A few weeks ago, I ventured into the Arts District of Los Angeles for a guided cocktail tasting experience at The Obscure Distillery—and what an experience it was! You step into a moody, darkly-lit room (taking a moment for the eyes to adjust from the blazing LA sunlight). The bar is revealed, which, together with the musical accompaniment, evokes the feeling that one has stepped into Hogwarts. A very boozy Hogwarts.
From there, our host guided us through stories about the creation, history, and name origins of three distinct spirits (one gin and two whiskeys), each of which came with a sample of the straight liquor for tasting and a curated cocktail. Yes, by the end of the event I was feeling very good. I was impressed by these small-batch spirits, as each one had such a unique and delightful flavor that any of them would be excellent as sipping liquors, in addition to making great cocktails (and I don’t know about you, but the idea of drinking gin straight normally makes me shudder; gin skeptics may be pleasantly surprised by their Four Thieves Gin).
My husband and I couldn’t leave empty-handed, so we bought a bottle of their Seven Spheres Rye, which is described as an “unconventional rye” with notes of “honey, caramel, dried stone fruits, caraway spice, oatmeal raisin cookie, toasted coconut.” The cocktail they made with it was a Manhattan—simple and perfect! They have different “seasons,” so I may need to pay the distillery another visit to check out more of their unique drinks.
The Obscure was created by a bunch of artists and creatives who suddenly found themselves out of work during the pandemic, and the distillery has since seen thousands of visitors come through for its tastings. That, to me, is a pretty good LA success story.
For this month’s book, we’ll have to head out of downtown and into the heart of Hollywood where dark and disturbing doings are afoot. You may need a drink for this one…
Cheers!
Maeve Fly
Maeve is basically a female Patrick Bateman living with her movie-star grandma in the Hollywood Hills and spending her days working as a Disney princess (my fellow Angelenos, please pour one out for that gnarly commute). When she becomes entangled with her friend’s enigmatic brother, she finds she many not be entirely alone in her darker impulses… but can anyone ever really understand her?
This love story for psychopaths offers plenty of meditation on the allure of Hollywood. Rather than being put off by the idea that LA is “fake,” its very artifice is the reason Maeve loves it so much. One of her favorite places in LA is the Tata Tiki Lounge, where she sips pina coladas while listening to Halloween songs and sitting next to an omnipresent jar of teeth. Tiki bars are a staple of LA kitsch, a romanticization of Polynesia: an artificial paradise. No wonder Maeve enjoys them.
Author CJ Leede explains the atmosphere she has created in the book here:
October in LA is hot, often unbearable. Angelenos love Halloween, but no amount of decorations and costumes and parties can temper the unrelenting sun. The fires that often rage all around us as soon as the winds pick up. Ash raining down on cars. Heat that radiates up from the pavement, down from the sky, off every reflective surface, windows, billboards, broken bottle glass. This city disgusting and a mess, it can beat down and break down any sense of hope you carry. And yet… there are crows circling overhead. There is jasmine on the air, history and glamor, the mismatched architecture, the shine and the grit comingled, intermingling every day, filling our senses, reminding us of the dream and of how few achieve it. Reminding us that we live in an artificial paradise built into a desert that thrived long before we got here, long before we populated it with bougainvillea and palm trees and collector cars, all the hundreds of imported fruits, flowers, vines, towers, strip malls, studio lots. Tar bubbling up from grass, palm fronds falling violently and suddenly, crash landing at our feet.
Not just a love story for psychopaths, this book is also a bit of a love letter to LA.
Pairs best with…
Piña Colada
Maeve drinks pina coladas at the Tata Tiki Lounge. Why? Because they are the perfect representation of the “artificial paradise” of the tiki bar and of Los Angeles itself. They are fruity and sweet and lacking in depth, and Maeve would never be caught drinking them in a more public place outside of her favorite little dive.
Ingredients
3 oz. light rum
3 TBSP coconut milk
3 TBSP crushed pineapple
Directions
Combine all ingredients with 2 cups of crushed ice in a blender.
Pour into a chilled glass and serve with a straw (and a little umbrella, if desired). Garnish with a cherry.
Tips from a Writing Professor
Art is everywhere.
I had as student tell me about an experience where they were complaining to another student about writing an essay about “The Raven,” worried they wouldn’t enjoy it anymore after having to critically analyze it. The other student said, isn’t this a work of art that you love? Isn’t writing about it also a work of art? That stopped the student and made them think about the act of writing in a different way. An academic essay isn’t the same as a piece of creative writing, but it, too, is art!
That made me pause because it’s true. If we look for it, we really can find art everywhere. Any act of creation we engage in, even if it’s something we don’t necessarily want to do: if we viewed it as art, would it change our attitude? Would the act of doing the thing we don’t want to do be more enjoyable if we just tried to find the art in things?
It’s so common for people to come out of education disliking reading and writing because they have been made to do these things in an environment that stifles their creativity. I often think about what I want my students to take out of my classes. Good writing and reading skills, yes, but also the joy of it all. That digging deeper into great art can make us appreciate it more, rather than beating it to death. That writing can be its own pleasure. If I can make a writing-resistant student realize that writing can be fun, that’s a huge win, and it’s something I feel compelled to stress even more with the rise of large language models that can spit out very un-fun, tired, terminally boring pieces of writing for us.
Happy writing!
Writing Update
I now have a novel and a short story collection out on submission, and in the meantime, I’ve been doing writing of a different kind… writing music.
Check out the new song—a dark and moody Spanish piece—by my band, Guerra/paz. I wrote and performed the cello parts!
About Me
Jo Kaplan is the author of the horror novels It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and a variety of award-nominated anthologies (sometimes as Joanna Parypinski). Find her at jo-kaplan.com.
Quite like the music. Had no idea. Halfway through "le muerte viene" as I type this --sounds wonderful!
Flat out fun and entertaining read.