1946 The Stock Club Bar Book by Lucius Beebe

record of how Martinis are compounded at the Men's Bar of the Plaza, or how the white aproned experts fling together a Planter's Punch at the Palace in San Francisco or how a whisky toddy is fabri– cated at the Hurry Back in Salt Lake, the Switch Key in Fort Worth or the Nose Paint Saloon in Durango, Colorado. These splendid shrines have their own local customs and individual ways of doing things, but they are not the ways of the Stork Club. The Stork Club's drinking has never been accomplished in the cloistered privacy of old gentleman's clubs; it has been orchestrated to sweet music, illuminated by the heat lightning of photographer's flashes and upholstered in broadcloth and starched linen. It has been drinking in the grand manner, guzzling with a panache of chic and elegance, a hoisting of crystal chalices in the secure knowledge that the wit, beauty, chivalry and wealth of the world were doing the identical thing at adjacent tables, each one a location of distinction and reserved for names that make news alone. Make no mistake, drinking at the Stork is neither a shy, anonymous nor retiring occu– pation. It is a public rite and requires stylish gestures and the dis– tant, barely audible accompaniment of French horns. Do you hear the French horns calling? I do. -L.B.

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xiii: Foreword