POUR ONE OUTSIDE!
Out-of-work bartenders are serving up moodboosting modern moonshine in city parks
Meg Moorhouse was recently enjoying her daily homemade cocktails in Prospect Park when the unthinkable happened: She ran out of alcohol. The 42-year-old designer and restaurant-industry veteran was about to pack it up when, like a mirage, there stood a guy with a cooler. “It was full of what looked like nutcrackers,” she said, referring to the popular, potent summertime drink illegally sold on the streets, typically spiked fruit juice or Kool-Aid. “But these were margaritas.”
With the indoor space of New York’s bars currently closed for business, the 526 acres of Brooklyn’s
Prospect Park has been transformed into a boozy city hot spot. Some, like Moorhouse, bring the drinks from home, but to-go cocktails are readily available, too. And while nearby spots such as Krupa Grocery offer drinks in accordance with New York’s newly lenient liquor laws, within the park, more clandestine transactions are happening.
A few Saturdays ago, 24-year-old eye-bank technician Hannah Flaig was lounging in Prospect Park when she noticed a man with a cooler in the distance.
Intrigued, she called him over. It turned out to be the Brooklyn Vagabond, a 32-year-old furloughed restaurant server who launched his cocktail service early in the pandemic. His drinks sell for $15 ($10 for his peach mango sangria), which are packaged in 12-ounce plastic bottles.
Flaig bought a sangria and happily sipped. “It was a great, unexpected bonus to the day,” she said.
Vagabond, who asked to keep his identity private, as it’s illegal to sell liquor without a proper license in New York, said he was inspired by seeing his restaurant coworkers make income baking and selling bread.
On the weekends, he can net as much as $600 daily with choices such as the Kachumber Basil made with honey gin and herb-infused vodka.
The drink, he said, was inspired by his friend, celebrated New York chef Floyd Cardoz, who died on March 25 from the coronavirus.
Vagabond, who markets himself on Instagram, says that his customer base is largely composed of childless millennials. “Sometimes they’ll buy twice in one day,” he said.
City dwellers can also get their fix from newly launched cocktail delivery services by out-of-work professional bartenders.
One such business is Boomerang, run by 31-year-old Shane Smith, formerly of My Friend Duke and Beauty & Essex, and Carlos Alejandro of Red Rooster. The pair offer drinks in a range of sizes — from 16 ounces ($20) to half-gallons ($80).
To get delivery from Boomerang, customers choose from the menu posted on Instagram and DM their orders, which are then fulfilled by a partnering restaurant with a liquor license.
To supplement income, Smith also teaches Zoom cocktail classes and is brainstorming other ideas for the brand. “We might try cocktail kits,” he said. “We want to keep it going in some way as long as we can.”
But Vagabond will be happy to see his business wind down as brick-and-mortar spots reopen. “It’s very hard work,” he said. “It’s not easy, or glamorous.”
He may not have to worry about it much longer: He just got the news that the Soho restaurant where he worked will reopen by September.