Goodness gracious, golly-gosh-gee: circulation's down at urban dailies (stay-at-home, beer-swigging fogies), up at urban weeklies (club-hopping, cocktail-sipping hipsters). So what's The Seattle Times to do?
How about sending a tag-team of 20-something reporters out to write a column about fancy bars? One of them's an Asian gal who gets "impaired" after a single greyhound; the other doesn't drink, but swoons when the handsome bartender at Suite 410 promises to set fire to a grapefruit cosmopolitan.
Sho-nuff, boss, this story actually ran last week, to city-wide snickers and guffaws.
Drinkboy's Robert Hess, the Seattle-based cocktail historian, points out that barman Aaron Garland actually ignited a spray of volatile oil from the cosmo's orange-peel garnish, the approved method of producing a brief flash. No comment for the record, but one could imagine the grownups--Bethany Jean Clement (The Stranger's "Bar Exam") and Liza Zimmerman (Seattle Weekly's "In Good Spirits")--just shaking their heads.
So the suspense continues: which saloon will Pamela and Nicole sidle into next? What drink will put Nicole under this week? Will their adventures sell even one more paper? Shake my nerves, rattle my brain ... Goodness gracious!
Your reviews are getting very interesting these days!!