Bar Scrawl

The book quoted here is Imbibe, by David Wondrich, who helped me track down the original article for this story! The book just came out in a new edition. Buy a copy here:

The drink also inspired this amazing poem, published in the New York Evening World on July 3, 1901:

Oh, siren of the summer drinks!
A pale rose in the shattered ice
Glows like the cheek of that sweet minx
Who names this drink of paradise.

Of raspberries their syrup soul
From tender fruit most tender nursed
And fragrant lime that reach the goal
And make a blessing of a thirst.

Oh, don’t forget the Plymouth gin
That makes of water merry jest-
Its pale and weak and soulless twin
That never stirred my lady’s breast.

And ice! Oh cool refreshing mass!
Oh grateful music to the ear!
Crushed, shattered powdered in the glass,
A grateful frozen poem there.

Then ale of ginger on the top-
Instinct with life and knows its biz-
That leaps out with a regal pop
As though it were the real old fizz.

Lo, crimson Venus that we hath!
The heartless cherry, sweetly nice
Fresh from a Maraschino bath
To rest upon a couch of ice.

A slice of orange, disc of gold.
The crowning glory of the float;
The drinks complete and smoking cold
And ready for the arid throat

To you, sweet “Florodora” maid,
Who caused this summer’s blessing make,
I drink the tipple in the shade
And bless you for it, Susie Drake.