Some recent research I've been doing on Twitter caused me to go back and think about my career in bars, which began a little over 40 years ago. Before that, I clearly recall what my parents and their friends drank in the 1940's and '50s: highballs, cocktails and beer. Wine, if drunk at all, was sweet and/or bubbly and mostly rolled out for the holidays. Not only my memories of famliy and friends, but also some LIFE Magazine holiday issues from the 1940's confirm this.

I started playing music in bars 5 and 6 night a week, first in the midwest, then in Southern California. In the Twin Cities, it was cocktails or beer ordered by the habitués. In California, it was a much different story. People almost always drank one of two things: beer by the pitcher or "spritzers", white wine mixed with Seven-Up. A few people would order things like Bourbon and water and the occasional Scotch. May a Gin Tonic here and there.

Looking at all the Twitter data, as well as what people are drinking around me when I'm in the USA, it seems we are definitely moving to wine of all kinds and lots of non-generic whiskeys and brandies. Beer is stronger than ever as beer lovers, those who move beyond drinking the same generic stuff in packs of 6, 12 or 24 cans or bottles,  have grown to love all kinds of small production character beers, just as wine lovers enjoy trying new, unknown wines. Interest in cocktails such as those we now see based on fine Cognac is growing strong, and online contests and recipes are multiplying. I'm in the process of creating aTwitter list of people who drink, create or serve cocktails.

Tracey was if anything, an entrepreneur. She was the perfect example of business acumen put to questionanble use, but we did share an apartment (two couples) just one house away from the beach. It's the only place I ever lived where you could hear the ocean, really loud, from your bed.
 
In those days, I worked steadily 6 nights a week in bar bands. Tracey waitressed at one of these and she was living with the bass player in our band. Beer was cheaper by the pitcher than by the glass, so Tracey came up with and generously shared a scheme with her fellow waitresses: she'd buy a pitcher, grab glasses and set them at the band's table. When
a customer ordered a beer, she'd come and pour it out iof the cheaper pitcher and serve it at the glass price. Gotta smile at that, right? Hey, the customer was paying the same price, Tracey and the others pocketed the difference.
 
Surprisingly, Tracey was also a pretty good seamstrees and she made all of the stage outfits of her man. I think he was the only one of us actually wearing anything specially meant for show business. The drummer hipped me right away to the idea that you could go to a cowboy shop in Fullerton or Anaheim and buy almost anything there to wear on stage. It was one of the best pieces of advice any-one ever gave me about how to dress for the gig :)
 
Camp Pendelton wasn't too far a drive from where we lived and worked and on the weekends Tracey would drive down there and sell "acid" to the Marines at the base, looking for a good time. I don't know what they paid for the pills, but Tracey was selling her birth control pills as "acid", at a high markup, since I believe the pills she got were free as part of some Planned Paranthood scheme. 
Tracey and my ex-girlfriend both eventually got mixed up with a Swedish hooker in Fresno. I never knew if they were just hanging out, a part of the "stable" or just on the fringe of the many unsavories that hung in that bar, selling dope and maybe fencing stolen goods once in a while. The owner was shot dead there one day and a book was eventually written about those
times in the San Juaquin Valley.