The LAST CALL 2025 New Year's Rockin' Eve Special
Year in Review! Fun Facts! Special Guests! A Contemplative Cocktail to Welcome 2025!
Well, another year is coming to a close in a matter of hours as we tick down to 2025. This year moved way too fast for my liking and I’m not particularly jazzed about starting a new calendar year come tomorrow, but “To everything turn, turn, turn.”
This super-sized New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Celebration is our biggest one yet and features a great lineup of special guests sharing their New Year’s Eve plans, favorite traditions, and what they’ll be eating and drinking.
Scheduled to appear: Michael Ruhlman! Katie Parla! Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez! Joe Stinchcomb! Gaby Scelzo! James O’Brien! And many more!
What are you doing New Year’s Eve?
Closing Out 2024: LAST CALL Fun Facts
Welcome to the third-annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Special!
The original editorial mission statement for LAST CALL still holds true, with a promise to feature spirited dispatches on bars and bar culture, drinks and spirits, restaurants and regional foodways, popular culture, and sometimes cats.
This past year I wrote and shared nearly 100 dispatches on LAST CALL with articles, personal essays, interviews, and recipes covering everything from a personal manifesto on my hatred of onions, an interview with Ciao Gloria’s Renato Poliafito, eating and drinking through Lancaster, Pennsylvania, two exclusive first looks at Grand Army’s seasonal themed cocktail menus (Grand Ole Army and Astrology), the sprezzatura style of Bar Basso's signature Negroni Sbagliato glass, a St. Louis road trip, and on the ground at Bar Convent Brooklyn to Martinis at Bemelmans Bar, an interview with James Beard Award-winning Seattle chef Renee Erickson, a round-up of my favorite Buffalo Wings, the art and style of movie end-credits, and recaps of drinks and dining out at Gramercy Tavern, Shukette, Rolo’s, Leo, San Sabino, and more.
I also continued with three rotating paid subscriber Friday exclusives: Dive Bar Jukebox (hand-picked, annotated playlists from bartenders, writers, chefs, musicians, and a cast of cool characters), The Lowdown (a roundup of what and where I’ve been eating and drinking), and City Guides (a curated lineup of my personal picks for eating and drinking in New York City and beyond). These will all continue, and expand, in 2025.
And 2024 is ending strong at LAST CALL with this year’s Holiday Programming, featuring six different Holiday Gift Guides along with the popular Holiday Specials (Thanksgiving Eve Holiday Special, The Holiday Special, Dive Bar Jukebox Christmas Eve Yule Log, and, of course, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve). The Gift Guides really broke out this year and would have taken up many slots in the overall top-performing dispatches of the year (though I didn’t include any holiday programing in the Top 15 Dispatches due to their seasonal nature to make more room for evergreen content). But for those playing along at home, the most popular Gift Guides were The Spirit of Italy, Food & Provisions, Drinks & Spirits, and Books & Cookbooks.
This year I also expanded my efforts collaborating with like-minded brands in the food, drinks, and lifestyle space here on LAST CALL. I’ve only had one person unsubscribe who cited “Advertising” as a reason. I usually run brand placements on content that would otherwise be behind a paywall so the brand support makes it free to all readers, so there’s an added element of goodwill. And I always try to make these a brief interruption, unlike so many endless podcast sponsorships, that doesn’t interfere with the flow, and often includes a special discount for LAST CALL readers and in many cases a bonus drink recipe.
My thanks to the following businesses and brands for their continued support collaborating with LAST CALL in 2024: Amaro dell’Etna, Black Seed Bagels, Campari America, Casamara Club, Demitri’s Bloody Mary Seasoning, Doladira, Ekone, Forthave Spirits, Four Walls Irish American Whiskey, High Wire Distilling Co., January Spirits, Le Moné, The New York Cocktail Co., The Pathfinder, St. Agrestis, See the Elephant Amaro, Vital Farms, and Wynk.
Contact LAST CALL if you work with a food, drink, or lifestyle brand or business interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities.
Subscriber Growth, Subscribers by Region, Audience Overlap
Before we look at some of the metrics, a sincere thank you to the real people behind these numbers who take the time to read and subscribe to LAST CALL. A special note of gratitude to each and every paid subscriber as you are true patrons of my work here.
“All Followers” includes total free and paid subscribers plus followers from the Substack app. Let’s go steady and commit to being a subscriber, not a a follower! Right now the All Followers number is north of 12.2K and growing daily.
“All Subscribers” includes free and paid subscribers who receive LAST CALL via email and/or the Substack App. That unexpected August 3, 2024 spike in nearly 800 subscribers was in response to multiple shares of “Exclusive First Look: The New "Astrology" Menu at Grand Army” via Substack and Instagram. As of this morning, All Subscribers is nearly 7.7K with total Paid Subscriber around 400 (I would obviously love to see more of you become paid subscribers if that’s something you can consider!)
LAST CALL launched on July 11, 2022.
LAST CALL is read in across 50 states and 124 countries
Most Subscribers by Country
United States (5K)
United Kingdom (588)
Canada (219)
Australia (111)
Where my Italians at?
Most Subscribers by State
New York (22%)
California (15%)
Illinois (5%)
Texas (4%)
Pennsylvania (4%)
Most Paid Subscribers by State
New York (36%)
California (11%)
Massachusetts (6%)
Washington (4%)
Audience Overlap
The Mix with Robert Simonson (10%)
Top 10 Most Popular Dispatches of 2024
“The Hidden Hospitality Hazards When You’re Too Big For the Bar” (May 10, 2024)
Perhaps the most personal essay I’ve shared. This originally ran on VinePair but they were kind enough to let me also run it on LAST CALL, where it instantly became, and remains, my most popular story. This is the most engagement I’ve ever received from one of my stories. To this day I still receive emails, DMs, texts, and in-person feedback.