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WORK TITLE: A Proper Drink
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://robertsimonson.net/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 98104067
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n98104067
HEADING:
Simonson, Robert
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__ |a Role of a lifetime, 1999: |b CIP t.p. (Robert Simonson)
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__ |a Performance of the century, 2012: |b ECIP t.p. (Robert Simonson) data view ((Brooklyn, NY) has chronicled American theater for a quarter century. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Variety and Playbill.com, where he was editor from 1999 to 2006. He is the author of the biography The Gentleman Press Agent and two collections of theater profiles, Role of a Lifetime and On Broadway, Men Still Wear Hats. In his other life, he drinks cocktails and then writes about them for the New York Times)
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PERSONAL
Children: Asher.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist, theater critic. Playbill.com, editor, 1999-2006.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including New York Times, Time Out New York, Village Voice, Variety, and Playbill.com.
SIDELIGHTS
Robert Simonson is a journalist who writes about American theater and cocktail culture. He was editor at Playbill.com from 1999 to 2006, and has published articles about theater and bartending in New York Times, Time Out New York, Village Voice, and Variety. He has also published several books on theater, theater business, actors, agents, and cocktails. His writings have earned six Spirited Awards nominations.
Performance of the Century
In 2012, Simonson wrote Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater. He traces the founding of the actors’ union in 1913 and its mission to secure the safety, health, and rights of stage actors. He describes how the union dealt with producers, segregation, political hysteria during the blacklist years, and the AIDS epidemic. The union also organized shows for American soldiers during wartime, and promoted Off-Broadway. Writing in the DC Theatre Scene Web site, Brad Hathaway noted the lack of any footnotes or bibliography, saying “that means it is often not as precise or all-encompassing in its descriptions as you would like if you were referring to it for other than a light skim.”
Simonson discovered the joy of cocktails when he first attended the 2006 Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. There he discovered the Moscow Mule and Sazerac. “There were flavors in there I had no experience with…I loved it,” he told Regan Hofmann in an interview online at First We Feast. Getting jaded writing about theater and having always liked wine, he decided to write about cocktails and spirits.
A Proper Drink
In 2016, Simonson published A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World, which chronicles the revival of craft cocktails. Through interviews with more than two hundred bartenders, bar owners, patrons, visionaries, and cocktail connoisseurs, he presents a look at the craft cocktail movement showing how creative cocktails and unique mixes developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He traces the lineage of craft cocktails from innovative cities like New York, San Francisco, and London.
Simonson also offers details on who made what and who contributed to the cocktail culture, and highlights trendy bars, signature cocktails, and the bitters and artisan liqueur industries. He also includes recipes for classic and new cocktails. Writing in Library Journal, Devon Thomas said: “An enjoyable survey of the field, including 40 recipes, that will be best enjoyed by aficionados.” Simonson does an admirable job, “showing how a single bar or bartender can have a butterfly effect in an industry that’s constantly evolving,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, December 1, 2016, Devon Thomas, review of A Proper Drink.
Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2016, review of A Proper Drink.
ONLINE
DC Theatre Scene, https://dctheatrescene.com (January 8, 2013), Brad Hathaway, review of Performance of the Century.
First We Feast, http://firstwefeast.com (September 19, 2016), Regan Hofmann, “The 10 Cocktails That Made My Career: Robert Simonson.”
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (July 18, 2016), Robert Simonson, “At Age 75, the Moscow Mule Gets Its Kick Back.”
Robert Simonson Home Page, http://robertsimonson.net/ (May 1, 2017).*
ABOUT ROBERT SIMONSON
ROBERT SIMONSON, journalist and author, is one of the leading authorities on spirits and cocktail culture in the United States. Called “our man in the liquor-soaked trenches” by the New York Times, he the author of “The Old-Fashioned” (Ten Speed Press, 5/2014) and has written extensively about cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders for the Times, as well as GQ, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Advocate, Imbibe, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn, and Time Out New York. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ABOUT ROBERT SIMONSON
ROBERT SIMONSON, journalist and author, is one of the world's leading authorities on spirits, bars and cocktail culture. Called “our man in the liquor-soaked trenches” by the New York Times, he has written extensively about cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders for the Times, as well as GQ, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Advocate, Imbibe, Saveur, Punch, Eater and Grub Street. He is the author of "The Old-Fashioned: The World's First Classic Cocktail," published by Ten Speed Press in 2014, and a contributor to "The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails," published in 2015. His writings have garnered six Spirited Awards nominations. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his son, Asher.
The 10 Cocktails That Made My Career: Robert Simonson
The New York Times cocktail writer reflects on the boozy revelations that inspired him to ditch theater journalism for the world of spirits.
Regan Hofmann Sep 19, 2016
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Images via Liz Barclay
Robert Simonson didn't know cocktails would be his passion until he'd arrived at Tales of the Cocktail, the annual convention dedicated to all things shaken and stirred. Held every July in New Orleans, the day-drinking capital of the world, Tales is a half professional symposium, half adult summer camp for the globe's top bartenders and savvy spirits brand reps.
As a first step into the cocktail world, a trip to Tales is essentially like showing up at the Olympics with a bathing suit. To hear Simonson tell it, he went out of a combination of politeness and curiosity, invited by the event's organizer, Ann Tuennerman (then Ann Rogers), after a chance meeting in NYC. At the time a veteran theater journalist, he had recently started to feel burned out on the subject and had begun writing about wine as a way to break the monotony. “I always liked wine, and I always wanted to know more about wine, and I’d reached a breaking point of going into wine stores and looking at bottles and knowing nothing,” he says.
But wine turned out to be just a brief diversion, and it was the cocktails at Tales that changed the course of his career. Or rather, one cocktail: a Sazerac, the quintessential New Orleans classic that is not for the faint of palate. At the time, Simonson's cocktail knowledge was minimal—his first drink ever was a Sea Breeze (a.k.a., a vodka-cranberry with some grapefruit juice thrown in)—and the Sazerac's punchy, unapologetic mix of rye, absinthe-like Herbsaint, and Peychaud's bitters was a wake-up call. “There were flavors in there I had no experience with,” he says. “I loved it.”
“The odds are against bartenders at this point. So many drinks have been invented at this point that you brace yourself for disappointment. But you hope they’ll hit it out of the park.”
The drink came at just the right time. 2006 was riding the crest of the craft-cocktail revival—Tales was in its fourth year, and a wave of soon-to-be-iconic bars, including Pegu Club and Death and Co., had just opened around the country. A new class of bartenders were about to permanently change the way we drank, and Simonson was there to witness it all. His latest book, A Proper Drink, is an extensive history of that period, stretching from the mid-'90s to 2010. He maps out the key players and ideas that inspired this boozy revolution, drawing on more than 200 interviews with those who were there.
It's a very different approach from his first book, published in 2014, which was a deep dive into the legacy of just one cocktail: the Old-Fashioned. Simonson is known to be focused in his passions both in writing and in person, and he remains loyal to the gin drinks and classic cocktails that he first fell in love with. Though he will always taste a bar's original concoctions—“When I’m out I sort of feel duty bound to try the original menu. The odds are against bartenders at this point. So many drinks have been invented at this point that you brace yourself for disappointment. But you hope they’ll hit it out of the park.”—he'll generally fall back on something tried-and-true.
And you still can't pry him away from an Old-Fashioned. “It’s a winner every time.”
Robert Simonson
Robert Simonson writes about spirits, cocktails, bars, bartenders, sometimes wine and the whole drinking world shebang for the New York Times and many other publications, including Imbibe, which he began contributing to in 2009. He is also the author of a treatise on his favorite cocktail, called “The Old-Fashioned: The World’s First Classic Cocktail,” published by Ten Speed Press in 2014. He has been nominated for three Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards and one IACP award.
BOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT SIMONSON has written about cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders for the New York Times since 2000. He is the author of A Proper Drink and The Old-Fashioned, and a contributor to The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails and Savoring Gotham. His writings have appeared in Saveur, GQ, Lucky Peach, Whisky Advocate, Imbibe, and many others. A native of Wisconsin, he has lived in Brooklyn since 1988.
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Print Marked Items
Simonson, Robert. A Proper Drink: The Untold
Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the
Civilized Drinking World
Devon Thomas
Library Journal.
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p118. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Simonson, Robert. A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World. Ten Speed. Sept. 2016. 352p. index. ISBN 9781607747543. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781607747550. COOKING
The 1980s were a dark time for cocktail lovers. Ordering a mixed drink at many bars often led to substandard liquor combined with a premade sour mix. Bars that did have cocktail pretensions were about the social scene, and cocktails were simply another booze delivery system. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, bartenders started to wonder what would happen if drinks were given the same amount of care as food. Scattered across the globe, individuals began looking at old cocktail books, creating and re-creating standards that were fresh and balanced, which delighted the eye and the palate. Simonson, drinks writer for the New York Times, lays out the personal history of the craft cocktail movement, tracing its lineage from the epicenters of New York, London, and San Francisco to its spread across the globe, focusing on the many industry professionals, drinkers, bar owners, and characters who contributed to the new cocktail culture. VERDICT An enjoyable survey of the field, including 40 recipes, that will be best enjoyed by aficionados interested in the details of who made what and when.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Thomas, Devon. "Simonson, Robert. A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the
Civilized Drinking World." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 118+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371295&it=r&asid=6b21fcdb5e85135b10b0c99a8f0dc8b4. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472371295
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A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a
Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking
World
Publishers Weekly.
263.29 (July 18, 2016): p206. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World Robert Simonson. Ten Speed, $27 (352p) ISBN 978-1-60774-754-3
Simonson's knowledge of and appreciation for craft cocktails was nil when he sampled his first sazerac in 2006 while visiting New Orleans to attend Tales of the Cocktail, a libation-focused conference that went on to become an iconic event. Realizing that he was at the epicenter of what would become a global movement, Simonson set out to document the bartenders, bars, and drinks that have forever altered the world of cocktails, and he shares their stories here, along with key recipes. He illustrates just how far cocktail culture has come since the stasis of the 1980s, when TGI Friday's, of all establishments, invigorated the industry, offering extensive cocktail training and the best pay for bartenders. New initiates became obsessed with authenticity, scouring bookstores for vintage cocktail recipes while jumpstarting the bitters and artisan liqueur industries on which new cocktails rely so heavily. From there, Simonson's story splinters as he highlights innovative bars such as Milk & Honey, Pegu Club, and Smuggler's Cove as well as the bartenders and their signature cocktails. Simonson does an admirable job of getting his arms around an ever-morphing subject, showing how a single bar or bartender can have a butterfly effect in an industry that's constantly evolving. No matter which side of the bar readers are on, they're sure to work up a powerful thirst. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World." Publishers
Weekly, 18 July 2016, p. 206. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459287588&it=r&asid=cb277c615d702c5971fe8acc45e5a90a. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459287588
about:blank Page 2 of 3
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Role of a Lifetime
American Theatre.
16 (July 1999): p60. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Role of a Lifetime." American Theatre, July 1999, p. 60. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA34889447&it=r&asid=a5a4afdbbe2720f16106d2beeef92c11. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A34889447
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At Age 75, the Moscow Mule Gets Its Kick Back
By ROBERT SIMONSONJULY 18, 2016
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64
Photo
Mike Holmes, owner and bar manager, mixes a Moscow Mule at the Wickman House in Ellison Bay, Wis. Credit Mike Roemer for The New York Times
Ten years ago, I attended a seminar on the history of vodka at Tales of the Cocktail, the annual New Orleans convention. The moderator mentioned a cocktail named the Moscow Mule as “the drink that started it all” — that is, vodka’s popularity in the United States. Invented in 1941, the drink was a mix of vodka, lime juice and ginger beer, typically served in a copper mug.
I had never heard of it.
Last year, in a nothing-special bar in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. (population 9,500 or so), I sat with my niece, who had recently reached drinking age. She struggled over what to order. The waitress suggested, “How about a Moscow Mule?”
Photo
A Moscow Mule made at the Wickman House in Ellison Bay, Wis. Credit Mike Roemer for The New York Times
Once a curious footnote, the Moscow Mule, which turns 75 this year, is now one of the most common drinks on the planet. Snobs may sniff at it, but few drinks have so completely benefited from the current cocktail revival.
On a recent episode of “Better Call Saul,” a lawyer orders a Moscow Mule over lunch. The traditional mugs, once rare antiques, can be bought at Bed Bath & Beyond. And Tales of the Cocktail has declared this year’s event, held Tuesday through Sunday, “the year of the mule.”
Not far from Sturgeon Bay in the even-tinier town of Ellison Bay, Mike Holmes, owner and bar manager of the Wickman House restaurant, recently ordered a new batch of mugs. The cocktail is so popular, he said, that whenever one person orders a Moscow Mule, there is a run on the drink.
NYT FoodCocktails
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How does a cocktail go from obscurity to ubiquity in a decade? That the mule is one of the few classic cocktails made with vodka helps; the industry has promoted it heavily.
“We’ve really seen it rise in popularity on the coasts three or four years ago,” said Nick Guastaferro, brand director for Absolut vodka in the United States, “and we saw it as a way to focus our cocktail strategy on the mule.”
That strategy includes educating bartenders and consumers about the drink, campaigning to get it onto bar menus, and providing bars with those pricey copper cups. (Look at your mug next time you order one; chances are, there is a vodka brand’s logo on it.)
Photo
In Louisville, Ky., the Silver Dollar’s own take on the Moscow Mule mixes Kentucky bourbon, ginger syrup and lime juice over shaved ice. Credit Tyler Bissmeyer for The New York Times
GuestMetrics, a data analytics firm that tracks consumer spending, reports that Moscow Mule menu placements in 2015 rose 60 percent over the previous year. Requests for the drink constituted more than 7 percent of all cocktail orders last year, making it nearly as popular as the Bloody Mary and the mojito.
Appropriately, the story of the Moscow Mule’s origin is a tale of pure capitalism. As the legend goes, John Martin, president of Heublein, who was trying to persuade Americans to drink his Smirnoff vodka, met up with Jack Morgan, owner of the Cock ‘n’ Bull pub on the Sunset Strip, who made a ginger beer drinkers were equally uninterested in. (Some versions of the story include a third purveyor of unwanted goods: copper mugs. Additionally, the cocktail historian David Wondrich says the drink may have been hatched by Mr. Martin and Mr. Morgan in New York, even if it took flight in Los Angeles. Cocktail history is about as clear as the rocks glasses in a dive bar.)
The resulting drink took off among the Hollywood crowd.
Its comeback makes some principled mixologists sigh. “As a cocktail, it’s fine,” said Colin Shearn, who has worked in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Louisville, Ky., fielding countless orders for mules in each city. “It’s not a bad drink. I just feel like it’s symbolic with everything that is wrong with American drinking habits. The people who I see drinking it these days, they know they’re supposed to be drinking something cool and craft. But they’re still set in their own ways to not move beyond vodka.”
Photo
Credit Ben Sklar for The New York Times
Not all mules these days are made with vodka, though. Bartenders are applying the recipe to any spirit, from Spanish brandy (at Whisler’s in Austin, Tex.) to bourbon (at the Silver Dollar in Louisville). Porchlight, in the West Chelsea section of Manhattan, offers a frozen version with aquavit, banana liqueur and coconut.
64
COMMENTS
As Mr. Shearn grudgingly admitted: “Spirit, ginger, lime, bubbles, those are all great things. The template is foolproof.”
Performance of the Century: 100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater
January 8, 2013 by Brad Hathaway
Let’s start the year off with a book you probably didn’t know you needed. It is one of those books that jump off the shelf at you when you see it, but only if you read the sub-title.
The title, “Performance of the Century”, doesn’t really hint at what the book is about, and after all there are lots of compilations of notable performances or profiles of famous performers.
The sub-title, “100 Years of Actors’ Equity Association and the Rise of Professional American Theater”, on the other hand, sets the volume apart from those compilations and gives a glimmer of its coverage and scope.
Most unions that have survived a century would have an interesting and important story to tell. Actors’ Equity, representing as it has some of the most famous and most influential practitioners of the thespian arts, has a history sprinkled with stars. Still, the story is much more than that.
As Robert Simonson relates, the position in society that actors occupy has changed astonishingly over the period of the union’s existence. Rising from the level of a profession looked down on to the extent that hotels refused them lodging, churches refused them services (such as weddings and funerals) and society expected them to arrive by the back door to perform their little entertainments, the people at the top of the profession are now honored at the White House, chronicled by an at times fawning press, pestered by paparazzi and sought out for endorsements by causes from the charitable to the political.
Not all of this miraculous transformation has been the result of unionization, and it is still true that the profession of performing retains one of the highest unemployment rates of any calling. However, Equity can certainly claim credit for many improvements in an actor’s life.
Consider that prior to the establishment of Actors’ Equity it was standard procedure for producers to require actors to rehearse without pay for weeks prior to a show’s opening. In some instances, the “no pay till we open” even applied to “previews” to which producers sold tickets but pocketed the proceeds.
Consider, too, that actresses often had to buy their own costumes before they could appear in a show or that some touring shows did not pay for lodging. Then, often there was no guarantee of so much as a ticket home if the show folded on the road.
The strike of 1919, the story of which is well told in these lavishly illustrated pages, began the process of changing all that. The terms of employment progressed first to more tenable provisions and then, thanks to continued efforts by the union, such features as health insurance and retirement benefits were added.
Equity has had many programs over the years which went beyond traditional union activities. The book tells the story of the Equity Library Theater that gave actors a chance to practice their craft when jobs weren’t available and also gave the theater community a chance to develop new customers which they call an “audience.”
There’s the story of the Agent Access Auditions that Equity established to give members – old and young – a shot at landing not just a role but an agent who might get them shots at lots of roles.
While Equity was established in New York City, it’s coverage eventually expanded nation wide, and not just for New York-based actors. Simonson includes a surprisingly comprehensive, if brief, overview of the Regional Theater Movement with interesting takes on the strengths and unique qualities of different companies from Washington DC’s Arena Stage to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
Equity represents stage managers as well as working actors for reasons which are well explained in the nifty chapter on that career track.
It is important to note that Simonson appears to be writing what might be called an “authorized biography” if its subject were a person rather than an organization. Note that the copyright for the book is held by Actors’ Equity Association, not by Simonson. As a result, it is hard to determine just how much editorial freedom Simonson enjoyed.
He certainly puts the most positive spin on the story of Equity’s record during the blacklisting era, making the most of the fact that the Association didn’t cave as far as some other theatrical unions or organizations to the pressures of the likes of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, the Senate Investigations Subcommittee of Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn or even the blacklisting magazine “Red Channels.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t sit in judgment, not having lived through that period as an adult, and let them take credit for only having a loyalty oath for their governing council members and not for the entire membership. They certainly deserve kudos for insisting on a “no blacklist” clause in their standard agreement by 1952.
Equity also deserves all the credit the book gives them for not going as far overboard with censorship as Hollywood did with the Hays Office of the 1920s and 30s but they did establish “Citizens Play Juries” in the 20s to respond to complaints of excessive sexuality or depravity in productions featuring Equity members.
Certainly, the organization deserves all the credit the book gives it for its role in the fight against AIDS. Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids is a sterling story of success.
As enjoyable a read as the book is it would also serve as an incredibly valuable resource if it only had any indication of the sources of its information. However, there is no bibliography, not a single note (foot or end) and precious few attributions in the text. That text is filled with assertions, quotes, dates and illustrative detail. But where did they come from? Its prose is intentionally entertaining, but that means it is often not as precise or all encompassing in its descriptions as you would like if you were referring to it for other than a light skim.