0:01

Hey, it's Dylan here. I have

0:03

an announcement, and this one

0:05

is a doozy. Atlas

0:08

Obscura has a new book coming

0:10

out, Atlas Obscura

0:12

Wildlife. And this book, it

0:15

is magical. It is incredible. It

0:17

is a guide to the high

0:20

weirdness of our natural world. Did

0:22

you know that in Poland, a series

0:24

of mussels, as in the little shellfish,

0:27

control cities water supply. The

0:30

mussels are very picky about their

0:32

water. When it's gross, they close. So

0:34

a tiny team of mussels is monitored

0:36

by a computer. And when they close,

0:39

it shuts off the city's water. Or

0:41

that the London subway, the tube,

0:44

has its own genetically distinct

0:46

variety of mosquito. Are

0:48

there really tiny shrimp in New York City's water?

0:51

Atlas Obscura Wildlife brings you

0:53

answers. In all seriousness,

0:56

this is the best book we have

0:58

ever written. And it's also an urgent

1:00

reminder to look carefully around you. We

1:02

are living in the

1:04

world of the bugs and the trees

1:06

and the birds and the bees. We

1:09

are but one species in their bizarre,

1:13

strange, magical world.

1:17

This is a call to look

1:19

at that world. I'm

1:21

putting a link to pre-order in the show notes. And

1:23

I beg of you, if you are at all interested, go

1:26

pre-order a copy. It really helps the

1:28

book succeed. It tells Amazon that it's

1:31

a good book and they should stock

1:33

it. It lets me know that you

1:35

care. But also right now, if you

1:38

send a screenshot of your pre-order to

1:40

hello at atlasobscura.com, I

1:42

will personally plan you a vacation.

1:45

I am not joking. If you

1:47

pre-order this book, you will

1:49

get a vacation planned by me, co-founder

1:51

of Atlas Obscura. You can

1:54

give the book and the vacation plan as

1:56

a gift. It is a pretty cheap way

1:58

to impress. Okay. onto

2:00

the show. The

2:11

year is 1865.

2:13

The place is New York City. But

2:16

none of that really matters. You

2:18

could be anywhere in any era because

2:21

you are experiencing a

2:23

very human desire. One

2:26

that people have had since the dawn of

2:28

time. You want to

2:31

drink. You

2:39

want to stay on Broadway passing the Metropolitan

2:41

Museum of Art, the Empire State

2:43

Building, Madison Square Park until

2:46

you arrive at Broadway and

2:48

22nd Street. Today it's

2:50

a touristy retail store. But

2:52

in the 1860s, there

2:55

was a bar. It's a basement

2:57

bar and on the walls are

2:59

oversized caricatures of politicians and funhouse

3:01

mirrors. So you pull up a

3:03

stool and behind the bar is

3:06

a man encrusted in diamonds.

3:09

A diamond stick pin in

3:11

his shirt, diamond cufflinks, multiple

3:14

diamond rings. He's

3:16

wearing a suit and he is ready to

3:18

make you a drink. This

3:21

is Jerry Thomas. He

3:23

had a tendency to be in places

3:25

in America at the right time. I

3:28

like to think when America needed a drink, Jerry

3:30

Thomas was likely behind the bar. Yeah. I'm

3:39

Johanna Mayer and this is Atlas Obscura,

3:42

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

3:44

and wondrous places. Today

3:46

we take a peek into the 19th century

3:49

world of America's first celebrity

3:51

bartender. A world that

3:53

was sometimes seedy, sometimes glamorous,

3:56

and almost always rocket. And

3:59

we'll get a look at... at what is

4:01

perhaps Jerry Thomas's most lasting

4:03

legacy. A small,

4:05

unassuming book that represented

4:07

American taste and culture

4:09

and transformed bars forever.

4:13

More after this. As

4:30

you travel the world, you

4:32

may be left with one burning question. Where

4:35

do you go to discover the perfect margarita

4:38

flavor? Kaminjac

4:41

asked that very question and then

4:43

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4:45

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4:51

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4:53

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4:58

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5:01

perfect, refreshing flavor. The

5:03

ingredients are a perfect balance of

5:05

salty, sweet, and sour every

5:07

time. Margaritas are maybe

5:09

the perfect drink. So

5:11

the search is over, but the adventure

5:14

is just beginning. Discover

5:16

legendary taste for yourself with Kaminjac,

5:19

America's number one margarita premium-flavored

5:21

malt beverage. Please

5:23

drink responsibly. American Vintage Beverage

5:25

Company, Chicago, Illinois. As

5:29

long as you're on vacation, you're

5:31

happy, right? But the

5:33

truth is, some vacations are better than

5:35

others. And there's one that's better than

5:38

all of them. Celebrity cruises.

5:41

With rooms, food, and service like theirs,

5:43

you'll never want to vacation any other

5:45

way. They even have weekend

5:47

Caribbean escapes for a quick getaway.

5:49

So visit celebrity.com, contact your travel

5:52

advisor, or call 1-800-Celebrity and

5:55

see why nothing comes close to celebrity

5:57

cruises. Ships Registry, Malta.

6:00

and Ecuador. Humans

6:13

have been drinking fermented beverages for

6:16

millennia. The Mayans fermented

6:18

corn to make a social drink called pulke.

6:21

In ancient China, people transformed rice

6:23

and grapes into wine. They

6:26

poured down 26 jugs of wine

6:28

in King Tutankhamen's tomb. And

6:31

by the time Jerry Thomas was born in

6:33

upstate New York around 1830, things were no different.

6:38

As a teenager, he worked in a

6:40

bar in New Haven, Connecticut, mostly just

6:42

polishing glasses and sweeping the floor. But

6:45

also, this is where Jerry started

6:47

talking to bartenders. And

6:50

if you had any designs on getting behind

6:52

a bar yourself one day, talking

6:54

to bartenders is what you had to do. Because

6:57

drink recipe books simply

6:59

didn't exist. Bartenders

7:02

as sort of trade secrets have kept this

7:05

to themselves or in their heads. Measurements,

7:07

all this stuff, right? Oral tradition, nothing

7:09

really written down. It was passed along

7:12

in an apprenticeship through bar culture.

7:14

This is Kyle Triplett. He's a rare book librarian

7:16

at the New York Public Library. You know, I

7:18

mean, who among us doesn't like to have a

7:20

cocktail here in New York City? And

7:22

you can kind of walk into an establishment now and

7:25

think about that long history of nightlife in New York

7:27

City, of which this is really a part. I met

7:29

him in a quiet room in the library one day

7:31

in April. And Kyle talked me

7:33

through Jerry's long and winding journey

7:35

from polishing glasses to being decked

7:37

out in diamonds in that Manhattan

7:39

bar. From

7:46

New Haven, Jerry hopped a ride on a

7:48

ship to San Francisco. And

7:50

he arrived in 1849. Gold

7:54

rush, baby. He briefly tried

7:56

to send out gold prospecting. But then

7:58

I think quickly realized. was so much

8:00

money there that

8:02

a way to apply that money from the

8:04

gold miners was to also bartend. With

8:07

a few years of experience under his belt, Jerry

8:09

came back to New York and he

8:11

landed at a famous institution. He

8:14

was bartending at the Barnum Museum, which

8:16

was downtown, which had a cabin

8:19

of curiosities type shows going on. The

8:22

Barnum Museum, as in P.T.

8:24

Barnum. I like

8:26

to imagine Tom Thumb and the

8:28

giantess Anna Swan popping downstairs after

8:31

a show, sidling up to the bar

8:33

and ordering a drink from Jerry Thomas.

8:37

After a stint at the Barnum Museum bar,

8:39

Jerry moved on again. He became

8:41

something of an itinerant bartender, making

8:44

stops in Charleston, in St. Louis,

8:46

in New Orleans. And

8:48

along the way, he developed a reputation,

8:50

made a name for himself. Eventually,

8:53

he worked his way back west

8:55

again and landed at a very

8:58

fancy San Francisco bar called

9:00

The Occidental. When he was

9:02

bartending at the Occidental Hotel, he was making about $100 a week,

9:04

which was as much as

9:06

the vice president at the time. What?

9:09

Yeah, he was that wildly popular and that

9:11

well known. He crossed paths

9:13

with Mark Twain, nearly had to kick Edward

9:15

Prince of Wales out of his bar. Jerry

9:18

Thomas was crisscrossing the country, somehow

9:21

always landing in the center of

9:23

things and pouring drinks for all

9:25

of these giants of American history.

9:28

You know, I think it's less that he was in the right place at

9:30

the right time and that it seems as though he chased these

9:32

things. But

9:36

it wasn't until he landed back in New York,

9:38

in 1865, right after the Civil War, when

9:42

Jerry Thomas would open his own bar,

9:44

the place on Broadway and 22nd Street. He

9:47

made the place his own, hung up the political

9:49

portraits and funhouse mirrors. And

9:53

he had one other odd piece of

9:56

decor. Okay, I read that

9:58

he was really into gourd. Oh

10:00

yes, he was part of the Gourds Society. You

10:02

heard it. Gourds. It

10:05

seems as though this may have been a

10:07

front. Perhaps for

10:09

a gambling club, perhaps for something else going

10:11

on. But there's

10:13

no real like minutes

10:15

of this organization. There's no real understanding

10:18

of what exactly they were doing. They

10:20

would put Gourds on the bar when

10:22

they were there. Well, whatever Jerry Thomas

10:24

was doing with those Gourds, it

10:27

wasn't the decor or even the bar itself

10:29

that he would become known for. It

10:32

was something a lot smaller and a lot

10:34

less flashy. A book packed

10:37

to the brim with cocktail

10:39

recipes. The New York

10:41

Public Library has a rare copy of

10:43

this book. Let's look at the

10:45

book. You want to look at the book? Yeah. At

10:48

the library, Kyle pulls out a compact greenish book and

10:50

places it on a cradle. There's a couple areas that

10:52

I wanted to show you. First of all, I'll show

10:54

you the cover. Then he

10:56

reads its full title, Buckle

10:58

In. The Bartender's Guide,

11:00

a complete cyclopedia of plain and fancy

11:03

drinks, containing clear and reliable

11:05

directions for mixing all the beverages

11:07

used in the United States, together

11:10

with the most popular British, French,

11:12

German, Clearly, Jerry Thomas took his

11:14

title very seriously. Julep's Cobblers, etc.,

11:16

etc., etc., in endless variety. By

11:19

Jerry Thomas, formerly principal bartender at

11:21

the Metropolitan Hotel on

11:23

York and the Planter's House, St. Louis. So

11:26

those are mentioned here very particularly because they were

11:29

important bars in America. Yeah, it's kind of like

11:31

a celebrity bartender. Completely. Yeah,

11:33

absolutely. He is the first celebrity bartender.

11:36

A small, unassuming book with

11:38

the Dapper Man with a handlebar mustache

11:40

on the cover. This

11:43

was the very first book

11:45

of its kind. Nothing like

11:47

it had been published before. And

11:49

honestly, it's probably more accurate to call

11:52

this thing a manual because

11:54

it really was a toolkit. Like

11:56

I said earlier, before this book, drink

11:58

recipes were passed. down completely

12:00

by word of mouth. You could order

12:03

a dirty martini at two different bars

12:05

and get two completely different drinks. There

12:08

are more than 500 recipes in

12:10

Jerry Thomas's book. Recipes

12:12

learned on his travels across the country, up

12:15

and down the Mississippi, and by

12:17

collecting and compiling them, he codified

12:20

this entire body of

12:22

professional knowledge that before had

12:24

just sort of been in the

12:27

ether. If you have a cocktail recipe

12:29

book in your house, it

12:31

is a descendant of this book by

12:33

Jerry Thomas. And Kyle

12:35

says this book was

12:37

saying something about American culture

12:39

at large, because cocktails

12:41

are a distinctly American phenomenon.

12:44

The mint julep is an

12:46

American cocktail, the sazerac. These

12:49

are all American inventions. And

12:51

I think partially to get some of these

12:54

things down, there's a cultural element of American

12:56

society was important because everything

12:58

previous to this was dictated a

13:00

lot by particularly England. It's

13:02

codifying it, first of all, in an

13:04

American book, and obviously toward

13:06

American tastes around these things too. So you

13:09

have all of that encompassed in this one

13:11

thing that just happens to be about cocktails,

13:13

but really it's about American culture. For

13:16

example, there's one recipe that

13:18

might be the most over-the-top,

13:20

performative American drink I have

13:23

ever heard of. It's probably

13:25

Jerry Thomas's most famous drink,

13:28

the Blue Laser. And the

13:30

manual was very self-important

13:32

about this drink. Listen to

13:35

this description. The

13:37

Blue Laser does not have a

13:39

very euphonious or classic name, but it

13:41

does taste better to the palate than it

13:43

sounds to the ear. A beholder

13:46

gazing for the first time

13:48

upon an experienced artist compounding

13:50

this beverage would naturally come

13:52

to the conclusion that it was a nectar

13:54

for Pluto rather than Bacchus.

13:58

Okay, Jerry. there's

14:00

actually quite a simple drink. It's just one

14:02

wine glass of scotch whiskey and then one

14:04

wine glass of boiling water. Put

14:06

the whiskey and the boiling water into one

14:08

mug, ignite the liquid with fire, and

14:11

while blazing, mix both ingredients by pouring them

14:13

four or five times from one mug to

14:15

the other as represented in the illustration. If

14:18

well done, this will have the appearance of a

14:20

continued stream of liquid fire. And

14:24

if it's not well done, Terry

14:26

writes, the novice in

14:28

mixing this beverage should be careful not

14:30

to scald himself to become

14:32

proficient in throwing the liquid from one mug

14:35

to the other. It would be

14:37

necessary for practice for some time with

14:39

cold water. Good tip.

14:42

Not for the novice here. But

14:46

of course, not every recipe in

14:48

the book was a masterpiece of ingenuity.

14:50

You might have buried this one because

14:53

I actually love this description. So

14:55

recipe number 213, brandy straight in

14:58

parentheses, use small bar glass. In

15:01

serving this drink, you simply put a piece of ice in

15:03

a tumbler and hand it to

15:05

your customer with a bottle of brandy. Though a

15:07

straight beverage is often used on a bender. I

15:15

know I love it. So we have bender

15:17

putting a glass with ice in it and

15:19

the bottle. Here you go.

15:21

And then the gin straight below. Yeah,

15:28

yeah, it's fantastic. I love it. We've

15:30

all been there. The bartender's

15:32

guide, a complete encyclopedia of plain

15:34

and fancy drinks, was a huge

15:36

success. In its first run

15:38

of printing, the price of the book

15:40

increased by a full dollar. That's worth

15:42

about $30 in today's

15:44

money. Kyle says it's possible

15:47

that price increase was because of

15:49

cost overruns, but more likely it

15:51

was just because the book was so popular.

16:00

10 years after publishing his manual, Jerry

16:03

Thomas had a quintessential New

16:06

York experience, a

16:08

rent increase. He got rid

16:10

of the political portraits and funhouse mirrors and sold his bar.

16:14

Not sure what he did with the gourds. He

16:17

went back to the itinerant bartender life, did

16:19

a little stint in Denver, then wound up

16:21

back in New York for good. And

16:24

then in 1885 ends up here at the Hotel Brighton in New York City, which

16:27

was kind of a CD small bar, and

16:30

then goes home one day after his shifts and dies of a

16:32

heart attack. And

16:35

that was the end of Jerry Thomas. The

16:42

thing that strikes me about this story

16:45

is how contemporary it all feels. Bar

16:48

attending being seen as a craft and

16:50

a profession, flashy drinks

16:52

and craft cocktails. The term mixologist,

16:54

which by the way is not

16:56

a new word, goes

16:58

back to at least 1866. Jerry

17:02

Thomas's whole story kind of feels like it

17:04

could have taken place today. Back

17:08

at the library, Kyle and I took

17:10

one last look at Jerry Thomas's cocktail

17:12

manual, flipping through the pages. Do

17:15

you have a favorite recipe out

17:17

of this book? Well, not

17:20

really. I haven't tried any

17:22

of them to be honest with you. I

17:26

tend to be more of a beer drinker. But

17:29

also when I do get cocktails, though, I

17:31

do like a good martini. I do like

17:33

a martini. I do dirty vodka. Dirty vodka.

17:35

So I always tell my wife, if you

17:38

have to say vodka martini, then you're ordering

17:40

something else. So martini has

17:42

gin. You

17:46

know, I changed. I switched. Yeah.

17:56

If you're ever in New York, you can see

17:58

for yourself this rare first edition. of the

18:00

Bartenders Guide. You'll just need to

18:02

make an appointment with the Public Library. And

18:05

if you want to visit the site of

18:07

Jerry Thomas's own bar that's on Broadway and 22nd

18:10

Street in Manhattan, it is

18:12

now a Harry Potter

18:15

store. Our podcast

18:17

is a co-production of Atlas of

18:19

Syrah and Stitcher Studios. The

18:21

production team includes Dylan Thres,

18:23

Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Camille

18:26

Stanley, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Gabby

18:28

Gladney. Our technical director is

18:30

Casey Holford. This episode was

18:33

mixed by Luce Fleming. Our

18:35

theme in uncredit music is by Sam

18:37

Schindel. I'm Johanna Mayer. I'll see

18:39

you next time. Put

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