Patron Silver Surfer Gods
Patrón Silver. Just saying the name makes my sinuses clear up – that tequila was always the perfect cure for a runny nose which I, ahem, had a lot of during that time. But it also makes something else happen, nothing to do with congestion and everything to do with memory. This was 2003. I was living with Mona in a condo overlooking the ocean, and we had this ritual. Every Friday, we’d drive down to the store and buy a bottle of Patrón. Sometimes two, if we were feeling particularly alive. We had money then. Not rich money, but enough money to not have to work or do anything we didn’t want to do, for a little while. Enough to just be in love and enjoy life. Mona had come into some money, and I’d sold a screenplay that would never get made but paid like it might. “This won’t last forever,” she’d say, holding up the bottle, “let’s drink it like it will.” The bottle would catch the light from our ocean-facing windows, that silver liquid looking like liquid moonlight, like bottled starlight, like something you might find if you cracked open the night sky and let it pour into a glass. And when we drank it – always neat, always slowly, always with the kind of ceremony that made our beachfront condo feel like a palace – strange things would happen. Not drunk things. Magic things. I swear to God, that condo would get bigger when we drank Patrón. The walls would stretch, the ceiling would lift, and suddenly we had room to dance. Mona would put on some music and we’d move around that space like we had a ballroom, like the laws of physics bent themselves around the silver fire in our bellies. And the colors. Jesus, the colors that would bloom from that bottle. We’d be sitting on our king-sized bed – we’d finally bought real furniture, figured we might as well live like adults while we could afford to – and the tequila would hit our bloodstreams and suddenly the white walls were painted with auroras. Greens and blues and purples that had no business existing in a beachfront condo. “Do you see that?” Mona would whisper, pointing at the patterns of light dancing across our ceiling. “I see everything,” I’d whisper back, and I meant it. The Patrón showed us things. Made us see things. Not hallucinations – something realer than that. Like it stripped away the filters that normally keep you from seeing the magic that’s always there, hiding in plain sight. We’d make love on that mattress surrounded by impossible colors, tasting silver lightning on each other’s lips, and afterwards the room would hum with something that wasn’t quite music but wasn’t quite silence either. Like the universe was purring. Like we’d found the frequency that everything vibrates to when nobody’s listening. Mona was an artist too- the kind that believes art can change the world – and when she danced after we’d shared a bottle of Patrón, her feet wouldn’t quite touch the ground. I’m not speaking metaphorically here. I watched her floating three inches above our scratched hardwood floor, moving to rhythms that existed somewhere between the music and the heartbeat of the ocean outside our window. “You’re flying,” I’d tell her. “We’re all flying,” she’d say. “We just don’t know it.” We’d sit on our balcony with shots of that silver magic, watching the ocean stretch out below us like liquid mercury, like a living thing breathing light. And sometimes – I swear this is true – we could see the dreams rising from other windows along the beach. Actual dreams, colored like smoke and shaped like the things people wished for in the dark. “When we make it,” Mona would say, and the words would shimmer in the air between us like heat waves, “we’ll have a house where we can see both the ocean and the mountains.” “When we make it,” I’d say, watching my words take flight like silver birds, “we’ll drink Patrón every night.” “When we make it,” we’d say together, and the phrase would hang in the air above the water like a promise the universe was actually listening to. We thought we were playing at being adults, but looking back, I think we were actually playing at being gods. The Patrón gave us that kind of confidence, that kind of power. Like we could reshape reality just by wanting it badly enough, just by drinking deep enough from the bottle that held liquid starlight. The magic was real. I know how that sounds, but it was. The room really did get bigger. Mona really did dance on air. The colors really did paint themselves across our walls. The dreams really did rise from the windows of the sleeping beachfront like prayers made visible. But magic, like everything else good in this world, doesn’t last. The tsunami was building even then, of course. We just couldn’t see it through the aurora that surrounded us every Friday night. The money was running out faster than we’d calculated. My screenplay money was gone, and the next one wasn’t selling. Mona’s money had seemed infinite when we started, but infinity has a way of becoming finite when you’re not paying attention to the math. The fights started small, but they grew in the spaces between the magic. Whether we should start looking for real jobs. Whether this whole period had been a beautiful mistake. Whether we should let go of the condo and move somewhere cheaper. The Patrón started tasting less like possibility and more like denial. Less like alchemy and more like expensive procrastination. The magic began to fade. The walls stopped expanding. Mona’s feet started touching the ground when she danced. The colors dulled to their normal, depressing shades. The dreams stopped rising from the windows of other condos, or maybe we just stopped being able to see them. She left on
Is Jim Beam Dodgers whiskey collectible?
A Meditation on Desperation and False Promises So there I was, standing in the liquor store on Sunset, staring at this Jim Beam Dodgers 750ml bottle (click that link to see what i’m talking about). Big blue letters screaming “COLLECTIBLE” right there on the label. And I thought to myself, Christ, when did we get so goddamn obvious about it? See, here’s the thing about collectibles that most people don’t understand because they’re too busy getting excited about owning something “special.” Real collectibles don’t announce themselves. They don’t need to. A 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card doesn’t have “COLLECTIBLE!” printed across the top. A first edition Hemingway doesn’t come with a sticker that says “SAVE THIS FOR YOUR GRANDKIDS!” The good stuff, the stuff that actually matters twenty years down the line, it just sits there quietly, accumulating value like dust on a windowsill. Unnoticed until someone with half a brain realizes what they’re looking at. But this Jim Beam bottle? This beautiful bastard with its Dodger blue and white, commemorating another season of overpriced beer and broken dreams? It’s screaming its collectible status like a drunk at 2 AM screaming about how much money he makes. Which is to say: the louder you have to say it, the less likely it is to be true. And yet… And yet there’s something different about booze, isn’t there? See, most collectibles just sit there. Baseball cards stay in plastic sleeves. Coins live in little folders. Stamps get locked away in albums. But whiskey? Whiskey has this beautiful, tragic flaw: it’s made to be consumed. You can tell yourself you’re saving that Jim Beam Dodgers bottle for when it’s worth something. You can put it on a shelf, maybe even buy two – one to keep, one to drink, like some kind of alcoholic hedge fund manager. But life has a way of wearing you down. Bad day at work. Relationship falls apart. Dog dies. Rent’s due and the bank account’s looking thin. And there you are at 11 PM on a Tuesday, staring at your “investment” and thinking, well, it’s still Jim Beam, isn’t it? That’s when the desperation kicks in. Not the screaming, dramatic kind of desperation. The quiet kind. The kind that whispers, “Nobody’s going to pay $200 for this thing anyway. Might as well drink it.” And maybe that’s the real genius of putting “COLLECTIBLE” on a bottle of booze. The company knows exactly what they’re doing. They know that unlike a coin or a stamp, this collectible has a built-in self-destruct mechanism. It’s not just an investment – it’s an escape hatch. A way out when things get tough. So while the baseball cards and comic books pile up in storage units across America, slowly losing value as the generation that cared about them dies off, these bottles get consumed. One moment of weakness, one bad night, one “fuck it” moment, and boom – the supply gets a little smaller. Maybe that bottle really will be worth something someday. Not because it’s inherently valuable, but because most people couldn’t resist drinking their way through their retirement fund. The Dodgers will win some games, lose some games, break some hearts, give some hope. Same as always. And that bottle will sit on shelves across America, waiting. Waiting for that moment when collectible becomes consumable, when investment becomes medication, when hope becomes just another thing you swallow. In the meantime, I bought a regular bottle of Jim Beam. No team logo, no special label, no promises about the future. Just bourbon and the certainty that I’ll drink it before the week’s out. Sometimes the most honest thing in the store is the one that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is. Carlos Bukowski writes about collecting, drinking, and the intersection of both from his apartment in Hollywood. His collection consists mainly of empty bottles and full ashtrays.
The Night Blanton’s Gold Taught Me About Value
by Carlos Bukowski My friend Marcus is the kind of rich that makes you tired just thinking about it. Trust fund money, the kind where his biggest decision on any given Tuesday is whether to take the Porsche or the Tesla to his therapist. He’s not a bad guy, just… vacant. Like someone hollowed out the inside of a Ken doll and filled it with cryptocurrency and daddy issues. So when he shows up at my door last month with a bottle of Blanton’s Gold Edition, I should have known it was going to cost me more than whatever he paid for it. “Happy birthday, man!” he says, thrusting this gorgeous amber bottle at me like it’s a peace offering to the gods of working-class resentment. My birthday was three months ago. “Marcus,” I tell him, “this bottle costs more than my rent.” “Marcus,” I tell him, “this bottle costs more than my rent.” “Exactly!” He grins like he’s just solved world hunger. “You always drink that cheap shit. Time to upgrade your palate.” See, that’s the thing about rich idiots – they think expensive automatically means better, and better automatically means what you need. Like the universe is just waiting for them to throw money at problems that don’t actually exist. But it was beautiful, I’ll give him that. Single barrel, hand-bottled, each one supposedly unique. The kind of bourbon that whiskey nerds write poetry about and collectors mortgage their houses to obtain. The kind that sits behind glass cases in liquor stores with little signs that say “Please Ask for Assistance” because they know damn well that if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. I should have put it on the shelf. Should have saved it for a special occasion. Should have done what sensible people do with gifts that cost more than their car. Instead, I opened it that night. Not because I was celebrating anything. Not because I was having a particularly good day. I opened it because Angela was supposed to come over. Angela, who’d been giving me another chance after I’d fucked up the first three chances she’d given me. Angela, who worked double shifts at the diner and studied nursing on her days off and somehow still found time to believe that I might be worth something. She was bringing dinner. Homemade lasagna, the kind that takes all day to make right. The kind you make for someone when you’re trying to say something important without having to use words. So I thought, hell, if she’s making an effort, maybe I should too. Maybe we’ll crack open this fancy bourbon and have one of those nights you remember when you’re old and everything else has turned to shit. Angela never made it over. Car trouble turned into a tow truck turned into a mechanic telling her she needed eight hundred dollars in repairs she didn’t have. She called crying, apologizing, asking if we could do it another night. And there I was, sitting alone in my apartment with a pan of lasagna that was never coming and a $400 bottle of bourbon that suddenly felt like a monument to my own stupidity. I drank half the bottle that night. Not because it tasted good – though it did, smooth as silk and complex as a jazz solo. I drank it because I was angry. Angry at Marcus for giving me something I couldn’t appreciate. Angry at Angela’s car for breaking down. Angry at myself for thinking expensive bourbon could somehow make me into the kind of man who deserved homemade lasagna. But mostly, I drank it because I could. Because unlike Angela’s time, unlike her effort, unlike the care she put into planning that evening, the bourbon was just sitting there, available. Easy. The next morning, I woke up with a hangover that felt like it cost $200 and the realization that I’d just pissed away more money in one night than Angela made in a week. When I told Marcus what happened, he just shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll get you another one.” And that’s when it hit me. The lesson wasn’t about the bourbon. It was about value itself. See, Marcus could replace that bottle without thinking about it. To him, it was just money, and money was just numbers on a screen that magically replenished themselves. But Angela’s lasagna? The time she took to call me even when her world was falling apart? The fact that she’d rearranged her whole day around the idea of making me happy? You can’t buy that. You can’t replace it. You can’t waltz into a store and say, “I’ll take another Tuesday evening with someone who gives a damn.” Rich idiots like Marcus think the most expensive thing in any room is whatever they bought. But the most valuable thing in that room that night wasn’t the Blanton’s Gold Edition bourbon. It was the woman who wasn’t there, and the dinner that never happened, and the chance I might have blown by confusing price with worth. Angela and I are still together. She got her car fixed, eventually. I learned to appreciate the cheap bourbon again – turns out it tastes just fine when you’re drinking it with the right person. And Marcus? He’s still rich. Still buying expensive shit for people who don’t need it, still thinking money can substitute for understanding. As for that remaining half bottle of Blanton’s? It’s still sitting on my shelf, unopened. Not because I’m saving it for a special occasion, but because I’m saving it for the right one. The next time Angela makes lasagna and her car doesn’t break down and we have one of those perfect, ordinary evenings that money can’t buy. That’s when I’ll know what it’s actually worth. Carlos Bukowski writes about bourbon, bad decisions, and the difference between price and value from his apartment in Hollywood. He still drinks cheap whiskey most nights, and has