In extreme cases of anguish and collapse, tycoons of the Commodore Vanderbilt era were known to stop their carriages on the way downtown, and New York's original “cocktail route” was not along upper Broadway, but at vantage points situated between Murray Hill and the financial district of Wall Street. Palsied sirs were forever signaling their coachmen to pull over or descending from the steam-drawn elevated cars for a quick one at Fourteenth Street, and the medicinal after-breakfast cocktail became as much of a downtown institution as Jim Fisk or the passing of an Eric dividend.
When, therefore, you get a firm grip on the bar for your first morning sour or clasp the initial brandy and soda with both hands in the interest of getting it intact to the human face, pause briefly and think of the heroic age when Martinis and Manhattans were conventionally hoisted before the breakfast spots were dry on the facing of the town's frock coats! Tell that to your broker when he tries to persuade you from the bar at the Recess Club after nothing more than a sissified sherry. Wall Street was populated with men in those days!
BOULEVARD BACKCHAT: Those who have missed the famous mouthwashes of Floris of London since the supply was cut off by the war, should by now be able to lay in a stock once more at Leslie's, the chemists, in East Fifty-third Street. Among those addicted to their use the stuff is practically as habit-forming as opium, and twice as expensive. … Sherry Wine and Spirits, New York's old established firm of purveyors, have moved to more spacious premises just across Madison Avenue from their former stand. … Although the prices of French champagnes and other wines in proportion have been reduced in some cases by as much as 20 per cent as a result of the devaluation of the franc, no luxury restaurant known to this department in New York has marked down a single item on its wine card. … The Chevaliers du Tastevin are shopping for a hotel which can serve their November dinner in the style they require, but the circumstance that they require solid gold service and other splendid flourishes pretty well limits the field to four New York hostels. They should be available to the legendary Palace in San Francisco, which has solid eighteen-carat service for one hundred guests… Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide (Doubleday) full of recipes from his bamboo bar in Oakland, is hailed on the dust jacket by Kenneth Roberts as “far and away the best bartender's guide ever written,” a powerful endorsement. … Pat Rafferty, dean of Plaza cab-rank jehus, is back on duty again at the age of seventy-eight after three years' absence occasioned by a fall from his box. “Drink six ounces of bourbon every morning before breakfast and smoke a pipe that will kill fleas on a down-wind dog and you'll live to be a hundred,” is his formula for longevity.
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