Last Exit is a speakeasy-esque cocktail bar located next to Tonic in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of DC. The entrance is an unmarked door to the left of the entrance to Tonic, though you can enter through Tonic as well.

The bar is fairly short, only accommodating about six guests. But there are plenty of other seats in the form of couches and lounge chairs. The eclectic furniture, exposed brick walls and concrete floor underscore the ambiance that you are in a clandestine speakeasy hidden from the patrons of Tonic.

Of course you really want to know how the drinks are right? Before answering that question, I need to give a little caveat. Tonic itself is not a cocktail bar. The cocktails at Last Exit are not the prime focus of the establishment. With that said, Matt the bar manager is very enthusiastic about the cocktails at Last Exit and from my observation is working hard for Last Exit to succeed.

So about those drinks . . . delicious! Our tour guide for the evening was Anthony Rivera and the lovely Ashley. Both bartenders were beyond friendly and hospitable and more so they enjoyed talking and debating the finer points of mixellany.

Their winter menu contains several hot drinks such as a glögg and a Root Toddy. Both were delicious and perfect to warm the cockles. Anthony made me a Martinez which was just about perfect. My final drink was my standard La Louisiane and I’m happy to report it was made just the way I like them.

I’m looking forward to more trips to Last Exit. The staff are making a big push to become another cocktail destination in DC and I see good things in their future. I don’t believe they will be an unknown outpost for very long.

Last Exit
3155 Mount Pleasant Street, NW
Washington, DC. 20010
(202) 986-7661

Cheers!

First off: congrats to my co-blogger, Marshall! He got engaged to his lovely and fun girlfriend, Sylvie, earlier this week. I couldn’t be happier for them!

Second: We’ll be updating our DNS records soon. Thanks to GoDaddy’s support for SOPA, and general embarrassment I’ve had with them as a hosting company in general (especially every time one of their ads come on) we’ll be moving registrars. If you have any problems reaching the site, try using an alternate name – put a dash between “scofflaws” and “den” (i.e. scofflaws-den.com) or use .org as well. I’ll be moving the domains over in batches.

Third: If you missed Drink.Write 2011, you really missed out. We had a fantastic meal at PS7 on Thursday night, a fun tasting group at Jack Rose on Friday, multiple trips to The Passenger, a heck of a great time at the Repeal Day Ball, and then ended it hanging out at the Speed Rack competition at Jack Rose on Sunday after brunch at Bourbon. It was FANTASTIC.

Fourth: Some events coming up. PS7 is doing a Feast of the Seven Fishes tomorrow (Christmas Eve) if you’re into that kind of thing, and a “Gangster to Gangsta” event (check LivingSocial) for New Year’s Eve. And on January 17th, the Museum of the American Cocktail is doing a seminar about George Washington’s whiskey. You can register here.

That’s it for now – after the new year we’ll have more stuff for you! HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY SEASON!

Ya know, so you can criticize me for what I missed or maybe check out some place you haven’t been to before. Whatevah!

(In chronological order!)

Marigny Brassiere: Went here to watch the World Cup and had a very fine po’ boy. Also some good beer on tap.

d.b.a. New Orleans: No food – just good beers and a large whiskey selection. Also, great music. Also, don’t order Campari and Red Bull or you will get hit by your companions.

CURE: Fantastic cocktail bar. Great bartenders. Good food. A must-visit.

12 Mile Limit: I want a bar like this near my house. An amazingly fantastic dive bar with a very interesting (and cheap) menu, including pulled beef brisket from a Weber out back and $6 cocktails. And a pool table. Yay.

Bar Tonique: Finally made it there, and one of my drinks was made by a bartender from CURE. Que sera sera. Had tons of fun, though I never did get my copy of the book I saw there…

Antoine’s: A classic New Orleans joint. $.25 martinis at lunch are worth every penny (take that as you will). Fantastic food.

Napoleon House: Look, I went here a lot. Muffalata is fine – not the best in New Orleans, but not bad by any means. Solid Pimm’s Cups.

Sylvain: Amazing food, great cocktail program, friendly staff.

Adolfo’s: Order the local fish, from what I understand.

Cochon Butcher: HOLY CRAP that was good. Boudin, head cheese, pork belly sandwiches, mac & cheese, hot dogs…not to mention the cocktails.

The Carousel Bar: It is what it is. For Tales, it’s a must visit almost every day. If not Tales – you should go once, at least.

The Rib Room: Overpriced. Not bad, not good.

Coop’s Place: FANTASTIC. Smoked duck quesadillas, fried chicken, jambalaya, crabmeat stuffed jalapenos, just … damn good eatin’.

Cafe Beignet: Not as good as Cafe Du Monde and nowhere near as crowded. Worth it, IMHO, to fix that beignet craving without fighting the hordes.

Felix’s: I like this place. Not hard to get into most of the time, blackened alligator, oysters…

Original Pierre Maspero’s: Tourist trap, but wasn’t awful.

NOLA: An Emeril restaurant. Wasn’t bad, but – eh.

Curious for more details? Let me know.

You’ll notice I don’t say that I’m at Tales of the Cocktail. There’s a couple of reasons for that.

1. It hasn’t officially started yet. Wednesday.
2. I’m not going to anything Tales-related that involves paying money.

You might wonder about that. I’ll be honest, and I’ll paraphrase someone else: like a lot of other people, I come to NOLA and to “Tales” despite Tales.

The single biggest reason why I’m here is because so many other folks are here at this time. Otherwise, I’d pick a cooler, less crowded time of year. I love visiting New Orleans, and would keep it in my rotation no matter what. But July? Only because folks from all over the world are here.

And they’re because of Tales. Don’t get me wrong; it’s become quite the event.

But it’s still the same event – and it’s getting old, already, for me.

Sessions are large events with little to no interaction, a couple of mass-produced cocktails, and while many of the presenters are entertaining, you can catch the info elsewhere. Alternatively, some are so skewed towards a specific product or brand as to be useless.

Tasting rooms are often over crowded, and I won’t get into other issues that cropped up this year involving badging for them.

Most events are completely slammed/packed. Good for ticket sales, I guess, but not necessarily for having fun.

And then there are the two most germane things to me, personally.

First off: ambush marketing. That’s the accusation that went on last year about any event that wasn’t specifically “allowed” by Tales of the Cocktail (read: paid TotC money).

So if you have friends over, and they work for a specific company, and they buy you drinks – ambush marketing.

You want to show off your stuff and invite folks to a party – and you haven’t paid up – ambush marketing.

Fuck that. Seriously. I’ve been to conferences and conventions of all sorts – beer and liquor related, video games, other gaming types, not to mention tons of ones for work, from completely technical related to government sponsored. No one else does that.

Can you imagine going to the LISA conference, which is for systems administrators, and having your company told “if you do any event outside of LISA in this city at the same time, we’ll ban you”? Or if you were at E3, which is video games, and told that if you didn’t clear your video game demos outside of the show with E3, they’d ban you?

No, you don’t do that.

Second: I don’t care for how media has been managed this year, especially the transition from last year’s style of handling bloggers to this year’s. I’m not mad at the bloggers involved, but instead how Tales handled it.

Especially with the relative dearth of press passes this year. Folks want to come here and give publicity – but I refuse to pay money to do it. So you’ll find me blogging about where I’ve been and things like that, but not about a Tales event. Sorry folks.

That being said – quick hits from day one:

Marigny Brassiere – Hit there to watch the World Cup. A “hot mess po’ boy” with fried chicken, ham, and blue cheese was fantastic.

Then it was off for boiled shrimps, headcheese from Cochon Butcher, etc. Yummy.

d.b.a. – This place will show up repeatedly. Good beer selection, great music. Going again tonight. Still, last night I realized that $9 for a hefeweizen just might mean it tastes like most other hefeweizens.

CURE - I always love going there Sunday nights ’cause it’s quieter. Some fun drinks there, and just a relaxing cool joint.

Twelve Mile Limit – if I lived down here I’d be there every night or two. What a fantastic place – kind of a “dive bar” ambiance with a cocktail program that costs, typically, the same as the most expensive beer on draft ($6 – yes, you read that right). Pool table, juke box, good cheap beer, man I liked it a lot. And the beef barbecue was pretty darn tasty.

Tonique - Didn’t hit it last time but did check it out last night. Had fun there, want to visit again. I’ve had questions as how it compares to CURE – it’s definitely a very different place. I only had two drinks there, and one was made by a bartender from CURE, so we’ll see how it is next time!

Today I’ve already been a few places, but we’ll catch up on that later.

Bourbon...brownest of the brown liquors...so tempting...

First a disclaimer: IANAL – I Am Not A Lawyer.

I mean, I’m freakin’ SURROUNDED by them around here in the DC area, folks like…my brother. My co-blogger. Friends. Coworkers. Cocktailians.

But that doesn’t mean I know anything.

However, I shall go on anyways, because that’s what we bloggers do. And hey, a little controversy never hurt anyone, did it? (It did? Oh.)

There were three events that caused me to want to write this post. First, a certain small start-up syrups company had to change their name. Second, a bar in New York was forced to change their name (and see if you can see the thematic similarity between the two!). Third, while visiting a local bar with a solid cocktail program, a short conversation between a tourist and the bartender forced me to rethink my opinions on this topic.

INCIDENT ONE: TRADER TIKI SYRUPS BECOMES B. G. REYNOLDS’ EXOTIC SYRUPS.

On June 8th, Blair “Trader Tiki” Reynolds announced that he was changing the name of his company to B. G. Reynolds’ Exotic Syrups – and he changed the URL of his site as well. There wasn’t a huge online uproar about this.

Google results for "tiki trader"

Quick disclaimer: I’ve known Blair for quite a while and consider him a friend.

He wouldn’t say who caused this to happen, though for some of us it was pretty to easy to figure out. Heck, start doing a Google Instant search for “tiki trader” and look at what you get – or look to the side here and see what I got.

If you know anything about these kind of things, you know that brands have to protect themselves. If they fail to go after people with similar names, they can lose the protection on their name. Therefore, when a company with a very similar name is also selling syrups, you know they’re going to want to protect themselves. From my understanding, there were discussions on it, but it’s just a question a lot of times of who has deeper pockets.

According to Rumdood, Blair was “neither bitter nor angry” at what happened. On the other hand, he points out that they haven’t (as far as one can tell) gone after Disney for having “Trader Sam’s Tiki Bar” and theorizes it’s because Disney has a bigger law budget.

I’m sure that doesn’t hurt, but there’s something else, too: as far as I can tell online, it’s not selling syrups online. Therefore, Trader Sam’s becomes advertising for Trader Vic’s and not competition.

Let me put this straight out there though: I own all of the B. G. Reynolds’ syrups, save one, and they’re all fantastic. Yes, Blair is a friend of mine, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone. I’ve even bought a number of extra bottles for friends and relatives! Go out there and buy some!

TRUST THIS MAN

Besides, how can you not trust that smiling face?

GIVE HIM  YOUR MONEYS!

Ahem, sorry about that. Let’s look at incident number the second.

INCIDENT TWO: DUE TO LAWSUIT, PAINKILLER BAR IN NYC BECOMES PKNY.

PKNY

Disclaimer: I don’t know anybody, really, from PKNY, except over Facebook, and haven’t been to their bar.

From what I understand and have read, this is what happened in a chronological order starting back in 1971. From Off The Presses, according to Beachbum Berry, the Painkiller was created in a bar in 1971 called the Soggy Dollar. Back then, it used Cruzan and Mount Gay rums.

In 1979, Pusser’s Rum was founded. From the founder’s statement, he got permission from the owner of the Soggy Dollar bar to trademark the Painkiller approximately 25 years ago. Approximately 8 years ago, they started work on a ready-to-drink Painkiller and have trademarks on both an alcoholic and non-alcoholic version.

Around a year ago, the bar then known as Painkiller opened in NYC. The owner of Pusser’s claim he contacted them “more than 10 times”. They didn’t respond, and so he sued, claiming they were causing irreparable harm to his brand. The court upheld that and PKNY lost their name and domain.

This caused a huge uproar amongst bartenders, cocktailians, tiki fanatics, and various other folks.

INCIDENT THREE: A TOURIST DESIRES A GIANT FROZEN DAIQUIRI.

Giant Daiquiri from Hard Rock Hotel

Recently I was up at Liberty Tavern in Clarendon (a neighborhood here in Arlington). Liberty has a good cocktail program – I wouldn’t say it’s the most innovative, but they have a good liquor variety and make solid versions of classic cocktails.

While chatting with my bartender (who is also a friend of mine) a tourist wandered up to the bar. He was curious if they sold giant frozen daiquiris, like you get in certain places – often infused with lots of cheap juice and/or high fructose corn syrup, rum (if you’re lucky) or even just grain alcohol (if you’re on Bourbon Street), these are usually fruity, extremely sweet concoctions that bear almost no relation to the classic daiquiri.

The bartender offered him a classic daiquiri so he inquired after a frozen margarita. After she politely pointed out that they don’t make any frozen drinks, he agreed to try a classic margarita – a drink that he couldn’t drink at all.

I had a realization: he thought he knew what he wanted. He wanted what he’d gotten in a number of places before. Meanwhile, the bartenders and I knew what those drinks SHOULD be. Sure, it was partly that he came into the wrong bar to order a drink like that, and the bartender did redirect him to one that would help him better (and didn’t charge him for the margarita); however, because anyone can make a drink and call it a “daiquiri”, a “margarita”, or a “martini” (to add that one in there) we’ve come to a point where people don’t know what they’re ordering.

ANALYZING WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS.

You might not realize it, but analysis is a combination of various words that basically mean “pulling lies out of your ass”.

Well, maybe not, but remember: IANAL. These are my opinions.

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine commented on the “Classic Cocktails” menu at a restaurant I’d visited, most of which involved “martini” or “margarita” variants. I distractedly responded that “well, it’s more of a beer joint” and he pointed out: “It’s just that terming these ‘Classic Cocktails’ is what we are fighting against.”

At first, I thought, “Fighting against? What am I fighting against? I just want folks to enjoy good drinks!”

And then incident three happened.

And I started thinking.

So…MY THOUGHTS:

A tradermark, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, nor is defending it.

I can’t be mad at Trader Vic’s for forcing the name change. They had a trademark and they had to defend it. I’m not privy as to HOW they went about that, what was claimed, etc., so I can’t say, but from an outsider’s point of view, I feel bad for Blair, but life is going on.

However, that’s more of a brand name, and not a cocktail. Let’s look at cocktails.

The trademarking of a cocktail is intended to protect the consumer – to make sure that when they order the drink, it will taste the way they expect.

This is Pusser’s argument. I think that is important in a cocktail, it should taste as you expect. However, I’m going to break this down a bit more.

If you did not create the cocktail, you should not trademark it.

Period. I don’t care that they have permission. Gosling’s gets away with it on the Dark & Stormy because supposedly it was created by them, but that not only points out the fact that Pusser’s recommended violating their trademark by using Pusser’s in a Dark & Stormy, but also my next point. Basically, in my opinion, there is no reason or excuse why Pusser’s should have that trademark.

A trademarked cocktail should not use specific brands. It should be trademarked by an individual.

This is a bit hazy, I will concede. Some specifics you can’t avoid – say, like Benedictine, or Chartreuse. However, when using rums, or whiskeys, or what have you, yes, there are slight differences, but the recipe should be generalized. It is not a religion. Recipes do not specify what brand of sugar or meat you should use.

If you’re serving a trademarked cocktail, you should give credit.

Honestly, in my opinion, if you know the origin of a cocktail, it should be credited. If you change it, it should be listed. “This is a variant of Mister Smith’s XYZ drink, but we use rum instead of poison.”

You should defend your trademark – when it is being abused.

Trader Vic’s probably does not sue Disney for Trader Sam’s because, in essence, they are advertising for them. Pusser’s should not have sued PKNY because, honestly, they were advertising the drink! If someone went home from PKNY and said “Man, I want a Painkiller now,” they’re going to look it up online or in a book. If you own the trademark on it, it should show up with your brand in it.

You should be clear and upfront with the public when defending  your trademark.

You should be engaged in the social media game. At worst, you should just make sure your statement is public: “We do not want to have to pursue legal action, but we are defending our trademark because of X, Y, and Z reasons.” Being silent until it’s all over just makes you the bad guy automatically.

You should only trademark when you can prove no one did it before you. You should only get mad if you can prove no one came up with it independently.

It can be very easy or very hard to come up with a recipe based off watching someone make a drink. A single idea, especially if it’s to a mass audience, can cause a number of people to have the same thoughts on creating a new drink.

If you want to trademark your drink, and you’ve found that no one has made it before, that is the only time you should be able to do so – and it should be done PROMPTLY. In my opinion, that means in this day and age in VERY LITTLE TIME – like weeks, or less. And you should check with cocktail historians (at the BARE MINIMUM, check their books) and search the Internet for similar drinks.

If you DO trademark your drink (or even if you don’t, you’re just very proud of it) you should NOT get mad at someone for having a similar or even same drink unless you can without a doubt prove that they are purposely stealing it from you. It’s easy to come up with a drink that uses similar ingredients, even if you’re doing some infusing or making something custom – especially if you’re basing it off the same inspiration. Perhaps I’m being a bit naive, but I think it’s better to talk to the other folks involved and find out the genesis of their drink.

I kind of feel like I’m talking in circles by this point so I’m going to lay off. Basically, what I think is: you should only trademark if a drink is definitely yours, but at the same time, that trademark can protect the customers. The power that a trademark gives you should only be used sanely and carefully however.

What do you think?