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It's hard to picture a goldminer drinking anything but rotgut out of a jug. And yet, goldminers and cocktails are interestingly linked in San Francisco history. When the 1848 Sierra Nevada gold strike flooded San Francisco with new money and people trying to make some, a rough and wild red-light district sprang up to accommodate the influx. Known as the Barbary Coast, it was a seedy, dilapidated nine-block-long neighborhood packed with whorehouses, opium and gambling dens, and bars. Using exotic ingredients coming into San Francisco's port from all over the world, bartenders invented new drinks. Many of those cocktails are now being revived and tweaked by the city's modern bartenders. We asked four of them to share their favorite Barbary Coast–inspired recipes in time for New Year's. Here's what they came up with.
San Francisco's past is colorful, entertaining, and odd, but hardly sleazy. The Barbary Coast, on the other hand, is said to have been colorful but even Sleazy is an understatement. Kidnappings ("Shanghai-ing") were common place and at one point there was a murder a day. Diseased women from the lower dives were left in vermin infested chambers off an alley near Chinatown to die. Yes, the...+READ
San Francisco's past is colorful, entertaining, and odd, but hardly sleazy. The Barbary Coast, on the other hand, is said to have been colorful but even Sleazy is an understatement. Kidnappings ("Shanghai-ing") were common place and at one point there was a murder a day. Diseased women from the lower dives were left in vermin infested chambers off an alley near Chinatown to die. Yes, the shameful, cruel, greed centered debauchery of the Barbary Coast is a sleazy aspect of our history, and it's rather colorful the way folks chose not to do anything about it until the Feds finally shut it down, but I wouldn't say that equate San Francisco history with sleaze, even Las Vegas doesn't deserve that reputation.-COLLAPSE