Dive Bar Jukebox with Aaron Goldfarb
"Cold beer, hot lights!"
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Please note: In honor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day federal holiday, next week’s Monday dispatch will arrive on Tuesday, January 17.
Welcome back to Dive Bar Jukebox, where every Friday bartenders, writers, chefs, musicians, and a host of dynamic people answer the question: If we were hanging out together at a bar and I put ten credits on the jukebox, what songs would you punch in and why? Their answers reveal thoughts on their favorite dive bars along with a hand-picked, annotated 10-song playlist for your weekend listening pleasure.
Please welcome today’s special guest…
Aaron Goldfarb
Aaron Goldfarb is a Brooklyn-based journalist who is a writer at large at VinePair and has contributed to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, and PUNCH, among others. He’s also written a number of books, including Hacking Whiskey, Gather Around Cocktails, and his latest, Brand Mysticism.
I run in the same spirited circles as Goldfarb and have always admired his work, intelligence, and sometimes sardonic point of view. He’s also one of the most prolific, and fastest, writers I know which always pains me as my pace and productivity as a writer tends to keep me the slow lane of the Deadline Highway. But Goldfarb did attend Syracuse University so we share a Central New York bond in regional foodways and Syracuse Orangemen basketball. Plus he has a very photogenic Maine Coon cat named Hops and an impressive spirits collection.
And if you haven’t read Goldfarb’s 2019 PUNCH story “JaNee: Where Is She Now?” do yourself a favor and check it out. Goldfarb won a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for his profile of JaNee Nyberg, the host of a now-infamous, unintentionally hilarious cocktail video tutorial that broke the internet as she makes the worst Old-Fashioned ever (and seemingly for the very first time), also breaking bartenders’ hearts around the world.