About Me
African Bowtie examines the culture behind a cocktail and unravels how bar culture evolves in today’s manic society.
Just as a swinging saloon door or a candlelit hotel room conveys a portal to a place where you shed your coat, bars today are designed for removing you, for a moment, from the times you live in. Bars still reflect the times, of course, but they also hold a purifying quality, allowing you to step inside and get away for awhile.
In Thailand, 2013, I started this blog as a light-hearted project to keep track of my favorite travels, recipes, dives, and lounges. But as I continued writing and society progressed, my ideas became less pure, more sticky and intricate. One day, I’d like these posts to create a compendium of these crazy times, and the bars we entered to get away.
The blog is inspired by, but not limited by the Gentleman’s Companion by Charles H. Baker Jr., the New Yorker’s Table for Two.
-New York, NY
October 2nd, 2018
Today, I had this thought.
It’s overcast, a glum, fall day in Paris, and I’ve been pinned to my mattress by the weather and the suffocating sensation of depression. I fell into a 2-hour waking dream where I confessed to an old, random acquaintance of mine that despite all of my facades, and Instagram stories and whatever, I’m not ok.
I’ve just finished writing a book, and am thoroughly exhausted from this experience, in the literal meaning, like an empty, discarded, rusting automobile. I’m tired of hiding this side of me, and I’ve decided that I’ll take this blog a new, authentic direction, which doesn’t limit itself to drinks, bars, experiences, and ‘cool,’ but also confronts the situation of living abroad with depression, because it is in times of displacement where one can feel most vulnerable, and I’d like to write about it.
The two topics don’t inherently go together, in fact, they almost seem to oppose one another, but that’s life–we figure it out as we go.
Living abroad in regards to mental health.
Love you all, Alexander.
African | Bowtie 