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Over the next few Fridays, we here at Spectavius will be saluting everyone's favorite time of the day, Happy Hour. It seems only fitting as many of you will spend Fridays daydreaming at work, doodling in class, or goofing around on your iPad while occupying Wall Street, just counting the minutes until freedom. Hopefully these columns will help you pass the time between now and the moment that first frosty beverage or tasty appetizer hits your lips. Sometime between 4-7 pm. Enjoy.
As a burgeoning member of the profession with the highest rate of alcoholism, I feel it is only appropriate that I add my two cents to the Happy Hour Debate. What’s the point of happy hour folks? I submit to you that the point of happy hour is to get sauced enough to forget your shitty day at work, but not enough to prevent you from having another shitty day at work tomorrow. And because you’re usually joined by a big group of like-minded friends and coworkers at 6:30pm on an off night at your local watering hole, the place will supply your cohort with friendly discounts. Drinks, discounts, food, friends—sounds simple, right?
WRONG. The happy hour is a delicate matter and people do it badly every day. First, pick your beverage special carefully, stick to it, and know how many is too many for a Tuesday. Cocktails, beer, and wine all have different implications. Cocktails gets you more sauce for your buck, but a much faster potential demise so you have to be careful. Beer is slow-moving, filling, and not really that expensive off special but it’s reliable and safe. Wine is a nice middle ground most of the time but beware the seemingly sudden sloppy meltdown factor. Second, you have to properly marry your chosen beverage special with an appetizer special. Beer + wings: check. White wine + spring rolls: check. Maker’s Mark Manhattan + bacon-wrapped dates: check. Don’t go running around downing apple martinis and bagel bites, or you will have fashioned yourself a sad hour.
Now what is the most awesome happy hour scenario out there? That’s a trick question, because it’s not a happy hour: it is an hora feliz. The beverage special: sangria. The appetizer special: any classic Spanish tapa. The result: perfection. Sangria is like a wine and cocktail merged into one heavenly glass of bobbing fruit and deliciousness. Not too fast, not too slow, not too filling, not too sloppy. Easy to drink, easy to enjoy, easy to get merrily home after imbibing with the right amount of sway in your step and glaze in your eyes. Tapas are savory, unpretentious bite-sized morsels of non-nutritious delight. You can chow down on them without keeling over, share them with all your pals, and still save room for dinner if need be. Marry the sangria and the tapas together and you’ll obtain the kind of satisfaction you’ve been searching for your whole young adult life.
So, before you and the gang flee from the office with relief and head straight to that mediocre place around the corner that has $2 PBR cans and potato skins, utilize that iPhone that you already have out anyway and Google Map the nearest upstanding Spanish establishment. You won’t be sorry. You’ll be muy feliz.
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