The Long Island Iced Tea Can Save Us

Bad News is everywhere and if we want to change it, we must trade the Aperol Spritz for the Long Island Iced Tea

September 12, 2009 was the last time life was good and this man was three pitchers of LIT’s deep.

A lot has changed since then.

We are bombing Iran.

Crazy.

ICE is snatching nannies out the park like the Inquisition.

We cannot actually talk about politics without someone withholding jobs from us.

There is no actual freedom or agility without a living wage in a society that seems to be getting tighter and stiffer and more untenable by the day.

Something is going to break if we keep paying $20 to drink Aperol Spritzes al fresco when the minimum wage is $16.50.

You could just opt out and not drink Aperol Spritzes, but if you want to date, procreate, or just participate and be present in society, you have to have the ability to pay for about 3 Aperol Spritzes and a plate of olives each night, which explains why the birth rate is so low.

But doing so severely increases your risk of broke-homelessness, an affliction affecting 9.9997652 out of every 10 men in New York currently.

The other day I saw what looked like a creative director homeless in St. Vartan Park.

For the uninitiated, St. Vartan Park is basically the Harvard Square of Murray Hill. Every one brings their kids to fill up water balloons, throw water balloons at each other, cry, throw tantrums, shit their pants, and there’s one dude who smokes black and milds but also helps fill up balloons so we suffer his second hand smoke.

There’s also an asshole who just sits on the bench between the hours of 3 and 5pm most weekdays burning giant dumbell Ls blowing sour in our kid’s faces. As a life long smoker, I respect his right to smoke in public but not disrespect a kid’s inability to choose whether or not to inhale what he’s putting in the air.

But back to the fresh homeless person.

The Creative Director, the most made-up Millenial Job of all made-up Millenial Jobs besides perhaps the mixologist.

He had Gramici-esque hiking pants on so he had money to shop for Japanese garments circa 2021. He also had a nice button down shirt with a relaxed boxy cut akin to perhaps Margaret Howell, but may also just be Studio Nicholson or something ancient he copped at Assembly New York or C’H’C’M’. Maybe his friend had a brand called Friends of Valykeries or something equally ridiculous like Band of Outsiders.

Either way, it wasn’t Gap or J. Crew or even Gitman. It was deliberately boxy and oversized and someone paid a premium for the intentionally destitute tailoring of this shirt. Most people buy it to look homeless, but this man was actually doing homeless which was extremely meta. It was as if he absorbed the shirt’s mood board and became it.

What interested me the most about this fresh homeless man was that he was cuddling the True Blood DVD box set curled up on the bench.

I diagnosed the entire situation like one of the doctors at NYU Langone across the street.

From the DVD box set, I could deduce that him and his boo watched True Blood circa 2008 to 2014, when we still drank Long Island Iced Teas out of pitchers then proceeded to throw up the corresponding number of fingers signaling how many pitchers deep we were and then if we were conscious enough would broadcast it on Twitter.

The show became an avatar of their relationship and they decided to cop the DVD box set with the knowledge that the relationship could now only go one of two ways. They would either be together forever and it would be because of this shared decision to invest their hard earned dollars in the True Blood DVD box set.

OR.

They would break up and one day someone would walk away with the DVD box set without the other…

AHHHHHHHHH!!! Thinking about intimacy in this way makes me feel like Hulk Hogan.

At that point, I recognized that cosplaying a doctor at Langone across the street required a level of objectivity that far exceeds the level of objectivity it requires to be an op-ed writer on my own Substack so I inhaled through my nose, contained my emotions, and held back a tear for True Blood Bae as Sean Thor Conroe would’ve called her.

Fresh Homeless probably lived downtown where you could buy a destitute-ly tailored oversized shirt or Japanese hiking pants.

I think he was doing well out of the pandemic because his clothes corresponded to that era where every one was hiking and thought it would be the next lifestyle category that contemporary mens designers would consume and pick clean like a Sicilian cat with a Branzino at the Port of Messina.

We all know what happened in the pandemic.

We couldn’t do anything but stare at words on a screen. We stared at those words so hard but without life happening in-between the staring we fooled ourselves into thinking we had answers.

It was like deciding to ferment nappa cabbage knowing that with time it could become kim chi, but because you had the ingredients, read the recipe, and couldn’t go outside to live life you insisted that the nappa was already kim chi because you stared at it for the requisite amount of time.

You can’t fake time. Things take time. Nobody knows shit without time, but every day in your house on the internet, it felt like you had the formula to change the world.

Every one did.

People posted slideshows, videos, then started newsletters explaining these theorems and plans. When you read them, you immediately subscribed cause you had stimmy checks. Great plan! Global Warming SOLVED! Identity politics SOLVED! Gender equality SOLVED! Everything FUCKING SOLVED!

Then we came outside, every one was fit and hot and stopped drinking alcohol, which created the opening for the explosion of the Aperol Spritz.

For all the nerds loading the clip into their keyboard right now, I had an Aperol Spritz before 2021. I’ve dined outside in Europe with with my foot in Gucci flip flops after doing you-know-what and I was fully aware what an Aperol Spritz was, but this shit EXPLODED post-pandemic because you could drink several of them, look chic, not feel a thing, and still tell people you were Aperol-sober.

Shipments of Aperol from Italy to the US went from 9,000 cases in 2010 to 390,000 cases in 2023. In 2022 alone, 227,000 cases were shipped doubling what they did in 2015.

I looked at the fresh homeless man and concluded that the Aperol Spritz killed this man.

Like artificially low interest rates, tax breaks, stimmy checks, and all the benefits of living in a country where the rest of the world’s hopes, dreams, and currencies are tied to yours, the Aperol Spritz is an avatar of delusion. You think you’re getting drunk, you think you’re getting money, you think everyone believes that ballet flat is Alaia, but it’s not babe.

The dupe only works if the rest of you is real and nothing in our society is real anymore.

The Kardashians want us to believe it’s La Dolce Vita, but we are all living an Aperol Spritz lie.

Things are not ok.

We cannot continue.

There are repercussions.

As a society, we have completely rejected physics and denied that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

You can go to Turkey, you can take Ozempic, you can put a rod in your leg to stand 5’10”, but my brother in christ, something is going to catch up to you.

For the Fresh Homeless Man, it was the Aperol Spritz. He thought, “If I could just make it to the Bar Bianchi opening, everything will be alright.” He was only down $15,950 on his Visa. He was about to get paid for this freelance gig with Hoka that was on 30-day terms...

If he could just make it to the Bar Bianchi Friends & Family opening, he could dodge one weekend of Aperol Spritz bills, avoid having his credit card declined, and the wire would hit on Tuesday.

But then the sun came out, True Blood Bae got off work early, she put on long denim shorts and loafers, they went to Bar Pitti for Aperol Spritzes and a $17 Panzanella Salad that she fed to her phone with the caption, “It’s Spring.”

Between the 2 spritzes, the salad, tax, and tip, they owed $67 and his Visa went over the $16,000 limit.

He was cut off and homeless two days before the Bar Bianchi opening that Saturday…

That Friday, he didn’t have the heart to tell True Blood Bae that he was broke, left the apartment with the True Blood DVD Box Set, and took up residence in St. Vartan Park where no one from downtown would ever see him.

It was at this moment I heard him murmur, “If only she wanted Long Island Ice Teas…”

The beauty of the Long Island Ice Tea was that you could get fucked up for the price of one drink. It was the same with Four Loko, but all the politicians were like “No! This is dangerous! It will kill kids!”

What say you about the Aperol Spritz that destroyed the West Village and is now coming for Alphabet City Charles Schumer?

Sure, in the wrong hands, Four Loko could be dangerous but someone died eating old fried rice!

I’ve lost enough arguing for Four Loko. In most peoples’ eyes, it was too lit.

Fine.

I concede, but the Long Island Iced Tea is a happy middle ground where you can have a great time, not stare at words on a screen, get loose, and live life for about $20 all-in. If you drink more than $20 of Long Island Iced Teas, there are very real repercussions.

You can only spend so much money drinking Long Islands and honestly people are a lot more fun drinking LITs than Aperol Spritzes because they’re actually getting fucked up, spilling tea, and being the generally messy humans we all are.

With an Aperol Spritz you sit there behind acetate glasses, all your shit splayed out, Cartier this, Rolex that, Sunny Angel by your side, pocket watching keeping up with the Joneses.

“What do you do?”

“Where are you vacationing for the summer?”

“Did you buy or are you renting?”

Those are questions assholes ask sipping Aperol Spritzes.

“What’s really good?”

“Are you gonna ralph?”

“Should I drive?”

Those were questions people asked sipping Long Island Iced Teas in 2008 and I understand why we had to stop. The LIT was a DUI in a tall glass in those days. You drank one, you could not, should not drive.

But we have Uber and Citibikes now. It is safe again to drink LITs and it’s been too long since we brought them back.

I cannot wait to see an entire city of people throwed off Long Island Iced Teas in the bike lane. That’s gonna be so fucking fire.

But make no mistake. The world is on fire.

This was from last week BEFORE we decided to bomb Iran.

But we must resist the temptation to fix it all in one day staring at our phones. There is not ONE silver bullet we can fire into somebody’s head that will change the course of history for the better as delectable as that idea sounds.

It’s just not true.

A lot of bad things happened to arrive here.

It took time for nappa to become kimchi and it’s going to take time if we are going to reverse it.

I like kim chi. I’m just using it as an anaology here. I don’t think you could even reverse kim chi so it’s not the best analogy but I need to take my kid to the Natural History Museum before my wife kills me.

If you want to cancel anything, cancel the Aperol Spritz, do not rank Cuomo, elect Zohran and embrace the Long Island Ice Tea.

Every thing has a consequence.

There is no sex in the champagne room, there is no alcohol in an Aperol Spritz, but it will still kill you and leave you with a True Blood DVD Box Set in St. Vartan Park.