Authorities suspended international flights at one airport and closed four bridges between the U.S. and Canada in the Niagara Falls area following an incident where a vehicle crashed and exploded on impact on the Rainbow Bridge.
04.11.2023 - 10:35 / nationalgeographic.com
Behind every great American dive bar, there’s a rock-steady formula. It goes something like this: walk through the door and a bartender stands poised to lend an ear, sliding drinks across the gnarly bar with easy intimacy. Overhead, a grunge playlist crackles through the speakers. And towards the back of the room, scratched tables and worn velvet seats provide shadowy nooks for getting up to no good.
Hekate Cafe & Elixir Lounge appears to tick all of these boxes, but there’s something decidedly off-beat about this buzzy East Village hangout. Perhaps it’s the cosmic tarot card reading happening in the window, or the greeting as I step in. “Have you been here before?” the long-haired mixologist enquires, handing me a menu. “We’re a 100% alcohol-free establishment,” he adds, in a tone that suggests the throw down of a challenge.
Hekate is part of a growing sobriety scene in New York. No longer the exclusive realm of committed tea-totallers, a surge of interest from the sober-curious and drinkers keen to dip their toes into the hangover-free waters of moderation has pushed abstention into the mainstream here, and a multiverse of sober socialising exists to serve them. It’s possible to greet the sunrise at a Daybreaker sober morning rave, attend a dry drag brunch courtesy of Third Place Bar, pick up a Phony Negroni at booze-free bottle shop Boisson, and join the zero-proof party at a pop-up event organised by Absence of Proof.
Social media has helped connect a new generation of temperance crusaders, I learn the next morning when I meet Rachel Hechtman in Central Park. Having called time on her own drinking, Rachel organises mocktail events across New York State, using her online platform to glamorise sobriety “in the way I once glamorised my drinking”, she tells me. “Once upon a time, every photo of me had a martini glass in it.”
She launched her new career in Central Park, organising sober walks during lockdowns, she says, as we walk past a carousel of dog walkers and joggers. Pausing on an ornate iron bridge, we gaze back at the city’s skinny skyscrapers through a curtain of foliage. Forget Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw sipping a cosmopolitan, once as synonymous with New York as the Statue of Liberty. Nowadays, it’s all about being sober in the city, Rachel explains. “Trends start here and ripple outwards,” she says.
I leave the park and make my way over to Brooklyn. When I finally locate Brooklyn Brewery, a warehouse reimagined as a microbrewery and tap room, I feel like I’ve arrived at hipster central. A disco ball swirls and pop art murals line the walls of the bar, with young clientele squeezing thigh-to-thigh on communal benches to take thirsty gulps of craft beer. Since 2019, the brewery
Authorities suspended international flights at one airport and closed four bridges between the U.S. and Canada in the Niagara Falls area following an incident where a vehicle crashed and exploded on impact on the Rainbow Bridge.
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Tigre It’s unusual to hear a rum based cocktail described as “joyful pain” but that happens at Tigre, the intimate, retro chic bar that opened this week on New York’s Lower East Side. The reason for this description is the rum, or rather rums, in the recommended cocktail Airmail composed of champagne and three symbiotic rums from Martinique, Venezuela and Haiti, countries in a region in which slavery played a part in their production. The social history detailed by the maître d’ is, obviously, painful but the cocktail itself is delicious, a choice on the “then” section reinventing classics of the six part menu. (Their screwdriver also has eight types of citrus including three types of orange.) Creative concoctions such as Mister Softee with Singani, sage and pina appear in the “Now” section and martini fans can dictate exact specifications with a ratio of 4:1 to 16:1 among other options.
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In 2019, the Vessel became the centerpiece of New York City's Hudson Yards neighborhood. Standing at 150 feet tall, with a honeycomb-looking facade, the Vessel cost an estimated $200 million to create, as Insider previously reported.