Swizzle History

There are an abundance of things that existed in the past, big and small, that were better than many things, big and small, that exist today. Some of the little things of the past that were better were never replaced, with anything--much as some big things of the past, Western Civilization, for example, are being eradicated, without a smidge of a thought about the nothing replacing it. I take that back. Chaos I suppose, the biggest something of nothing, is replacing it. But I am today speaking of the small.

Swizzle sticks. 

Like matchbooks, they were an identifying piece of Bar and Restaurant history, and of history writ local. Some of it was history writ by celebrities when Hollywood was a Dream Factory and not Nightmare Alley. 

Why is she thinking about Swizzle sticks? Well, for some reason I have a lot of them. I am trying to recall how they were bequeathed to me. I think many of them were in some large brandy glass in a library or bar on Townsend Avenue, for the first sixteen years of my life. I think many of those were given to my parents, because although I recognized some of the places which they frequented with my Aunt Teri and Uncle Frank back in the 50s and 60s, many seem to be places that only Aunt Teri and Uncle Frank, who did a lot of travelling back in the day (they had no children) visited for meals and libation.

Even I stepped into a few of them in my early years, and later. When I came to Los Angeles, a few were hanging on, like Scandia, and one or two Brown Derby's, Hamburger Hamlet, Chasen's, Perino's, Chianti on Melrose, and I was lucky enough to visit each at least once. A few are still around, and boy they are a piece of nostalgia I hang onto, and enjoy, like the Smokehouse in Burbank (1940s), and Musso and Frank Grill (1919), Peppones' in Brentwood, and Tam O'Shanter (not sure when it began), Miceli's. Most of them lack glamour these days, (what doesn't?) and you probably wouldn't want to see the inside--the furniture, the bar, the carpet-- in daylight, for they are pretty ragged. Oh, yeah, there is Dan Tana's but I haven't gone there since the 1980s, when a party I was with spent oodles of dollars from soup to nuts but we were told "We need the table" as soon as we sipped our last after dinner aperitifs. 

So today, after finding a box full of swizzle sticks while moving stuff I don't need from one location to another, and threw out a little of it (no, not the swizzle sticks!), I tiptoed through culinary and bar related memories of my own, but mostly of others.

I think I have about 50 of them, but here are just a few.

I know they are hard to see, but just below, Musso and Frank Grill; The Cattleman (ok, that's New York, but I was there, many times with my family. Uncle Frank used to grease the palm of the head waiter to be sure of a flow of cocktails); Millionaires Club (I think New York, not sure); Tail of the Cock.

Below, a slightly better view of the few above.

The only three that I went to of this group below were Hotel Del and Benihana (which was everywhere including Restaurant Row on LaCienega and in New York) and the Riverboat, after my high school prom. I had my first drink there. Tom Collins.  The Sticks from the Chateau Frontenac and Ruby Foo's are quite old, in fact they are about nine months older than I am, because they came from a trip my parents and Aunt Teri and Uncle Frank took to Montreal back in the 1950s where I became more than a wink of the eye. 

Below, close up of the Tail of the Cock Swizzle stick. Never was there. 

Funny how something so insignificant, matchbooks and swizzle sticks, can be so memorable. Today you are lucky to get a toothpick. Or a shaker of salt on your table.