{"id":540,"date":"2013-09-24T13:02:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T13:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2013\/09\/unpacking-my-bar-by-susan-harlan.html"},"modified":"2013-09-24T13:02:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-24T13:02:22","slug":"unpacking-my-bar-by-susan-harlan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=540","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking My Bar, by Susan Harlan"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Ed. note: This gorgeous essay came over the transom, from cocktailian and friend of the blog Susan Harlan.)<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n

\n\"1305378_10151601302736428_236436410_n\"<\/p>\n

I am unpacking
\nmy bar. Yes, I am. My bar was just delivered, and it has all the potential of a
\nnew thing. And now I am going to fill it with old things.<\/p>\n

This bar will
\nhouse many objects that have been in storage for the last year. These things
\nare hidden away in boxes that have been hidden away in warehouses. Taking
\nthings out of boxes is like acquiring them for the first time. My dining room
\nfloor is covered with crumpled packing paper. I am surrounded by boxes, and I
\nhave an X-Acto knife.<\/p>\n

I gaze on this
\nnew bar, this gorgeous creation of chrome and wood with its vacant shelves and
\nmirrored back, and I know I should be unpacking more practical things. I should
\nprobably unpack my clothes, toiletries, and dishes. But I\u2019m not going to. I
\nhave a whole house to unpack, but I am unpacking my bar.<\/p>\n

I open the
\ndoors to this bar. The inside smells deliciously of wood, but it has an
\nappealingly fake varnished smell, too, as if this bar of mine understands
\nartifice. I think of The Lion, the Witch
\nand the Wardrobe,<\/em> a book I never liked. The bar\u2019s doors open onto a world
\nof fantasy, minus the creepy fauns and witches with candy fixations.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s
\nsomething sad about the end of unpacking, so you don\u2019t want to unpack too
\nquickly. You want to draw out the process \u2013 to live a bit longer amongst the
\nmysterious things in bleached packing paper. And so I take my time. I unwrap a
\nset of gray glass tumblers decorated with signs of the zodiac. I unwrap a pink
\nflamingo tumbler and pour myself a bourbon. The little pink guy looks content
\nagainst the brown of the bourbon.<\/p>\n

\n\"1305501_10151601302731428_507420941_n\"The pink
\nflamingo is a very retro bird. The bird of choice of John Waters. I have two
\npink flamingos in my yard; they are named Patsy and Edina. But the pink
\nflamingo is particularly suited to a bar, as is the penguin. They are both boozy
\nbirds. I unwrap my penguin cocktail shaker. His head is tilted ever so slightly
\nin the air, as if he is a proud penguin butler, a figure invested in elegance
\nand order. (He is wearing a tie, of course.) I unwrap a silver orb-shaped ice
\nbucket with a parade of penguins marching all in line. These penguins seem worn
\nout by life; they trudge along, slightly slouched. They are penguins of the
\nworking day. The orb ice bucket is very mid-century; it oozes sixties-ness. And
\nnext to the owl, the penguin is the most mid-century of fowl, but the owl has
\nmore of a punch bowl physique. And as penguins can\u2019t fly and are not considered
\nparticularly wise, they can take comfort in their established place in bar
\nculture.<\/p>\n

Some people
\nthink of objects as real \u2013 almost as living things, or at least as the
\nnon-living means by which we make manifest our lives. Others think that there
\nis something unsavory about this sentiment \u2013 that it is a kind of false
\nworship. But those who feel the life of things take it for granted that this
\nis how it is, and it seems impossible that one could feel any other way.<\/p>\n

I unpack
\nswizzle sticks and straws. Swizzle sticks with orange and black spheres at
\ntheir ends. Marbled straws. Straws striped in red and yellow. Straws printed
\nlike the bark of birch trees. One should always have things that one does not
\nuse. I have two mini-olive skewers for martinis with plastic olives on their
\nends. They are pretty, and they serve no real purpose.<\/p>\n

I am unpacking
\nmy bar, and there is a lot to unpack. A rhinestone-encrusted golden elephant
\nbottle stopper. A small stack of linen cocktail napkins embroidered with ladies
\nin large skirts.<\/p>\n

I rip open another
\nbox. Gifts. A monogrammed mint julep cup my friends gave me for performing
\ntheir wedding ceremony. In another box, I find the cocktail shaker they gave
\nme, in which I have mixed virtually every cocktail I\u2019ve ever served. I find a
\nwhite ceramic bottle stopper in the shape of a dog (the stopper part makes up
\nthe upper half of the pooch\u2019s body and his head.) Some of my favorite people to
\ndrink with gave me this dog. And I come across my bluebird bottle stopper from
\na friend in New York. That little guy doubles as a candle-holder: he is an
\nover-achieving bottle-stopper. Multi-tasking.<\/p>\n

\n\"1372996_10151601302751428_1122773390_n\"So many
\nglasses. I arrange them in neat rows on the shelves. I unwrap an old PanAm
\ntumbler. Some friends gave it to me when they lived here, but now they have
\nmoved away. I like the little PanAm icon on the glass. It suggests a glamorous
\nera of air travel \u2013 a time when people sat back in wide seats and sipped
\ncocktails while a semi-magical, gorgeous machine cut through blue skies. I
\nunwrap a Cachaca glass from a Brazilian restaurant where I had my thirtieth
\nbirthday. It was not a happy birthday, but the glass makes me happy now. It has
\na cheeky-looking crustacean on it.<\/p>\n

Glasses
\ndecorated with ferry boats or four-leaf clovers or acorns. Foxes. The devil. A
\nwhale \u2013 that elusive creature. Glasses with stems and silver rims. Glasses that
\nare rounded, squared, heavy, light.<\/p>\n

These glasses
\npromise future evenings with friends. They recall past evenings. Over the
\nsummer, I drove across the country to work in Los Angeles for a month. It was
\nan alien place \u2013 in some ways a lonely place, a place where I felt trapped in
\nmy car or trapped in my temporary home. In the evenings, I walked my dog around
\nthe quiet residential streets of my neighborhood, and I listened for the sounds
\nof parties or get-togethers. Silence. I looked for extra cars on the street.
\nNothing. The turning in of the American
\nfamily,<\/em> a friend said to me recently.<\/p>\n

People used to
\nhave bars in their houses, sometimes built into their houses. Bars turn out.<\/p>\n

\n\"1291301_10151601302726428_1782900130_n\"<\/p>\n

I unwrap a set
\nof coupe glasses. I love the way a coupe glass feels in your hand. Everyone
\nsays they\u2019re terrible for drinking champagne as they let all the bubbles escape,
\nbut I don\u2019t care. Nick & Nora glasses. Glasses from flea markets and from vast,
\ndisorganized antique malls. Glasses printed with leaves and flowers. I set a solitary
\nlittle cordial glass on the middle shelf and stand back and survey the scene. The
\nbar is starting to resemble a cabinet of curiosities.<\/p>\n

\n\"972731_10151601302746428_768384032_n\"I come across
\nthings that I have bought for myself. A narrow, elegant blown-glass pitcher. A tumbler
\nwith a nice, heavy bottom that I found at a store on Block Island last summer.
\nThe shop also sold fishing tackle and rain gear. The glass has the shape of the
\nisland etched into it, an abstract white shape on the clear glass. If you don\u2019t
\nknow what it is, you wouldn\u2019t know what it is. I unwrap another tumbler with a gleaming
\nStatue of Liberty superimposed right in the center of the city\u2019s skyline. \u201cNew
\nYork,\u201d it proclaims. I think I found that one here in North Carolina. I come
\nacross my favorite vintage cocktail shaker printed with colorful Paris
\nmonuments \u2013 Moulin Rouge! Ballets de
\nParis! L\u2019Opera de Paris! \u2013 <\/em>and drinks recipes: Tom Collins, Martini, On the Rocks, Old Fashioned<\/em>. On the Rocks<\/em> suggests that you take a
\nbit of liquor and put it over ice.<\/p>\n

I set a small
\nbook of Fitzgerald\u2019s writings entitled On
\nBooze<\/em> on the lower bar shelf. I like the way it looks \u2013 it\u2019s a slim, clean
\nwhite book \u2013 but I\u2019m not convinced he knew all that much about drinking. He\u2019s a
\nmythic boozy figure, like Dorothy Parker, but to me there is always something
\ncold about Fitzgerald, like the flickering diamonds of his depicted worlds.
\nPlato is a warmer model. He understood that friendships are forged by boozing.
\nAnd he understood that thinking and drinking are suited to one another.   <\/p>\n

I finish my
\nbourbon and walk into the kitchen and rinse out the pink flamingo glass, and
\nthen I dry it off and put it back on the top shelf of the bar. Now I just have
\nto gather up all the paper and the boxes and throw them away. I look over the
\nshelves. There is no more room. And so I close the doors.<\/p>\n

\n\"1241366_10151601302741428_650245734_n\"
<\/em><\/p>\n

Susan Harlan is a professor of English literature and an avid cocktailian. She also enjoys drinking on the move, as she chronicles in her travel blog Born on a Train<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Ed. note: This gorgeous essay came over the transom, from cocktailian and friend of the blog Susan Harlan.) I am unpacking my bar. Yes, I am. My bar was just delivered, and it has all the potential of a new thing. And now I am going to fill it with old things. This bar will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housekeeping","category-ingredients","category-seen-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}