The 2021 Return of BVBS

And We’re Back

Catching Up Before The First Update of 2021

By now we’ve all aired out our grievances about  2020. Common refrains include It wasn’t supposed to be this way, I had so much planned, Depression doesn’t care!, and that’s only the easy stuff. Loss of loved ones, losing your job, interminable waits on the phone for state assistance- it’s all much heavier than the expression we use to capture how we really feel. The words are snowflakes, the feelings are the water that makes them, and when the thaw comes so too does the reckoning.

This blog suffered tertiary effects of the pandemic. Let’s catch up:

1.) I frequent the livelier areas of the barrios and cities of the NYC metro area. The places where broken-down cars with working batteries are still used as sound systems, the sidewalks where so many pairs of dice are shaking that you think you hear tap dancing, and on the stoops where the “group chat” is actually the gaggle of shingled and scabby-skinned whores sharing laughing about their pathetic Johns and accusing one another of really being on that dope are the places where I live and shop.

Crime stopped for a few weeks and then it skyrocketed. One specific day a few weeks into the pandemic, the photos on my phone reveal it was the 27th of April, I walked home from the grocery story and watched a young man on a bike steal a cell phone out of a woman’s hand as she was talking on it, proceed on his bike two blocks up the avenue, and then sell the phone to someone there waiting for him. The whole thing, from the phone being snatched from between an earlobe and a palm to being sold a few blocks up the way, lasted 20 to 40 seconds. The same day featured a violent daytime assault in front of my building (a prolonged beating that last ten minutes), an overdose death also directly across from the front door of my building, and someone in my building being chased by police out of his apartment and on to the fire escape and then on to the next building’s fire escape to evade with a backpack full of felonies (he got away too!).

Considering what I just described to you, what do you think the liquor stores where I get my dusties looked like? 

2.) I saved some money for my once-a-year purchase from overseas. ExcellenceRhum’s service is terrible and it took me many months to get my money back after never receiving my package. That ordeal lasted from May to October. I guess money is so tight for these guys they have to steal from people like me. I will never take this company seriously and if someone steals from them, I approve. To every person at Excellence Rhum who touched my order or ignored my emails: I hope calamity greets you at the curb every time you step out your front door. You may take advantage of people who don’t work for their money, but you can’t take advantage of the proletariat without consequence so long as we let you stay open.

I eventually made a purchase from The Whiskey Exchange and my bottles were at my door in 9 days. 

3.) No more social media. Unless it’s to spread the word about this blog or to post a food and rum related picture on Instagram, I no longer engage on social media. It’s been fantastic. The last straws weren’t political but they relate to the correlating “outrage machine” that essentially translates to “encouraging emotional volatility via algorithm”. I was searching for vegan recipes and a box score for the 76ers’s game and BOOM! For the next few days all of my social media and news feeds shout things like “Want to get meat-eaters out of your life forever? Try these five tips!”, “WATCH THE HORROR OF THIS INDUSTRIAL SLAUGHTERHOUSE”, “Fire the Coach!”, “Buy out his contract and leave him in the unemployment line,” and more. I can’t look up recipes without the advertisers and media companies trying to sway my belief system. I can’t look up the box score of a simple basketball game without there being a bevy of belligerent and bellicose click-bait headlines competing for my attention. It’s fucking basketball. It’s fucking food. Leave me alone, everybody. 

Am I the only one who finds these headlines to be… anti-social? I don’t want to meet the people who get paid, or don’t even get paid, to write those headlines and articles. Those people must be miserable. It must be exhausting to be so militant about mundane things at all hours of the day and likely deep into the night. 

4.) I am finally building my bar in the mountains. Watch this space over 2021. I live in the hood and I relax in the mountains. As the year progresses you’ll see the bar built, lighting installed, dusties arranged, furniture and pool table installed, and hopefully some video reviews in English and French.

That’s it for now, new review of three dusties with Jamaican food is coming this afternoon.