Ugly Christmas sweaters and the hope of going viral
Miracle pop-up bar reflects millennial love of internet culture
When I walked into the Miracle pop-up bar at Johnny’s Gold Brick on Monday, I didn’t expect to think about Jeffrey Epstein.
But there I was, standing in a dim-lit den of red and green decorations, gazing into an immaculate Ugly Sweater that said “Epstein didn’t kill himself.” The guy wearing it said he bought it on Instagram. What a perfect encapsulation of this current generation — the memefication of a news story emblazoned on an already memefied article of clothing, spotted in the wild at a Christmas cocktail pop-up bar aimed directly at the Instagram generation.
Sipping on my Yippie Ki Yay Mother F **** r! cocktail — rum, another kind of rum, Cachaça and pineapple juice — I looked down at my own ugly sweater. Golf clubs. Cheesy. Definitely not as memeable as Epstein.
Miracle is exactly the kind of place to attract the kind of people who wear Epstein-meme sweaters. Originally a bar concept in New York in 2014, Miracle has expanded to seemingly every major city, with Houston welcoming it for the first time this year. Miracle itself isn’t a bar but imports its vision and custom cocktail menu into an existing bar, offering the local establishment a cute menu, cute decorations and cute mugs. So it’s basically an Instagram filter.
Johnny’s, a cocktail bar in the Heights, hosts Miracle this month by turning itself into a cozily festive watering hole. People who don’t mind paying $14 for a light buzz can post photos of their drinks with #miracle. One snapped from Miracle says,
“Look everybody, I have disposable income.”
After all, if the boomers valued wealth, which meant buying jewelry and televisions, and Gen X valued disaffection, which meant hating on the crass consumerism that is the Christmas season, then millennials value “unique experiences” — basically, spending money in a way that yields a good Instagram post.
Miracle is tailored for this kind of new consumerism. Not that I really know (I have nine posts, mostly of buildings). But it seems like a good Instagram post needs to show off style and adventure, which means experiences that appear unique yet conventional enough to be broadly acceptable.
Miracle is a prime example of how retail has reacted to internet culture. It’s a celebration of the comfort of kitsch, and the internet loves self-referential humor. It serves up a so-called “unique” outing while still being easy to brand, replicate, duplicate and scale — in other words, it embodies consumerfacing social media.
Exhibit A: my cup of Yippie Ki Yay Mother
F **** r! Served in a mug that looks like Santa Claus’ belly and pants, this drink is a delightful reference to the perennial HuffPost/ Buzzfeed articles debating whether “Die Hard” qualifies as a Christmas movie. With late-1980s pop culture, internet memeing and an f-bomb all in the same cocktail, it’s a millennial home run.
The drink itself is ironic. It’s a rum-and-pineapplejuice cocktail served with an umbrella, which is about as wintry as a surfboard in the Bahamas. Man, where can’t you find the polished irony of internet culture these days? My bartender wore an ugly sweater with a T-Rex wearing a Santa hat, a shiny 1980s jacket and sunglasses. The dinosaur was dancing with its tiny arms next to a bunch of floating presents.
He stood behind a bar overflowing with holiday decorations — Christmas wreaths on the countertops, Santa hats covering bottles of Maker’s Mark, even animatronic elves climbing up and down miniature ladders in perpetuity. Someone stuck dollar bills in the robot elf ’s pants.
I was carrying back my Christmas Carol Barrel — $15 for tequila, coffee liqueur, cognac liquor, iced hot chocolate, Mexican spices and orange, served in a wooden barrel mug — when I think I walked into a woman’s Boomerang. (If you don’t know, a Boomerang is a short video clip that, like both the robot elf and internet culture, is stuck in an endless loop.) Wearing a green sweater, green undershirt and tiedup ponytail, I looked like a nerdy version of the Grinch. The dirty look she gave me suggested she didn’t want that kind of content in her post.
Maybe she wanted to go viral. Don’t we all? I pulled up my phone and saw
Tomi Lahren, whom I follow to throw off Facebook’s algorithm, had a new story. She was selling her “Liz Warren Pocahontas Ugly Sweater.” Bored, I looked up from my screen and noticed the Miracle bar looks cozy as hell, with the warm red hues of a fireplace evoking the primeval appeal of Christmas — huddling up with loved ones.
Yet Miracle is very much of its era. Maybe, I thought, at this bar, simmering under the fireplace chatter, lives the intersection of all these brands hoping to go viral. Miracle “eventized” the night by calling it the “biggest ugly sweater party in the world.” (There were about 40 people in the bar). By being part of it, whatever it was, we all had a shot at fame.
Me, my newspaper, Miracle, Johnny’s, the Epstein sweater guy or anyone who was present just might create the most retweeted or liked post of the week. Why not me? Why not now? You never know. It happens all the time. It happened to Popeyes. It happened to Marie Kondo. And so, even in the simple act of drinking or serving a holiday cocktail, we were all trying our luck at something more — something retweetable.