Let's Celebrate the 1-Year Anniversary of LAST CALL!
"Will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it?"
7/11: Celebrating 365 Days of LAST CALL
This super-sized anniversary dispatch will likely be truncated in your Inbox, so be sure to click the link to expand at the very end.
LAST CALL is back from a weeklong Fourth of July “vacation” (if you count doing the same things I normally do—except with more hot dogs—and not leaving the apartment a vacation) and the timing is perfect as today, 7/11, marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of LAST CALL.
And I’m thrilled to share that 7-Eleven is celebrating the occasion by offering a free Slurpee to readers of LAST CALL! Okay, I’m stretching the truth a tiny bit, but 7/11 is also National Slurpee Day (“the coolest day of the year”) and today you can indeed get a free small Slurpee at your local 7-Eleven. Before today, I think the last time I had a Slupree-like concoction was at the ampm in Oneida, New York, the summer before my senior year of high-school while cooling off between 2-a-day soccer practices. But there is a 7-Eleven on Atlantic Avenue just few blocks away from LAST CALL HQ…
Slurpees aside, I want to sincerely thank all of the readers and subscribers of this publication, whether you’ve been with me since day one or signed up just this morning. (Substack is currently featuring LAST CALL as a “Substack to Discover” on their homepage and app, so a warm “ciao!” to all of the new subscribers who have just joined us—I hope you’ll stick around!).
You can read a more detailed BTP origin story here, but a quick introduction to new readers… I’m Brad Thomas Parsons, a Brooklyn-based writer and award-winning author of Bitters, Amaro, Distillery Cats, and Last Call. I’m currently at work on my fifth book, Drinking Italian, about the spirited traditions of Italian drinking culture, which will be published by Ten Speed Press in October 2024.
When I launched LAST CALL a year ago the mission statement was, and remains, to share “spirited dispatches on bars and bar culture, drinks and spirits, restaurants and regional foodways, and popular culture.” Since then, LAST CALL become a certified Substack “bestseller” and one of the Top Food and Drink publications on Substack.
Over the course of 52 weeks I’ve written 107 dispatches—including 44 Dive Bar Jukebox interviews and playlists—consisting of essays, articles, interviews, previews, recipes, round-ups, and more. There were stories on Italian drinkways, from vintage amaro, amaro riserva, and all of the drinks in The Talented Mr. Ripley, along with features on modern classic cocktails, frozen Mudslides, a grandma-themed pop-up bar, and historic dives. And also personal essays on hometown pizza parlors, the heartbreak of being a lifelong Knicks fan, and realizing you are never truly alone when you’re drinking solo at a bar. Plus a special-edition holiday package with features on why Three Days of the Condor is a Christmas movie, a Christmas Eve tale of a bodega cat named Cyrus, and the first-annual LAST CALL New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
And LAST CALL will remain the first place to discover behind-the-scenes stories, photographs, updates, previews, recipe excerpts, and pre-order information about my new book, Drinking Italian.