The Speakeasy The Illustrated Man with David Wondrich
Dec 12, 2025
David Wondrich, James Beard and Spirited Award–winning cocktail historian and author, talks about bringing cocktail history to new readers through a comic book format. He explores early internet cocktail culture, recreating historic drinks like gin cocktails and theatrical libations, and traces punch, tiki, and postwar cocktail trends. Conversations touch on collaboration with an artist and why cocktails matter socially.
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Times Square Dive Bar At Risk
- Jimmy's Corner is a longtime, unpretentious Times Square bar founded by a boxer and beloved by locals.
- Hosts warn its likely eviction would be a big cultural loss for the theatre district and New York City.
Internet Fueled Cocktail Community
- Early internet forums connected disparate cocktail enthusiasts and enabled deep, cross-disciplinary discussions.
- Those conversations seeded collaborations that later shaped modern cocktail scholarship.
Tribute Sparked Deep Research
- Wondrich organized a Jerry Thomas tribute in 2003 bringing bartenders together to recreate Thomas's drinks.
- That event sparked his archival research and led directly to writing Imbibe!.
