The Rum Historian title
This is the second article devoted to Basil Woon’ book “When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba” published in 1928. In the first, HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM 24. YOU MAY DRINK AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO, published in the January issue, we dealt mainly with why, according to Woon, Americans loved Cuba so much; we also looked at the most fashionable cocktails of those years. In this article, on the other hand, we will dwell on what Woon tells his readers about the bars, and the other pleasures available to (rich) tourists in Cuba, or better, in La Havana, because almost all the narration takes place in the capital.
In his book, Woon talks about Bars and characters that have become mythical and are now known to all rum enthusiasts. I don’t know about you, but his tales touch me, provoking a kind of nostalgia for things obviously not experienced personally, for a fascinating, inimitable era. Surely, as often happens with nostalgia, it is exaggerated. And yes, I know, in reality things were not so golden and life for many in 1920s Cuba was hard, but, well, we can’t be rational all the time. Every now and then we can also abandon ourselves to the myth and dream with our eyes open.
Moreover, Woon teaches us something else, not only about DRINKING. Already in the first article we saw only a few, but extremely interesting hints about other, more profound matters. By difference and comparison, Woon implicitly tells us something about American life, for example about the relationship between the sexes and their tensions, remember? “You may stare at the pretty señoritas because such staring in Cuba is a compliment – not a crime.” And also about what constituted the charm of an exotic tourist location for American tourists, always keeping in mind that we are talking about few, very rich tourists. There are also some succinct but intelligent reflections on the damage that the monoculture of sugar has caused to the whole Cuban economy and society, as we will see.
Finally, allow me a personal memory. When I was a boy and passionately read stories about red Indians and cowboys, I was particularly impressed by and admiring of the fact that the Indians who hunted buffalo did not throw anything away: they ate the meat, but also used the skin, tendons, bones; in short, everything. Well, I often behave in the same way with a good book: when I read a book, an insightful book, I don’t want to throw away anything I have read.
This said, here are some excerpts from Woon’s book. Again, I present those which seem most interesting to me, and my intervention is limited to simple notes in italics and a few brief reflections.
Let’s start with the most famous Bar in Cuba, El Florida, later better known as El Floridita. And at El Florida worked, or better, practiced his art, the most famous of the famous Cuban bartenders, Constantino Ribalaigua, called Constante, who actually, like many other Cubans of the time, was a Spanish immigrant, specifically Catalan. The bar and its bartender were already famous in the time of Woon, and later became legendary thanks also to Hemingway, whom we will talk about in the future.
The most famous bar for the sweet mixed drinks so popular with the Cubans is La Florida, behind the Asturiano Club on Montserrat Street. Drinks here, although the place has the appearance of an ordinary bodega, are as expensive as at the Sevilla or the Almendares. The bar, which is also a restaurant and grocery, sprang into vogue due to the remarkable talents of the head barman, Constantino, a saturnine individual whose peculiar gift consists in his accurate, though seemingly casual, measurement of drinks. Six of you visit the Florida and order Mary Pickford. A boy is put to work squashing and squeezing the pineapple. Meanwhile another boy fills six glasses with ice to frost them. When the pineapple juice is ready Constantino pours it in a huge shaker, takes the Bacardi bottle and, without looking, pours a quantity in the shaker. Then, still apparently without a glance at the shaker, he does the same with the curaçao or grenadine. The drink is shaken by throwing it from one shaker and catching it in another, the liquid forming an half-circle in the air. This juggling feat having been performed several times, Constantino empties the glasses of ice, puts them in a row on the bar, and with on motion fills them all. Each glass is filled exactly to the brim and not a drop is left over. It’s worth a visit to Havana merely to watch Constantino operate. I told him that he could make his fortune in Paris. He smiled. “I no do so badly here”, he said.
But of course, Constante is not the only bartender to make Cuban bars magical.
As in Paris, the new comer to Havana soon ‘discovers’ his own favourite bar and thereafter stoutly defend it against the others. There is plenty of choice. One of the famous places frequented by the younger set of rich Cubans and by American habitués is the Paris Bar, which is really only a serving bar for the Paris restaurant. … A place convenient to the Sevilla Hotel – it was in fact once the Sevilla bar – is the Winter Garden owned by George, who used to be barman in the Biltmore Hotel in New York. George is an Englishman. One block up the street is “Sloppy” Joe’s, so George calls his place “Sanitary George’s”. He has a large trade with American business men …
One of the curiosities among Havana bars is Donovan’s, back of the Telegrafo Hotel. Donovan was proprietor of a bar in Newark, New Jersey, when prohibition came. Most of the other saloonkeepers in Newark swore a little, then philosophically either closed their places, turned bootleggers, or sold soft-drinks. Not so Donovan. That Irishman had been had been too long in the saloon business to quit it then. So he packed up his entire bar – chairs, tables, hanging sign, mirrors and bar itself – and moved it down to Havana. Newark people entering the place rub their eyes and feel transported backward ten years.
Sloppy Joe’s place does the largest tourist business and during the season is filled from noon until after midnight. It never closes. It was originally a corner bodega, with sawdust on the floor and boxes for the customer to seat on, and the only help was the proprietor, Joe, and his brothers Raymond and Valentine. The place owes its amazing vogue partly to luck and partly to Joe’s ability in pushing that luck when it came, and mostly to its name.
The lucky part came when the Havana city government some years ago appointed a ‘sanitary commission’ to inquire into the cleanliness of the bodegas. The less said about the actual workings of the commission the better. But it happened that ‘Pop’ Roberds, proprietor of the Havana evening news, and Joe were having a little squabble about this time over a matter of advertising. ‘Pop’ thought Joe should advertise with him, and Joe thought differently about it. ‘Pop’ being an old-style newspaper man, very properly thought himself affronted, and forthwith wrote an editorial in which he suggested to the sanitary Commission that they might with profit extend their investigations to include ‘a place on Zuletta Street which should be called Sloppy Joe’s.’ The name caught on almost at once, and Joe, although privately peeved at ‘Pop’, realized that he had a good thing. He enlarged his place, and at a moment when drinks in Havana were costing seventy-five cents apiece (it was just after the Volstead Act became operative in the United States), suddenly cut the price in half. The resultant business forced him to enlarge his place again. ‘Sloppy Joe’s’ became a byword and Joe used the slogan on his saloon sign and in his advertising. Distinguished writers from New York and further afield wrote about the place and money came in so fast that Joe again enlarged. He now employs eleven bartenders. He advertises in The Evening News and ‘Pop’ Roberds is a regular client. The place is big, noisy, has an almost exclusive tourist trade and is frequented for refreshments after the theater. It has little really Cuban about it and might before the war have been on Third Avenue, New York.
Then Woon describes restaurants and food. And obviously, addressing a predominantly male readership and most likely in search of exotic adventures, he dwells on the beauty of Cuban girls. But he immediately warns his readers that they are, in fact, inaccessible, guarded by a wall of mothers, fathers, brothers etc. and wisely reccommends:
So be warned. Look your fill, drink in this admirable panorama of dark, seductive beauty until your pulse leaps, but don’t be foolish. Don’t fall in love. You’ll only have to fall out again and it may hurt.
Towards the end of the book, Woon returns to the same theme, repeating that so many girls in Cuba are very beautiful, but it is almost impossible to make their acquaintance; respectable girls, of course. Then there are the other girls you can meet in the cabarets.
It may be as well to warn you here that few of these “beautiful young things’”- and they are both beautiful and young – are Cuban. Most of them are from Panama or Chile or Ecuador.
Besides drinking, there are other pleasures in Cuba, particularly in Havana, among which Carnival, dances, the Basque Pelota, but above all, horse racing and gambling stand out.
Rum, roulette and racing form a fascinating combination. You might think it the most dangerous combination in the world, and Havana, which stretches ‘personal liberty’ to the point of permitting all three to operate in one same spot, a ‘wild town’. But as a matter of fact Havana is not a ‘wild town’. You do not hear guns popping in the streets nor see hilarious gentlemen ‘shooting up’ barrooms. That phase of Havana’s history belongs to the past. Today even the police are polite.
That is, in Havana, as a tourist, you can do many things that are forbidden elsewhere, and without taking too many risks.
The title of the seventh chapter, on the other hand, is a synthesis of the myth of Cuba: A JUG OF RUM BENEATH A COCONUT TREE, A DINNER DANCE, AND THOU, which, after describing a very pleasant typical day, ends like this:
And after dinner, with its accompaniments of good French or Spanish wines, there are multitudes of things to do. You may, for example, go to bed! Or you may indulge in another game of tennis, under the electric lights. Or you may decide to put on formal dress, invite a beautiful companion in Paris gown, and, at intervals of roulette or baccarat, sit over a quarter of champagne on the Casino terrace, looking into her eyes…
Before being devoured by envy, it is better to change the subject. Here is a reflection of Woon’s on Cuban identity, a subject on which I would like to write something, sooner or later.
It must be realized that the Cuban is a race apart. A Cuban is more a Cuban, if anything, than an American is an American. He has as distinct an individuality as he has a nationality. It may at times be difficult to distinguish between Panamanian, Honduran, Ecuadoran, Costa Rican or Venezuelan, but the Cuban, as the Mexican, stands alone. That is why patriotism to the Cuban is such a precious thing. It is a nationality christened by the blood of thousands to whom ‘Cuba’ meant ‘Mother’. Their blood is Spanish, but Spanish far removed. The blood of Cuba came from the heroic days of Spain. The temperament of the Cuban, then, is gay, amorous, generous and sentimental. … He is most serious when he is speaking of his country; sentimentally, Cuba to the Cuban is mother, wife, mistress and child.
And let’s end on a serious note. Woon acknowledges that Cuba depends too much on sugar and that there is too much corruption, but things are getting better with Machado, according to him a good President.
“Ninety percent of what Cuba eats could be raised in Cuba, but ninety percent of what she eats is imported. The soil surrounding Havana is among the finest in the world; even two crops of potatoes a year are possible; yet most of the vegetables used come out of cans. Cuba even imports tropical fruits, of which she has the largest variety of any country except Mexico.
Marco Pierini
