did "craft" beer start? I always felt like the small brewery thing began with Sam Adams, and that it was an 80s trend.
The "craft" beer movement that we know today can be traced back to Fritz Maytag's purchase of Anchor Brewing in 1965. At the time, Anchor was a tiny, struggling San Fransico brewery. But by the mid 1980s, Maytag had stablized the brewery and was selling the beer nationally (albeit on a rather small scale). This was about the time Jim Koch started the Boston Beer Company and began producing Samuel Adams (which at the time was contract brewed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company). The explosion of the craft beer scene occured in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And like the classic cocktails we're rediscovering today, craft breweries were the norm before Prohibition. Unfortunately, most of the small, regional breweries were unable to survive Prohibition. The big guys -- Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors -- did so by producing other products.