Am I Famous Now…

There’s a little thing not that many people know about, but one blogger always reminds me of it.

Sometimes I wished I lived in another era. Far away from the information highway and media. Far away from modern society and IT. Far away from sophistication.

I don’t mean the wonderfully described and worldly drawn by Patrick Süskind Middle Age world. A world and era where people at one side of the Seine (Paris, France) didn’t know what happened at the other side of the river. In the same town.

No, the era that makes me weak, makes me dream is full of small cafés, locals trenched in a coat of blue smoke.
Even if the locations were bigger, low light and the mark of nicotine on the walls has given those rooms a claustrophobic touch. Tthe smoke curtain makes the ceiling feel lower.
But still have those locations been the inspiration of many cultural generations.

The noise level was high in those places, but there was no sophisticated DJ system, most of time there was no music at all. People spoke with each other, they communicated and didn’t need the Internet or even cell phones to do so.
They sat together at tables, a candle in the middle, and smoked away. Coffee, wine and adult beverages alcohol were omnipresent. Nicotine often was mixed with other additives and it was the golden age of worm wood… absinthe. Recipes of that period mention amounts as high as 95mg/l worm wood.

Locals were filled with internationally respected artists, artists of the written, spoken and drawn word and waiters often wore leg-long white aprons.
Poets, film producers, philosophers, literary masters and several generations, streams of visual artists made those smoking caves notorious.
The most known areas in Europe are Mont-Martre in Paris (F) and The Ramblas in Barcelona (E).

From Van Gogh, Gauguin, Paul Delvaux, André Breton and his freind Salvador Dali, the genius, to the master Hemingway. All did they frequent those cafés. Impressionism, expressionism, Jügendstill and Art Déco, surrealism… not only visual (and written) periods, but also a milestone in the modern history of alcohol and drinks.

Until the Spanish Civil War, and later WWII, but also industrialism, saw several pioneers go into exile in the US, other killed or just one of the icons of modern alcoholism, Hemingway, started traveling the world and visited almost every (cocktail) bar he could find, spending his days with alcohol, unknowingly creating one after the other cocktail, cafés used to be the epicenter of the Second Age of Enlightment.

I wished I could have shared a table with García Lorca, discussed women with my all time idol Salvador Dali, shared my depression with Vincent Van Gogh, visualized my best absinthe trip in a Luis Buñuel movie and refined the Gimlet with Ernest Hemingway while enjoying a Monte Christo.

Years before some asshole decided the Martini should be made with Vodka and be shaken

The Martini is a Gin drink. Period.
And genuine Vodka wasn’t a drink nipped by women, not a smoothly flavored clean spirit. Original vodka had a very strong taste, much worse than Gin.

Sigh, why do cafés and bistros nowadays offer wireless internet connection or worse even, are replaced by coffee raping chains such as $tarfuck$?
And or cocktails soulless mixes of hundreds of ingredients, but not wonderful creations making even the worst alcohol taste delightfully?