Ah, shots.
Unfettered. Unpretentious. Mostly uncomplicated. And completely unnecessary.
You can say you drink ‘em in the name of social camaraderie. You can say you drink ‘em in celebration. You can say you drink ‘em because you hate the taste of beer or mixed drinks; or because people are always buying ‘em for you without asking; or because it’s a tradition you share with your closest drinking buddies.
But really, you drink shots for one reason, and one reason only: to cop a buzz as quickly and directly as possible without forgoing some sort of glassware entirely and just upending a bottle into your needy, alcohol-dependent face.
Listen, if you really liked the taste of unadorned liquor, you would pour two fingers of something expensive into an old fashioned glass (also known as a “rocks glass”) and savor it for longer than the half a second it takes a shot to go from your hand to your gullet. If you really wanted to celebrate a special occasion with your friends, you would buy a round and let each person select his or her favorite cocktail, rather than forcing them all to experience esophageal burn and an almost instantaneous shift in personality, whether they’re into that sort of thing or not.
If you really liked drinking, you would drink, as opposed to cranking up the process to one stop short of hooking up an ethyl-alcohol I.V.
In some cultures, shots masquerade as a ritualistic demonstration of masculinity — which is weird, because the more you do, the less virile you become. In many “socialist” countries, political leaders and other influential figures demand multiple shots between courses of ridiculously extravagant meals, ostensibly to show that they’re one with the common folk — which is arrogant beyond justification, because the common folk in those countries drink shots more or less to get through another day without killing themselves outright.
The shot is a ruse, a lie. At its best, the shot is the basest form of medication; at its worst, it’s the ultimate denial of reality, a tacit admission that one prefers the obvious facade to the difficult substance of truth.
While the public perception of shots in particular has never descended to the distaste afforded similarly self-medicating vices, like smoking, their popularity has waxed and waned in cycles at least since Prohibition. They were decadent in the ’30s and ’40s. They were manly in the ’50s. By the introspective “me era” of the ’70s, however, shots began to be viewed as the symptom of deeper issues. In Jaws author Peter Benchley’s lesser-known rehab novel Rummies (published in the late ’80s), a bartender screws with the protagonist by filling his shot glass to the brim, knowing the drunk’s shaky hands would create an embarrassing mess.
(In a successful yet still somewhat humiliating solution, the protagonist ties one end of his tie around his wrist, then pulls his tie over his neck with his other hand to lift the shot glass to his lips.)
Shots came back in a big way along with late ’80s/early ’90s club culture, but they were different. Instead of straight liquor, shots were fruity and chocolatey and tart and sweet and multi-hued — basically, mini-cocktails for young nightlifers who didn’t have the time to spend getting fucked up on regular-sized drinks. This latest iteration of shots marked the beginning of the end by doing away with the pretense of masculinity or tortured moodiness or artsy self-destruction completely. These were shots for kids and paralegals who hated the taste of whiskey but loved being shitfaced.
And as if the whole concept of shots in its entirety needed an additional nail in its coffin, the ’00s brought with them a whole new take on the boilermaker. Traditionally, the American boilermaker — a shot of liquor either in or chased by a pint of beer — was a physical manifestation of blue-collar hopelessness, something the guys who couldn’t get the union jobs drank before and after their night shifts to ease the pain of broken promises and unfulfilled potential.
That doesn’t exactly sound like a party. The last generation of power drinkers found a way to make it one, however, by turning the boilermaker into the bomb — booze mixed with tastier booze and dropped into other booze to hasten a drunk-and-disorderly arrest, or, infinitely worse, flavored booze dropped into an energy drink. You know, so you can stay awake longer and drink more and not know you’re beyond hammered until 4 a.m., when the alcohol finally beats the taurine into submission and you’re pissing through the mail slot of a small business three blocks from your apartment.
Thankfully, the trendiness of craft beer and artisanal cocktails has put a substantial ding in the popularity of these spiritous abominations. It’s for the best; shots are over for now, and they should be — at least until we’re ready to admit that slamming one out of the short glass is more akin to taking a Xanax (or smashing a TV tube at the dump) than it is loosening up on the town with some friends.
Woo-hoo.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 5, 2014.