"California turned 175 on September 9, which means it's time to celebrate the only way the Golden State knows how: with alcohol that costs more than rent and tastes like optimism mixed with wildfire smoke. A concoction that shakes you up! Forget cake. Forget balloons. This is a state with a history that reads like a fantasy sci-fi novella, with chapters on the Gold Rush, the 1906 earthquake, Charles Manson, Hollywood's Golden Age, Silicon Valley, and the rise of agentic artificial intelligence."
"This should keep us all going until lunch at noon, where we graduate to Pisco Punch, the drink that built San Francisco's cocktail culture. Back in the 1850s, when the bay was mostly muddy streets and dreams of gold, Duncan Nicol's Bank Exchange Saloon served this deceptively smooth cocktail to miners who needed to forget they'd traveled 3,000 miles to splash around in rivers looking for shiny stones."
California's 175th birthday is celebrated through a curated lineup of historically rooted cocktails that evoke state culture and memory. Expensive, exuberant drinks serve as a lens for California's layered history, from the Gold Rush and the 1906 earthquake to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and emergent agentic AI. An Irish Coffee traces its origin to San Francisco's Buena Vista Cafe in 1952 and functions as a classic morning cocktail. Pisco Punch helped build San Francisco's cocktail culture in the 1850s at Duncan Nicol's Bank Exchange Saloon, served to miners seeking escape after long journeys. Trader Vic's Mai Tai originated in Oakland in 1944.
Read at San Francisco Bay Times
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