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Wayne Curtis

@wcurtis.bsky.social
417 followers 125 following 246 posts

Freelance this and that

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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
On Oct 1 new British regs award "English whisky" official status. Or is it "whiskey?" From the new regs: “In English, the Geographical Indication allows for two spellings, ‘ENGLISH WHISKY’ and ‘ENGLISH WHISKEY.’” Gentlemen, draw your swords! thelongbar.substack.com/p/whiskey-vs...
thelongbar.substack.com
Whiskey vs. Whisky: A Debate about Nothing, Argued by Everyone
Elijah Craig has called a referendum. I propose a third option nobody asked for.
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Reposted by Wayne Curtis
DJ Soul Sister @djsoulsister.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I’ve been with @wwozneworleans.bsky.social since 1994, 32 years volunteering, cause I love sharing music. 🎶 With federal funding gone, WWOZ has a $400K annual gap to fill. If you also love community radio, please become a member during our Fall Pledge Drive (and my show tonight 8-10p CT): WWOZ.org
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A tiny brewery on a small Canadian island tried to escape the tariff war by moving 3 miles down the road and across the border. After getting pummeled figuratively and literally, a week later they were selling off their last cans. thelongbar.substack.com/p/the-worlds...
thelongbar.substack.com
The World's Stupidest Trade War Claims Its Smallest Casualty
Canada's tiniest brewery wanted to relocate three miles across a bridge. The internet had other plans.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
In 1979, a commuter lamented that losing his train's bar car felt like "the loss of another human touch on this railroad." It's only gotten worse since. My latest article, on the rise and fall of the bar car: thelongbar.substack.com/p/last-call-...
thelongbar.substack.com
Last Call on the 5:14
Bar cars once turned trains into rolling social clubs. Then the spreadsheets won.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Tequila will do that, I'm told.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Welp.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
A cocktail road trip up the Maine coast: Portland, Camden, Stonington and ten drinks along the way. thelongbar.substack.com/p/10-cocktai...
thelongbar.substack.com
10 Cocktails: Maine Coast Edition
Cocktails are better with a view
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Every decade invents a cocktail making ritual that seems absolutely essential — until it isn't.
thelongbar.substack.com
You Again! The Return of the Japanese Hard Shake
How one of cocktail culture's past obsessions resurfaced unexpectedly at Tales of the Cocktail
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
And the Puritan ancestors rejoice.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Picon Punch has been the drink of Basque shepherds in California for a century. The problem: you can't get the real thing here. Campari bought a key ingredient in 2022. Whether they'll do anything is an unanswered question. More on the history here: thelongbar.substack.com/p/could-pico...
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Napping on the couch while watching the World Cup and thinking you should probably be working counts as multitasking, right?
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The other World Cup (of rum): Cuba won against Bermuda last week, although a rematch this Saturday may give Bermuda's Bacardi a final victory. After thirty years of legal wrangling, is the fight over the Havana Club name may be at last entering its final match.
thelongbar.substack.com
Cuba’s Havana Club Finally Won its Battle with Bacardi, Right?
Don’t count on it
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This dates to 1879, and is far as I know is the first published "walks into a bar" joke. (The Sumerian "joke" that's often cited as the proto-joke is a stretch.) Will it endure another century-and-a-half? I have thoughts in this week's post on The Long Bar. thelongbar.substack.com/p/why-the-lo...
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Promises kept, I guess. 🥚
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Remember when Dan Quayle couldn't spell "potatoe" and that was considered disqualifying for being president? No? You should have been there. Good times.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
I scanned thru my spam folder and found many, many possible names for your metal band: Legal Boner Tea You, Pervert Deadly Artery Crystal Toenail Fungus Top Urologists Unusual Account Actuvity
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Hey, if I can round up a few dozen friends and we storm the US Capitol and smash some windows next week is it too late to get in on that $1.8 billion?
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
HOW CAN 37% OF AMERICA THINK TRUMP IS DOING A GOOD JOB?
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
"It's the audacity of the afternoon that matters." A few notes on day drinking, with helpful hints for those just beginning their journey into genteel debauchery. thelongbar.substack.com/p/a-field-gu...
thelongbar.substack.com
A Field Guide to Day Drinking
The art of the unhurried cocktail
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
The Aviary opened in Chicago 15 years ago and made molecular mixology mainstream — rotovaps, flavored ice nuggets, cocktails aged three ways. Most of that didn't survive. What did is more interesting. thelongbar.substack.com/p/the-bar-th...
thelongbar.substack.com
The Bar That Changed Everything (Except Itself)
Fifteen years on, the Chicago bar that made molecular mixology famous has left an enduring legacy — and it has nothing to do with the rotovap
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Dear algo: what do you know about me that I don't know mysel?
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Leans forward to ask taxi driver: "Where exactly are we headed?"
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
The best story I've read to date on Graham Platner, who is up 27 points in primary polls for the US Senate. "Organizing is central to Platner’s vision...'This kind of campaign and kind of politics, with an organizing focus, this doesn’t work if you just run TV ads,' he said."
themainemonitor.org
I went to school with Graham Platner. Here's a look at his success
Graham Platner, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, is possibly the most remarkable political story in the country.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
You meet only five types of people at craft cocktail bars. Prove me wrong. thelongbar.substack.com/p/the-5-drin...
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
"None of these people, including our own, very disappointing, NATO, understood anything unless they have pressure placed upon them!!!” A sentence is trying to find its way out of a atrophied brain. Maybe next time!
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
A court ruled one whiskey bottle looked too much like another. Which would be more convincing if most whiskey bottles didn’t already look like they came from the same 19th-century saloon. thelongbar.substack.com/p/who-owns-t...
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
When latte art becomes sentient.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
O Tenenbaum....
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
MTG and Elon both REALLY want to show their independence but also also still want love from daddy.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Now do 151.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
"Hello Mr President. My name is Chris Hansen."
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
When the world wants hazmat-level whiskey, Heather Greene delivers… something gentler, smarter, and far more subversive.
thelongbar.substack.com
“We Want More 80-Proof Whiskeys,” Said No One Ever. Except Heather Greene.
High-proof bourbons may get all the hype — but Milam & Greene proves that restraint can be revolutionary
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
First Bowdoin-American to become NYC mayor
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Arsonist calls fire department. Hailed as a hero.
nytimes.com
Trump’s China Deal May Avert a Crisis of His Own Making
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
In the Maine woods I established a curated, artisanal bottle dump with my favorite empty craft liquor bottles. I invite everyone to come back in 150 years and marvel at what once was. Read and learn: thelongbar.substack.com/p/a-second-g...
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Well if I ain't a snail's turd! It's an email from old uncle Foghorn Leghorn, and he's gone all cattywampus and set down my voter info somewhere and it's gone and walked off! No amount of shaking the overalls upside down and looking in the sock drawer will turn it up! Oh, wait, here it is: 🖕
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Apple really needs to think about streamlining their emails if they don't want to end up in my spam folder: Apple Services xqjsupportkfgv@wbuglzylotcazbugucahdbge.com
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Brett Martin @brettmartin.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
All the advancements and achievements of Europe are wiped out by the practice of deplaning onto a bus.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
It's happening. Everyone should prepare an escape plan.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Love coffee cocktails but hate laying awake at night? For the upcoming National Coffee Day, I offer you a three ingredient solution
open.substack.com
Why I'm Making My Own Coffee Liqueur This National Coffee Day
A simple 4-ingredient recipe for homemade decaf coffee liqueur
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Reposted by Wayne Curtis
Sean Howe @seanhowe.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
“Talking with Patrick McGovern about liquor was like talking to an astronomer about the Big Bang.” A tribute to the man who saw ancient history in every sip.
open.substack.com
The Man Who Drank History
How biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern traced the tangled roots of humanity’s first drinks
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
I was twelve when Butch Cassidy came out and I saw it at least four times and then I got a cowboy hat and on my stingray bike with a friend I swooped out of the woods on the dirt road near our house when cars went by with the idea of holding up the passengers. Why am I not dead?
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Un. Fucking. Believable.
apple.news
National park to remove photo of enslaved man’s scars — The Washington Post
The Trump administration is ordering the removal of information on slavery at multiple national parks in an effort to scrub them of “corrosive ideology.”
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Brett Martin @brettmartin.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Went to a science fair under the I-610 today.
Three punks under a highway overpass with a trifold science presentation on mold. 
Two women with a trifold science project on "Telepathic Poetry"A man sitting under an overpass with his science presentation on "Lumer"
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Why it takes so long to compose a simple email.
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John Hodgman @hodgman.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
I took this photo of @grahamformaine.bsky.social on the day I met him in 2023. He’s the smartest and fiercest and he’s going to vanquish Susan Collins finally. His oysters are terrific too. Anyway going to a meetup with him tonight at 6 at Lucky Jack’s on Orchard if you feel like meeting him
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Feeling gaslit? Read this.
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
Find the bar! Sound easy? Have you met Tokyo?
open.substack.com
Highballs and Hidden Doors
Exploring Tokyo’s bars is an IRL video game
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Wayne Curtis @wcurtis.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
For the love of Christ, just let them. I for one would welcome our iguana overlords.
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