The Mix is 3!
We Feel Lucky To Be Celebrating Our Third Anniversary With You.
The Present
This past Tuesday, we posted The Mix’s 365th post. That’s a nice, round number. There are 365 days in a year. But, in this case, that number represents three years of work.
That’s right. This Sunday, Jan. 19, this newsletter will celebrate 3 years in business. It seems just a moment ago that we were deciding to do The Mix after months of a friendly fellow Substacker saying “You should have a Substack!”
I vividly remember January 18, 2022. We were going “live” the next day, and I was so nervous. In the days leading up to the launch of The Mix we had made all the decisions about what we would be as a publication. Friends helped by saying good things on social media about Robert’s writing and then even subscribed in advance to support an unknown newsletter. Thank you for that; we will always be grateful for your unhesitant, generous leap to join us in this leap of faith.
I looked it up: the 3rd Anniversary is the Leather Anniversary. I immediately thought up a lot of bad jokes I could write about that. Alternately, I read that when you are celebrating the third anniversary, an acceptable contemporary gift can be made of crystal and glass. Perhaps something filled with a delicious cocktail!
The leather anniversary is pretty apropos, though. We really have had to toughen up lately. Since starting The Mix during the pandemic, so much in the world of journalism has changed. Publications have closed, including several devoted to drinking culture. Others have been swallowed up by media conglomerates. Writers have been marginalized to the point where they are often offered a pittance to write an article, if they are offered anything at all. Others have been the victims of recurrent corporate layoffs. Some sites have gone from using Google research to using AI to write articles.
It’s unclear how much people care about these seismic shifts. A couple months ago an architecture book was published. This book was diligently researched and carefully written by two of the best minds in the business. Not two months later, there are not one, but two copycat books for sale on-line. Hastily assembled with AI, riddled with mistakes, there they sit, selling in the same digital space as the original.
Journalism is in pretty dire straits. Money is king and things like constructive criticism, experience and research aren’t considered valuable. A constant, unbridled barrage of content is the new normal.
But there is perhaps another way to look at these changing times. Just recently, shortly after the new year, I was talking with probably the youngest person at my office. I was complaining about all the things that were changing in my life and in the world, and how we did not know what the outcome would be. And before I could get out the part about being scared out of my mind, she said, “Oooooh, transformative.”
I just froze. Her perspective was completely the opposite of mine. But she was right. We have to approach all this uncertainty with a bit of exhilaration and a hefty dose of chutzpah. Now is not the time to roll up in a comfy blanket and hide (at least not all of the time). We’ve got to keep going.
And so we shall!
—Mary Kate
Growing
Who’s reading The Mix? Well, a lot of people! The Mix with Robert Simonson is read across all 50 U.S. states and in 118 countries. (Yesterday, we received a message about a bar in Madrid that is getting more orders for its signature Martini than ever, because we wrote about that drink in early 2023. We get notes like that on a regular basis. It makes us giddy.)
We want to reach even more people. Do you have a minute? If you do, please sit back and think of a friend or relative who might like The Mix. Hit the button below and tell them you think they should subscribe. We don’t have PR people working for us. We need you to get the word out, please.
Suggestions
We have lots of special features like: “In Search Of” where we look for regional food and report back, not only with where to get it, but its history and how to make it; “On a Toot!” where we do bar crawls, visit restaurants, hotels, museums, shows and spots of interest to bring them to your attention; “Side Bar,” where Robert interviews authors about their latest work—and more.
Is there something you’d like to see us explore at The Mix? Tell us. We would love to hear it.
Sharing
Are you a sharer? Over-sharer? Over-liker? Then we need you!
We would love to hear what you like about The Mix. But even more important is for you to tell other people what you like, like subscriber and drinks guru Philip Duff did with his recent Substack comment below. We really appreciate it.
Recognition
In September, we were so thrilled to win an IACP award. You have no idea. It means a lot and we are grateful.
That’s all, I just wanted to say it again. Here’s proof:
And, Of Course, Hot Dogs
It was brought to my attention that some “no sayer” (please pronounce in your best Wisco accent) said that hot dogs were “out” for 2025.
Hot. Dogs. Will. Never. Be. Out.
(And, by the way, that’s one sort of article—the “What’s In/What’s Out” clickbait sort—you will never find on The Mix.)
This might be a good place, also, to point out that the Simonson Dog is still being sold at PDT.
The Past
In these days of media overload and short memory spans, it’s always good to revisit history and remind people of the origins of things. The text below is from The Mix’s first post. Perhaps you saw it, perhaps you didn’t. Either way, give it a read, please. It’s a good one and we think we’ve hit these marks. Picture some wavy lines, slowly dissolving into the flashback article below. Then meet me at the end and we’ll talk about the future.
January 19, 2022
Hi! My name is Robert Simonson and this is The Mix, my new newsletter.
I’m a writer. A cocktail writer, in particular, but I’ve been a journalist all my years, so the story of my life’s beats is more complicated than that. I wrote for my high school newspaper (The Palmyra Enterprise), my college paper (The Daily Northwestern), my hometown paper (The Waukesha Freeman) and, after moving from Wisconsin to New York, my adopted hometown papers (The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal).
I began by writing about theater, an inevitability given I came from a theater family (perhaps Wisconsin’s only full-blown theater family). After twenty years of that, and a brief stint as a wine writer, it was time for a change, so I trained my focus on a different stage, that of the bar. That shift, in the mid-aughts, came just in time to cover the beginnings and heyday of the global cocktail renaissance in real time. Along the way, I wrote four books about theater and five about cocktails, with more of the latter to come.
I’ll continue to cover cocktails and bars at The Mix--albeit in a more personal and individualized fashion, something that piecemeal freelance journalism doesn’t allow. But my long career has had many curious detours, and I’ll also traffic in the various subjects I’ve scribbled about from time to time over the years. I authored the blog Lost City from 2006 to 2013, the first of the New York blogs chronicling the city’s fast-disappearing cultural heritage (this isn’t my first time to the blogging rodeo). I wrote the column “Who Goes There?,” about stubbornly enduring, but overlooked New York eateries, and “A Beer At,” about anonymous New York saloons, both for Eater. I reviewed cocktail bars for Time Out New York and Punch, and profiled veteran bartenders for Punch; I described famous New York wine cellars for the New York Sun; I profiled the unsung heroes of the cocktail revival in Imbibe; I penned a column about the Wisconsin bar scene for Milwaukee magazine; and for 17 years I summed up the “Theater Week in Review” for Playbill.com. I’ve even written obituaries for Playbill and The New York Times. In short, I’ve gotten around.
My enduring passions have remained fairly constant, if disparate. They include food; old legacy restaurants and bars; regional food traditions; New York history and lore; Wisconsin history and lore; cooking; travel; opera; literature; new books; old books; writers; cemeteries; and hot dogs. (If you follow my Instagram page, you know my improbably intrepid pursuit of the latter. “Hot Dog Critic at Work!”)
The pandemic of the past two years has tightened my professional focus to what I truly know and love writing about. Now, I feel it’s time for another chapter in my writer’s journey, time to bring it all together in one place and share it with you. That’s what this newsletter will be. There will be recipes, reviews, opinions, profiles, photos, interviews, conversations, sound bites and observations. I’ll talk about what I’m drinking and eating and what you could be drinking and eating; where I’m going, and where you might want to go if you get there. If I drank or ate something recently and liked it, you’ll know about it, where I had it and who the hell made it and why. What there won’t be in The Mix are any punches pulled or sponcon, as I am happily unbeholden and untethered to liquor interests. So, if you see me writing about a brand of spirits or a bar or even a person, I and I only have chosen to write about them.
Sound good? If so, there are four ways to participate in The Mix.
A Free Membership will get you The Mix’s weekly newsletter.
A paid Weekly Subscription ($6) or Annual Subscription ($50) will get you everything: all the articles, news items, interviews, spirit reviews, sidebars, bar news, cocktail recipes, travelogues, restaurant and saloon visits, videos, voice memos and other audio stuff, musings and what have you. I’ll publish at least three times a week, but maybe more.
A Bar Regular Subscription at $150 and up, you will get you all of the above, plus a signed copy of one of my books, a Big Thank You, AND a “Regular” plaque on the virtual bar wall of The Mix!
I’m looking forward to this. I hope you’ll join me.
Robert
The Future
This coming year will bring some good stuff. We’ll have a new feature once a month for paid subscribers called “At Home With,” in which we visit some notable characters in their home bars. There will also be a new podcast, and we think you’ll like it. There’ll be more profiles, more editions of “Side Bar,” “On a Toot!,” “Making History,” “In Search Of,” more theater reviews, restaurant visits, bar menu deep dives, travel pieces, food history, booze history, plain old history —and cocktails. Lots of cocktails.
Hot on the heels of last year’s successful Gin Week, next month—with Dry January well in the rear-view mirror—will bring Bourbon and Rye Week, with seven full days of features, interviews and reviews about America’s homegrown whiskeys. You may have read in the last week that the Bourbon Boom is finally over. Well, it ain’t here!
There will also be another Mix cocktail party, in which Bar Regular subscribers will be invited to meet and sup together. Last year’s event was at Altar in Brooklyn, with Phil Ward bartending. This year’s will be at Stage Left Steaks in New Brunswick, NJ. Stage Left has not only the oldest, continually operating, craft cocktail program in the state, but the oldest in the country. It’s been going strong for more than 30 years. And the owners, Francis Schott and Mark Pascal, are consummate hosts and also longtime Mix subscribers and supporters. Details will be sent out to Bar Regulars soon!
What else? Well, everything, really. When we started The Mix, I saw this newsletter as my future as a writer. I was still going to write books and free-lance articles for fine publications like The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Vinepair and Imbibe. But I knew I had no control over those enterprises as going concerns. I wasn’t in charge. Here, I have control.
And that future I foresaw in 2022 is now here. This newsletter is where I hang my professional hat and where I invest my best efforts. I hope you can see that. And I hope you can sense the genuine enthusiasm behind every post. There’s nothing more creatively freeing that assigning yourself stories that you actually want to write. And there’s nothing more rewarding that supporters like you, who freely choose what they want to read. We are grateful you choose us.
We are the future. Here comes Year Four. Let’s go!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeee! Hang on to your hat, Simonson! Here we go!! Year four and I am ready! 🏁
Robert - as I think I've told you, I have been following your work on cocktails/bars/bar culture since the publication of the Martini Cocktail, one of the best books on THE single cocktail ever written. I think I actually found that book as the Martini Obsessive I am through surfing YouTube of all places right after covid; you made a couple of your favorite martinis on an IG reel Mary Kate took during the lockdown. From there, I was onto the Old Fashioned, 3-Ingredient Cocktails, Modern Classic Cocktails, and, of course, your seminal Encyclopedia. Somehow, I found the Mix early last year and knew right away I had to become a Regular. It has been the friendliest, warmest solace online from life in our city. During the holidays, you and Mary Kate brought us such Christmas cheer during what was one of the most beautiful (but isolating) times of our lives. I look forward to another year reading the Mix and hope to see you both in the city of my alma mater. Warmest & Congratulations!