Humans have invented a thousand different ways to consume alcohol, mostly to convince ourselves that we’re not really consuming alcohol—that we’re actually just salted-rim and floating-olive fans, and all that 100-proof spirit is just a coincidence.
With these thousand options comes a dense nexus of status anxieties, snobberies, and social codes—such as the law requiring all bourbon drinkers to own a pair of leather driving gloves, for example; or that all I.P.A. orderers “could genuinely have made it” in the music business if they weren’t so damn good at strategic advertising and wearing too-short trousers.
