So last year

The Chronicle has a big story on the popularity of speakeasy bars in the Sunday pink (datebook) section. It's a fine story, but really old news. (At this rate next year we might hear that skulls are in fashion.) Last week they ran a story on historic cocktails in San Francisco, including the pisco punch. These stories, once limited to nightlife sections, were discovered by food and wine editors in the last year or two, and are now rolling over into the style and news sections only in the past several months.

Overall this is a good thing- more attention to cocktails means more consumer awareness means more pressure on drinking venues to do a better job. It also should mean more writing assignments in better publications for me if I'm smart. But my initial reaction to seeing these stories popping up in venues and sections that until recently wouldn't touch cocktails (several of which I'd pitched cocktail stories to directly) is always a very personal one: That's what I've been talking about this whole time. I get jealous that these stories are assigned by and to people who just figured it out.

I guess I'm going to have to adjust my attitude on this front. Maybe the reason that these editors are discovering that cocktails have ingredients and history and culture behind them is because the booze nerds have been doing a good job of getting the information out there. Instead of thinking of slow editors as slighting me, I need to think of myself as a pioneer. And that's pretty dumb, because I'm reporting on things that other people are doing, not creating anything myself. Heck, in the same Chronicle section today they reprinted a column from 1962 about the 100th anniversary of Jerry Thomas' book. You mean I didn't invent the wheel?

I thank you all for bearing witness to my ego check. You may now resume your drinking.

Labels: writing_life