Dive Bar Jukebox with David Wondrich
"Rock, rock, Rockaway Beach."
Welcome to Dive Bar Jukebox, where bartenders, writers, chefs, musicians, and a cast of cool characters 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 responses reveal thoughts on their favorite dive bars along with a hand-picked, annotated playlist for your weekend listening pleasure.
Today I’m sharing a DBJ from the LAST CALL archives featuring award-winning author and educator David Wondrich. Dave was the very first guest on Dive Bar Dive Bar Jukebox when I launched LAST CALL in July 2022. Since then, the number of subscribers back then compared to now has multiplied by thousands—including the hundreds of new subscribers signing up this week due to LAST CALL being a 2024 Featured Publication this week across the Substack platform—so I wanted to turn off the paywall on this spirited gem so new readers and any subscribers who may have missed this the first time around can check it out.
David Wondrich
When I first launched LAST CALL and started reaching out to some of my favorite people to see if they would be interested in being featured on Dive Bar Jukebox, the first person to respond (within a few hours) was David Wondrich, who wrote back: “Well that just got me out of half an afternoon's work! How do you know when a writer really, really doesn't want to write something? When they immediately bang out something else.”
Former English professor David Wondrich is an award-winning author, cocktail historian, mixologist, and educator, and is hailed as one of the world’s leading authorities on the modern craft cocktail renaissance and the history of spirits and their production, cocktails, and bars.
Wondrich was Esquire’s first drinks correspondent and was later the senior drinks columnist at The Daily Beast. As an author, his library of books includes Esquire Drinks, Killer Cocktails, Imbibe! (the first cocktail book to win a James Beard Award) and Punch. In November 2021, Wondrich, along with writer and editor Noah Rothbaum, published the 10-years-in-the-making The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails. The three-and-a-half-pound, 864-page book features 1,150 entries from more than 160 contributors (Wondrich wrote 250 of them and co-authored another 50).
As someone who writes about drinks for a living, I’ve been inspired by Wondrich’s work from the beginning of my career and I’m truly standing on the shoulders of giants like him who have raised the bar and paved the way with continued inspiration. When I interviewed Wondrich for PUNCH on the release of The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails he talked about the intimidating shadow cast by some of the previous Oxford Companion volumes while he was writing his own, saying, “I’d look up at these huge, polished, incredibly well-done books and I had to kind of put them aside. Harold Bloom’s anxiety of influence was just too high.” That’s exactly how I felt after reading Wondrich’s books and articles while I was writing my first book, Bitters (and every book of mine since then).
I got to know Dave when I moved to Brooklyn in 2010 and still light up when we cross paths at a bar and have the chance to catch up and talk shop. When he signed my copy of his ground-breaking book, Imbibe!, he inscribed “To a friend and colleague…” I know he was probably just being polite but those two descriptors made me feel like I had been anointed into this spirited orbit of writers. He’s one of the most big-hearted writers I know, whether he’s sharing research, answering a few questions for a story, emailing you a compliment (or a quick fact-check note) on a recent story, or compiling a list of some of his favorite songs to play in a dive bar.
In October 2019, on the eve of the publication of my book Last Call, I celebrated the launch with a party held at The Long Island Bar that was packed with writers, bartenders, distillers, chefs, friends, and family. At one point, among the iced buckets of Miller High Life ponies and baskets of fried cheese curds, Wondrich commanded the attention of the room to offer a toast, sharing some impromptu and inspiring words about me and the book. I was incredibly moved and remain forever grateful for Dave’s kindness and generosity of spirit. Like Huck Finn, it was the closest I’ll come to witnessing the eulogy at my own funeral.