Fletcher Flora is a last-century pulp/pocket book/noir/mystery/etc. writer who perhaps in my humble opinion (or imho, as they say) hasn’t always gotten his due as being in the upper echelon of such writers. He has, in his best work, an individual style (I have a hard time pinning it down in words. I read it called “off-beat” and that’s not a bad description, character-forward, wry in a way, you just have to read them), and he’s from KS, as I was, both of which drew me to him. Until recently, there weren’t a lot of reprints of his novels, and the stories were – like so many stories pubbed in the pulps – entirely impossible to get unless you were lucky enough to inherit a stack of said mags or the money to track them down. However! As with Day Keene and a few others, more recent years have provided a boon to those of us who enjoy a good yarn in the genres, as reprinting tech has been made easier, making it possible to rediscover more of the words written by worthy authors like Flora and Keene (very different writers in style, by the way). We’ve had a few Fletcher Flora Cocktail Talks in the past as I’ve managed to score more books, and then recently I found on the Amazon a wonderful collection called The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack – funny enough, the First Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack wasn’t available when I was shopping, so I started with the second, though I’ll remedy that asap. The megapack (from Wildside Press – thanks by the way Wildside) has an assortment of stories from Mr. Flora, ranging in length, and while all slide into the crime and mystery shelf, the set-ups and characters and driving forces change enough to make it a swell read. They aren’t all of the same high quality as his best – he had to make a living and the pulps didn’t pay phenomenally well, so quantity mattered, too – but they’re all close enough that I was amazingly happy to get the collection, and to round out my Flora-fiction. I can’t wait to read more in the first megapack, if I can wrangle it! With all that preamble, I should say that there was lots of Cocktail Talking in the stories, so expect to hear more in the coming weeks. To start, a quote from a story called “Hell Hath No Fury.” In it, we step into a little dive bar, which Mr. Flora describes perfectly in a few short sentences, and then heads for the rye.
On Fifteenth, just off Wamego, The Peanut was a dismal, little bar which, like all bars in the morning, somehow gave the impression of having a hangover. In the shadowy interior, behind the peanut bowls, a bartender looked at me as if he wished he didn’t have to. Opposite the bar lining the wall, there was a string of booths, each with its own peanut bowl, and private remote-control box for the juke box in the rear. In the last booth, where the shadows were deepest, I caught a glimmer of platinum, the white movement of a lifted hand.
I told the bartender to bring me a shot of rye and went back to the booth and sat down.
Warning: fake nearly swearing heading your way! This delight (ideal for the here and now and for the upcoming sunny days that you’ll hopefully be enjoying with pals or by yourself or with your dog to the fullest) was created by Seattle (and the world) legend, the mthrfcking baron of booze, Andrew Bohrer. I can’t recall when said sloshed sensi created it, but he let me put it into the mthrfcking Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz, thereby making that book like a billion times better times a billion times. That’s mthrfcking right. The Bruja Smash is not only the Hulk himself’s favorite all-time drink (and he knows drinks, mthrfckers), but also is highlighted by Italian saffron, mint, and more goodness containing golden-hued liqueur Strega, which is mingled with tequila and a whole bunch of mthrfcking fruity goodness. Perfectly balanced, of course, cause Andrew is a genius. And he currently slings drinks most Sundays at The Doctor’s Office, which is a, dare I say it, mthrfcking awesome spot.
The memorably-titled, Wichita-based, PI-featuring, crime-and-criminals riddled, mystery and murder-packed pocket-style book Hot Summer, Cold Murder by Gaylord Dodd had too many Cocktail Talk moments to just have one post from it (if you missed Hot Summer, Cold Murder Part I, then please read it now, as it’ll give you more background). I actually like this quote even more than the first, though it doesn’t feature muscatel, our hero’s (hero of sorts, that is) favorite summertime tipple. But the below quote is a fabulous one, summing up a certain type of bar at a certain time period perfectly:
Tom Silver’s big red and white face swam in an ocean of bar glasses hanging from a rack above the bar. He was the perfect bartender. He spoke when spoken to and otherwise stood leaning against the counter with his arms folded across the massive pad of his enormous gut. The drinks he made were clean and when you ordered call-booze you got what you called. When some woman you were with ordered a Gin Fizz or a Gold Cadillac, Tom made it quickly, correctly, and without the condescending leer of the bartender whose only desire is to stir a jigger of whiskey into a six-ounce tumbler with Seven-Up.
“Waddle it be, Mr. Roberts?”
“Old Grandad with water back, please Tom.”
“Yes, sir.”
Recently got my hands on another one of the superb (if you’re into such things, which I hope you are, so we can be friends and all that, though of course we could maybe still be friends even if you aren’t, but it’s not quite as easy) Stark House Noir Classics collections. Often these are collections of out-of-print books by a single author, but in this one, there are three authors from the pulp-y period. All are worthy reads – your favorite is up to you – but the one I’m highlighting here is Park Avenue Tramp, a book by Fletcher Flora (great name, too, and one I hadn’t been acquainted with before) about booze, a dangerous (in a sort-of different way) broad, a piano player, and bleakness in the best way, the way true noir books deliver it. Enough so that I was fairly, oh, downbeat for a moment when finishing this tale. Then I moved on to the next one (which is nice in these collections). A bar plays a central role, too, which is also nice, and where we get the below Cocktail Talk quote from.
She looked at him gravely and decided that he was undoubtedly a superior bartender, which would make him very superior indeed. It might seem unlikely on first thought that a superior bartender would be working in a little unassuming bar that was only trying to get along, but on second thought it didn’t seem unlikely at all, for it was often the little unassuming places that had genuine quality and character and were perfectly what they were supposed to be, which was rare, and it was exactly such a place in which a superior bartender would want to work, even at some material sacrifice. She felt a great deal of respect for this honest and dedicated bartender. She was certain that she could rely on him implicitly.
“Perhaps you can help me,” she said. “In your opinion, what have I been drinking?”
“You look like a Martini to me,” he said.
“Really, a Martini?”
“That’s right. The second you came in I said to myself that you were a Martini.”
Our trip (we’re taking it together, I feel) through some of the Charles Willeford oeuvre, via Willeford Cocktail Talks, is almost done, and ending with a second from the Floridean funky mess (among other things) Made in Miami, originally called Lust is a Woman, which isn’t actually as good, or as accurate, a title in my mind. You’ll need to read the book to see why! And also read the Made in Miami Cocktail Talk Part I, if you haven’t. You’ll dig it. The below quote isn’t drink specific like many of the Cocktail Talks we have here, but is a great view into bartenders of a certain time period. Or perhaps how some people view or viewed bartenders. You decide.
Ralph sat down on the bench to smoke while he waited for Tommy. Two bald middle-aged bartenders entered the locker room from the back and began to change their clothes. Ralph examined their dour faces with the dawning realization that all of the bartenders he had ever known looked exactly like these two. Not that they were all bad, although most of them were, at that, but their expressions were all alike. All faces, like character actors in the movies; expressive eyebrows, small chins, and large liquid eyes. Ralph pictured these two men later working behind the bar, changing their expression to match the mood of each customer at the busy half-price cocktail hour in the Rotunda Lounge. But right now, in repose, their characterless expressions oddly reminded Ralph of the ex-Presidents born in Ohio.
I do a monthly column (along with various other things) for Seattle magazine (sure, you can be jealous), and until recently it was called Bar Hop, and had me chatting about a single new bar in the wondrous city I live within. But now it’s changed up a little, still a single bar, but with the focus lighting a little more on a single cocktail within said bar – and it’s not just new bars anymore, either, and is called (for now, at least) the Bar Method. And for the first one, I visited one of my favorite Emerald City bars of all, Liberty, which is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary! Amiable bartender Laura Bishop was my shaker, and made me a delicious wine cocktail called the Red October. But heck, don’t let me ramble, go read the article now.
I was lucky enough recently to work on a big bar-and-cocktail-and-distillery issue of the mighty Seattle magazine, and in said issue (which if you missed, you’ll have to deal with the regret for the rest of your life. Sorry), we had some swell interviews with some of the top local shakers . . . wait, strike that. Top shakers anywhere! However, due to magazine restrictions, and such, the interviews had to be edited down somewhat, as interviews are. But they’re now available for reading in fuller fashion online! You are very lucky. So, don’t miss my recent interviews with these cocktail geniuses, including:
Seattle is stocked like a good bar with good bartenders and mixologists and shake-em-up-ers, and ice-crackers, and sturdy stirrers, and bottle-top-twisters, and cocktail cuties, and powerful punchers, and ear-twisting-tipsy-story-telling tippler pourers. Lots of ‘em. I hate to even make a grouping, but if I have to pick a list, let it be one favoring those who both make great drinks and also make the whole bar happier by their presence and person. Which is what I did in my happiest happy hour bartender list (from the new issue of the Seattle Magazine). Because spending a happy hour or six with these five jolly drink slingers is sure to make the day better.
