Dismal economic news got you down? Don your best 1920’s garb – or bread-line appropriate apparel – and party with us like it’s 1929!
Carri Bella will be crooning favorites from the jazz age era and we’ll be pouring Absinthe cocktails – just the thing to help you forget dismal circumstances! Relax with a glass in your hand and imagine you’re in a dark speakeasy – without the big guy at the door demanding the secret password.
Carri Bella will sing favorites from the jazz era of the 1920s & 1930s.
Once you’re lubricated, Carri’s jazz renditions of “Blue Skies” or “Glad to be Unhappy” (depending on whether you are a glass half full or glass half empty kind of person) will soothe your frazzled soul.
Or request something from the era! Leave a comment here by 5:00pm Friday and Carri will try to accommodate your song request.
“Even though Absinthe is no longer against the law, its mystique has made it a bootleg favorite of many international travelers over the years,” notes West Café co-owner, Doug Smith. “It is reputed to have mind-altering properties, so introducing it to Portlanders who need a respite from reality seems perfect.”
Event details:
Live jazz with Carri Bella & Steve Blackman 7:00-10:00pm
Special deals on Absinthe cocktails
Bail Out Menu available for dinner
No cover charge
Interesting facts and folklore
about Absinthe from Wikipedia:
West Cafe serves Absinthe in a traditional glass.
Dubbed the Green Fairy, absinthe gets its chartreuse hue from wormwood and there is a long-held notion that absinthe is hallucinogenic. The most famous “users” of Absinthe in the past were bohemian artists or writers. In one of the best known accounts of absinthe drinking, Oscar Wilde described the feeling of having tulips on his legs after leaving a bar. Two famous painters who helped popularize the notion that absinthe had powerful psychoactive properties were Toulouse Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh.
One early critic of the liquor said “Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman…”
Albert Maignan's "Green Muse" depicts Absinthe's reputation.
Although Émile Zola mentioned absinthe only once by name, he described its evil effects in his novel L’Assommoir.
In 1906, Belgium and Brazil banned the sale and distribution of absinthe, although they were not the first. The Netherlands banned absinthe in 1909; the United States banned it in 1912, and France in 1915.
Today it is known that absinthe does not cause hallucinations. In 2007, a federal agency begrudgingly allowed two European distillers to sell the notorious liquor Stateside. You can read more about the recent changes that allowed for legal importing of Absinthe in TIME Magazine.
