The Blindboy Podcast - Soda Jerk

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

A roasting hot take which interrogates the connection between chicken burgers served in 1990s Irish nightclubs and sandwiches made out of rubber which were served to Irish people in New York bars in the 1890s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hey cool dudes, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast and this week I'm going to open with a piece of short prose that was submitted by Hollywood actor Aidan Gillen. The ghost of Derek Davis haunts my sister's teeth, he controls her jaws from heaven. The only words that she can utter are the opening paragraphs of Derek Davis's Wikipedia page, and it is having a detrimental impact on her quality of life and mental health. She has lost her job, and sadly, last week, she was informed by the bank that her house would be repossessed. Her only response was, Derek Davis, left bracket, 26th of April 1948, underscore, 13th of May 2015, right bracket, was an Irish broadcaster, full stop, on television, comma, he co-hosted Live at Three, comma,

he co-hosted Live at Three presented Davis at Large and Out of the Blue and one Celebrity Banished Door that was The Ghost of Derek Davis Haunts My Sister's Teeth submitted by Aidan Gillen who is currently in quarantine but is choosing to do it like a bat Aidan Gillen. Who is currently in quarantine. But. Is choosing to do it. Like a bat.

So he's. Aidan Gillen is in quarantine. But he's doing it. He's hanging upside down. With his hands over his eyes. And refusing to. To see. He's become voluntarily blind.

And is operating using echolocation. So thanks very much Aidan Gillen for that piece of prose. It was beautiful. Lovely feedback from you. For last week's podcast. Where I spoke to Dr. Michael Brooks. About quantum physics. So thank you very much for the kind messages and all that. Carry on.

So, I often... You know, if you listen to this podcast, you know that I often romanticise genres of music. You know, I'm very interested in periods of music like you know the disco in the 80s and fucking 70s disco I'm always romanticizing the past and trying to wonder what was it like how class would it be to be in an early fucking disco where house music is just emerging in Chicago in the early 80s, wouldn't that be incredible, and sometimes, you know, I might romanticise the early 90s rave scene, seeing a band like the fucking prodigy going to an all-night rave so with the 90s

it's like you know i know people who would have been going to raves like i i was a child so i obviously wasn't going to raves so i went to a buddy of mine who was a DJ and he would have been DJing in Limerick in the 90s. Now the rave scene, Cork had a good rave scene in the 90s I believe but there would have been a bit of rave music in Limerick. And there would have been nightclubs where rave music would have been played. So I went to my buddy and I said to him, what the fuck was it like? What was it like? What do you remember? It must have been incredible and he paused and he goes to be perfectly honest

what I mostly remember is a strong smell of chicken burgers and a smell of chicken nuggets and people with curry sauce all over their hair. Now that wasn't the answer I was expecting. You know I'm there with bated breath expecting oh it was incredible there was so much unity the sound system was banging if only I could go back to those times and no the answer was when I was a DJ in Ireland DJing at raves unfortunately I'm overwhelmed with culinary memories of fried

fucking food and the smell of fried food and people with fried food in their heads and on their clothes so as you can imagine that was quite a disappointing answer for me to receive because I'm thinking for me the answer I wanted was you know I think of the rave scene

of the early 90s as people dancing wearing fucking bright clothes bright baggy clothes banging tunes, everyone taking ecstasy, you know, almost like the 60s hippie movement, but a new techno version of it, you know. So it was a disappointing answer, but my disappointment soon turned to fucking intrigue, disappointment soon turned to fucking intrigue because what do you mean your memories of being a rave dj are mostly culinary memories what the fuck is that about i need some answers buddy and he gave me an explanation and i didn't believe it at first because i figured he's

deliberately telling me something fucking ridiculous so I'll turn it into a hot take and put it on a podcast as fact so I went googling his explanation about the relationship between curry sauce and fried chicken and these things and and why Irish raves in the 90s would bring up these memories instead of memories of music and it turns out when i looked it up that like fat boy slim had the same experience when he dj'd in ireland during the 90s fat boy slim was djing at a rave in ireland getting on fucking great banging out the tunes and then suddenly everything stopped at about half eleven everything fucking stopped and they start queeling out

curry sauce and chips and chicken and no one's eating anything, the food is just there and Fatboy Slim was just like what the fuck is going on in ireland with the raves and the curry sauce and the chips and the chicken so what i ended up finding out was in ireland up until the year 2000

if if you legally wanted to run a nightclub if you wanted to have a nightclub that stayed open late you couldn't do it unless you provided everyone at the nightclub with quote-unquote a substantial meal so Ireland was presented with this unique problem whereby if you went to a rave right the nightclub is legally obliged to provide every single customer with a fucking substantial meal or else it gets shut down and the meal was included in the admission price of going to the nightclub so the Irish rave scene is strangely and uniquely different to the rave scenes of other countries it's somewhat solid some might say like you go to the nightclub you're dancing the tunes are banging it's still the same tunes they have in the UK and they have over in America, the lights are bright, the sound system is loud, having a great night. Then half eleven happens, everything's shut down for a half hour and every single person

is confronted and forced with mandatory chicken, chips and curry curry now it's fair to assume that 90 of the people at this rave are taking ecstasy this this was ecstasy was part of rave culture if you're taking ecstasy the last thing in the world you want to do is eat food people are chewing the fucking jaws off themselves. Eating food is probably dangerous. So they're still being handed curry sauce and chicken and chips and they're out of their mind on ecstasy on a fucking love buzz. So people started smearing themselves with curry sauce on their faces or they'd get the fucking hot chicken in their hands and they'd be doting on yolks pulling the chicken apart and and feeling empathy for a fucking fried

chicken breast and trying to shove it into their friend's mouth but their friends like i'm on fucking yolks and i've got speed mickey too what the fuck do i want with this chicken and they spit it out so everyone was covered in chicken and curry sauce and that was the rave scene in Ireland solid a solid rave scene because of a ridiculous law and they got rid of the law in in the year 2000 but I just found that mad that to go to a nightclub meant non-consensual chicken and chips. So I had to reassess my romanticised image and version of the 90s rave scene in Ireland. But if you listen to this podcast you know that information like that. It's what inspires kind of hot takes

and that information for me it made me paralytic with the hot takes bubbling up inside of me because I see a connection now because of the

mandatory non-consensual chicken and chips in curry of the Irish rave scene of the 1990s, I now see a connection between the Irish rave scene of the 1990s and 100 years previously. If you were an Irish person trying to go to a bar or a dance in New York in the 1890s. And I'll tell you why. If you were an Irish person in New York in the 1890s, and it was late at night, and you wanted to get yourself a drink,

so, you know, 1890, New York, you're Irish, a couple of decades after the famine you're going to be pretty poor probably a labourer if you're lucky to have a job at all so you're going to go into a shitty enough bar you're going to ask for a pint

and what would happen is instead of a pint they give you a rubber sandwich, right? Irish people in New York in the 1890s were sitting down at bars, asking for drinks, and instead being given a rubber sandwich. And the sandwich, like it's made out of rubber, and it's there in front of you at the bar and you're not disappointed that the barman has

given you a rubber sandwich because you know the crack your pint will come soon after so the barman takes the rubber sandwich off you gives it to the next person who asks for a drink and then you get your beer

or if the sandwich wasn't made out of rubber, you were given a week old stale sandwich with mouldy bread and one sandwich was made on a Monday and it was passed to all the other Irish people in the bar in New York who asked for a pint. I'm not making this up it was known as a rain sandwich it was a cultural phenomenon of the 1890s in mostly Irish bars where there was one sandwich in the bar made out of rubber or if it wasn't rubber it was a week old and if you ordered a drink you were given the sandwich. You didn't touch it. You didn't eat it.

Then the sandwich was taken back and passed to the next person. And then you were given your drink. A rain sandwich, it was called. A real thing. And why the rain sandwich of the 1890s of New York and the mandatory non-consensual chicken curry of the 1990s rave scene in Ireland why they're connected is

it's because of the complicated relationship that Irish people and Irish culture has with alcohol as a result of post-colonialism of course I'm blaming the Brits but the complicated relationship we has with alcohol as a result of post-colonialism. Of course, I'm blaming the Brits. But the complicated relationship we have with alcohol and binge drinking. So in the 1990s in Ireland,

you know, why bring in a law into nightclubs that say that you can only open late if you're serving food. It's a fundamental legislative distrust of the Irish people around that much alcohol. Like even today in Ireland, nightclubs, like you won't find somewhere open past three o'clock if you're lucky, most places close at two. A distrust that we collectively have of ourselves around alcohol. The law in Ireland was called the Special Exemption Order.

Right? And it was brought in in the 60s, the 1960s, I believe. And fundamentally, it comes down to, what do you mean you want to keep a nightclub open till three o'clock you want to serve people irish people drink until three o'clock in the morning sure they'll go mad the whole country will go on fire no we gotta stop it so you bring in this ridiculous you try and stop people getting licenses by saying well you can only open till three if you're technically a restaurant so the nightclub owners find a way around it by having this mandatory chicken and chips but ultimately it comes down to the Irish can't be trusted with

drink and in 1890 in New York the thing that led to this rubber sandwich that all the Irish people had to pretend to eat this Rains sandwich it came from a thing known as Rains Law Rains Law, right it was known as the Excise Law was brought into New York in

1896 and it restricted how and when alcohol could be served but at its root was an anti-Irishness all right like I said 1890s in New York the Irish were an incredibly poor immigrant community I think two-thirds of every person in New York was fucking Irish the there was a massive moral panic about Irish immigrants especially famine Irish immigrants and Irish people were discriminated against massively and seen as a violent race of people who simply could not be allowed near alcohol or chaos would ensue so in america it's straight up anti-irish prejudice and in ireland it's an internalized

prejudice that we have towards ourselves of for me it's a it's a it's a fear of freedom, we spend so 800 fucking years, with the Brits telling us what to do, that when we're given the option of freedom, you know a 24 hour nightclub, it's like, no, no we can't have that much freedom, no, no we'll go mad if we have that much freedom, give us a little bit of freedom,

chicken, chicken sandwiches, mandatory curry, alright, we can't have full freedom we'll go mad so in new york in the 1890s a big thing in new york was saloons right now saloon nowadays i think saloon it it's you know when you think of a saloon you think of the old west in america but new york had saloons

there was 8 000 saloons in new york and saloons were the worst of the worst in terms of bars you know real fucking shitholes like if you ever walk into a hipster a hipster bar and there's hay on the floor do you know the way some places would put hay on the ground? Like that comes from saloon culture. In the 1890s, there was no chairs and you had your pint up against the bar. The reason there was hay on the ground is because people used to just piss on the ground. People would piss on the ground in a saloon and you just put hay on the ground to soak up the piss like a fucking barn. ground in a saloon and you just put hay on the ground to soak up the piss like a fucking barn but these 8 000 saloons were inhabited in new york by mostly very very poor irish people

who were a discriminated i don't want to say minority because two out of every three people but they were they were an ethnic group in new york who received massive discrimination so the republican party wanted to shut down they're like how do we shut down all these shitty saloons that all the irish are drinking in so what did they do they brought in this raines law and raines law in 1896 the gist of it was if you wanted to stay open as a saloon and serve drink the annual licence went up by I think it was 10 times as much effectively

placing saloon owners in a position where it's like fuck well I can't turn over a profit with all these Irish labourers coming in if my annual licence has gone up by 10 times as much so they found a fucking loophole they found a loophole they stopped trading as saloons and instead became like private supper clubs so when the Irish labourer in 1896 went in for his late night pint he wasn't buying a pint he was buying a rubber sandwich he was buying food at the supper club and the drink came with it and that was the loophole that's what happened this

anti-irish law they found a way around it through rubber sandwiches, just like the rave scene found a way around it in the 1990s in Ireland with mandatory, non-consensual chicken curry and chips. One of the other things that Raine's Law tried to stop, and this is one of the aspects of, we'll say, New York bar culture that's kind of problematic in the 19th century so saloons used to have this from from like the 1860s onwards they used to have this promotion known as the free lunch right and some people view it as almost like a drug pushing.

It was a way to turn mainly Irish labourers, new immigrants into alcoholics. So the Irish that were coming from America were escaping the famine, escaping hunger. They were escaping a land where food simply didn't exist so when they arrived in America you would all the pubs all the saloons would say outside free lunch free lunch so the Irish would go in and it's like where's this free fucking lunch are you giving out free lunches and the saloon owner would say yeah there's free lunches it comes free with a drink so if you buy a drink we give you a free sandwich free food and that's what happened the Irish

started going in for free food but it's promoted and developed a culture of of drinking of alcohol consumption they're not going to you know there's no irish deli there's no irish restaurants it's go to the pub and buy the alcohol buy the drink and then you get your food because of it. It was also, a lot of these Irish people didn't speak English. They spoke Gaeilge. So they'd go to the pub to be with other Irish people. Not only that, unions became a thing. If you wanted a job on a building site, because a lot of building was going on in New York at the time

and the Irish were involved in the building, you went to the pub for the drink to speak in Irish to the foreman who was also Irish to get a job and it led to and developed a problematic culture of almost drug pushing alcohol and Irish people in New York and Reigns Lobb was brought in to try and stop that so it reversed it instead of buying a pint to get free food you went in and bought a fucking rubber sandwich to get your pint and if you've ever heard the phrase there's no such thing as a free lunch that's where it has its roots it's like there was no such thing as a free lunch it's no you're you buy a pint and then you get the lunch but

you're still buying a pint but in general this the free lunch culture and fucking reigns law and these saloons full of drunken irish laborers was one of the driving forces that, it would have fuelled what was called the temperance movement at the time, which was a movement of socially, would you call them socially liberal or socially conservative, people who wanted to ban drink. And the temperance movement eventually led to, in the 1920s, the prohibition of alcohol in America. Drink was illegal in America. And you can trace the roots of the temperance movement, like I said, to these particular saloons. So this hot take is going to get even more bizarre. And stranger. It's going to get more weird.

Than rubber sandwiches. And mandatory chicken. At Irish raves in the 1990s. But before. We go there. Let's do our little ocarina pause. So that an advert can be played. I've got my blue ceramic ocarina this week which has a lovely range

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Yart. yart so that was the ocarina pause an advert for some products also I'm going to use this opportunity to remind you to support the Patreon for this podcast. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBoyPodcast As you know, if you've been listening, all my live income has been taken away

as a result of the coronavirus. Coronavirus. All my live income is gone and I've been landed with a big load of debt because I postponed a gig in London so I'm in a financial pickle

the Patreon is my sole source of income I do this podcast for free and you the listener support it via the Patreon page but right now I'm just asking if it's something you've been thinking about for a while i could really use the price of a pint once a month or the price of a cup of coffee once a month patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast and as always if you can't afford it you don't have to you can listen for free but if you can't

afford it please do support the podcast it's not far off the free lunch do you know it's like buy me buy me a pint and you get a podcast for free

but optional not mandatory not forced on anyone so back to the hot take to the boiling hot take so these rubber sandwiches that were being served in New York in 1896

in the saloons these Reign sandwiches the Reign's law had unintended consequences instead of it stopping the amount of saloons it meant that the saloons could keep serving

as long as they were serving a rubber sandwich as well. And what happened is places decided to open up as hotels that served these rain sandwiches and it effectively meant that now there was no closing time. There were hotels serving rubber sandwiches and you got a drink with the rubber sandwich and it went on all hours, non-stop. So it made the initial problem that the Republican Party were trying to solve, it made it way worse and now there was non-stop drinking and as i mentioned before the ocarina pause the temperance movement right now the temperance movement in in the 19th century was huge this was a huge cultural movement um that wanted to ban drink it wanted to make alcohol in America illegal and the temperance movement were using

things like saloons and the debauchery of saloons and the violence that might happen and then an anti-Irishness and an anti-immigrant vibe too to be honest they used these things to push for prohibition to make alcohol illegal and to close the saloons and the thing is with prohibition people obviously if you're involved in the temperance movement it can be assumed that you yourself don't drink alcohol you yourself don't go to saloons you don't go to bars so what became quite popular with the temperance movement were soda fountains because people in the temperance movement still had to go somewhere they're not going to go to bars they went to soda fountains and the interesting thing around the

culture of soda fountains in new york in the 19th century a soda fountain was it was a pharmacy that served fizzy drinks basically but in the 19th century people didn't have fridges in their house so the idea of going somewhere and getting a cold drink was a real treat a real novelty and a fizzy cold drink with flavors in it even better but like i said soda fountains these were in pharmacies because for a hundred years carbonated water or mineral water as it was known it was like it was seen as as a medicine it was seen as having medicinal properties it wasn't like a recreational drink temperance people who thought that alcohol was evil would go to soda fountains in pharmacies to drink their fizzy drinks because i think what it was is is carbonated water does exist naturally

there's certain springs and fountains wherein it was known as mineral waters where people would drink water from these springs that was fizzy and they believed that it cured a lot of ailments so they started making carbonated water from about 1800 onwards this is why as well like if you remember being a kid you know when you're at an Irish funeral From about 1800 onwards. This is why as well. If you remember being a kid.

You know when you're at an Irish funeral. There's always an uncle. Who appears out of the crowd. Like a strange goblin. And if you're a child. They offer to buy you. A mineral. You know it's a uniquely Irish thing. We call our fizzy drinks.

Like coke and Fanta. Well we don't. Uncles do. Irish uncles always say mineral. So if you've been a child at a funeral and you're Irish, it's a ubiquitous experience. A goblin-like uncle just arrives out of nowhere. The uncle you never speak to.

You've no communication with him, but at a funeral and you're a child they'll arrive and they'll just say do you want a tin of mineral and I remember at a young age going

why the fuck is this uncle referring to Coca-Cola or Fanta or Fizzy Orange as fucking mineral what is it

and you're intrigued. Because you're like. Yeah I think I do want a mineral. Because what the fuck is that? And they never say it normally either. The uncle slithers through the crowd. Tip tone. Long fingers.

Goblin like. Would you like a tin of mineral? Would you like a tin of mineral? A tin of mineral? Creating. Brand new vowels that are exclusively born into the mouths of slithery Irish uncles at funerals

a tiny mineral a tiny mineral but that's, yeah that's why Irish uncles call it mineral because it comes from mineral waters. They were seen as mineral waters that had medicinal properties. But let's go back to these temperance cunts in New York in the 1890s and we'll say the early 20th century. They're all hanging around the soda fountains in pharmacies looking for their mineral water. You know, getting the horn off the medicinal properties of what they're all hanging around the soda fountains in pharmacies looking for their mineral water you know getting the

horn off the medicinal properties of what they're drinking you know feeling superior to the sinful Irish immigrant down in the saloon getting drunk on alcohol and they're in their soda fountain in their pharmacy but the thing is

these early carbonated beverages they were they were laced with heroin and cocaine like there was a typical drink that they would have been drinking in around 1905 in new york in a pharmacy it was like cocaine cannabis and morphine in this fizzy drink there was enough i think it was like a tenth of a line of cocaine in one drink so they were drinking this thinking that it uh it gave them pep that's what like drinks that we eat we drink today like pepsi and the term pep like pepsi contained an enzyme called pepsin like in the in the 18th century when it was being sold in pharmacies

as a medicinal drink pepsin which was a digestive enzyme but I think it also had a lot of caffeine and cocaine in it Dr. Pepper another drink with 19th century origins in America it didn't have pepper in it

it gave you pep Coca-Cola Coca-Cola literally had cocaine in it. It was literally just a drink of cocaine. It was invented by a fella called Pemberton who was in the Civil War. He got addicted to morphine after getting injuries. And developed this drink Coca-Cola to get off morphine. He made himself addicted to cocaine.

So all these temperance people were drinking heroin, cocaine and hash in these soda fountains thinking they were brilliant and looking down their noses at the saloons full of Irish people getting drunk in New York. Now things started to change a little bit with him.

People started to figure out that there was lots of people getting addicted to these cocaine drinks and stuff so flavor kind of ended up winning and alongside these medicinal drinks that they were making in pharmacies these carbonated fizzy drinks the roots of what we now call fucking minerals here's another fucking mad thing actually i did a podcast on this before fanta right just talking about the bizarre drug origins of like coca-cola and and fantanta was made specifically for the Nazis in 1940 there was an embargo on Germany because fucking Hitler was running Germany and they couldn't coca-cola couldn't send their syrup mix over to Germany but they still wanted to make drinks for the Nazis so the Nazis had access to a lot of orange so they made Fanta for the Nazis Fanta is a Nazi drink so anyway the soda fountain started to develop what we call soft drinks they didn't have

mad ingredients in them they were becoming more about flavor and effervescence and how cold they were the pharmacies that were making them the people the tenders the bartenders or the pharmacists became known as soda jerks and they started to make incredibly ornate uh drinks with like ice cream in them and the roots of a lot of contemporary and modern cocktail making actually doesn't come from bars, but it comes from these pharmacies that were making mineral waters and carbonated drinks. And during Prohibition, because eventually the temperance movement won in America, and Prohibition was brought in in, I think it was 1919,

these soda fountains became absolutely incredibly popular because now you couldn't buy alcohol anymore but what did happen is when alcohol was being illegally served they would take a lot of the techniques bartenders were taking techniques from the soda jerks because they wanted to make alcoholic drinks look like they were soft drinks. So if the police came in, you didn't look like you were drinking alcohol. It looked like you were drinking like a soda jerk drink, a soft drink. As well, a lot of the alcohol in Prohibition was homemade. Rotgut, it was known as. It could kill you.

Homemade alcohol. So they'd use a lot of effervescence and syrups to disguise the disgusting flavor of the illegal alcohol a lot of these soda fountains too they were actually able to serve alcohol during prohibition but it wasn't called alcohol it was it was like a tonic that had to contain alcohol so there was this drink called jake uh jake was the name for it it was it was jamaican ginger that had a load of alcohol in it and people were buying this as a medicine from soda from uh soda fountains they were getting this jamaican ginger but it had about 80 alcohol in it and getting pissed off it but then the police found out that people were drinking this Jake this Jamaican ginger because there was alcohol in it

so in order to get around it the manufacturer of the Jamaican ginger had to add another ingredient to it and this ingredient turned out to be a neurological toxin so people continued to drink the Jake drink but they ended up developing a neurological disorder that affected their ability to walk so you had all these poor people with a

condition known as Jake leg from drinking adultered Jamaican ginger from soda fountains. I'm gone on a tangent now. So anyway, let's take it back to 1890. And the reason I'm bringing up the temperance people going to these soda fountains as a way to shut down the saloons full of Irish immigrants

the great fucking irony of it all, one that I find anyway it's carbonation and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York now bear with me here

so in these saloons where the Irish were eating the rubber sandwiches and the temperance movement were complaining about all the drunk Irish immigrants, okay? St. Patrick's Cathedral, which was built in Manhattan and finished in 1880, was hugely important for the Irish community in New York because they were all Catholics and it's St. Patrick and it was an Irish church. And it's like, if you're this disenfranchised group of people, to have this beautiful, huge cathedral that's an Irish cathedral in New York,

morale-wise and for the Irish community, it's huge in 1880. And a lot of these labourers who were in the 8,000 saloons that were in New York these Irish laborers who were getting the free lunch getting the drink being served rubber sandwiches and also going to the saloons so that they could hold union meetings and get jobs and building sites a lot of these Irish were actually building Saint Patrick's Cathedral and here's the bizarre connection between Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the rise of soda fountains in New York right so the soda fountains that didn't serve alcohol but served fizzy carbonated drinks that the temperance people loved,

the reason these soda fountains exploded all of a sudden from about 1890 onwards in New York, a big reason so many of them popped up, is it was difficult in the 19th century to make water fizzy to i mean they weren't getting natural mineral water which had to be extracted from the fucking ground and required a specific spring to do it there the first attempts at carbonation in the early 1800s it was they used to mix yeast with water and make it slightly fizzy. It wasn't very nice. But around 1810, they had a breakthrough where in order to make water fizzy and carbonated, if you got marble, right, the stone marble, and you mixed it with sulfuric acid,

and you put this into water, it created huge amounts of carbon dioxide and that's how you made fizzy water you got marble mixed it with sulfuric acid and you had fizzy water and this is where a lot of soda fountains were getting their fizzy water but that was quite expensive but what happens in 1880 the irish and the saloons are building this giant St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan for the Irish community and they're building it out of marble and there was so much marble being used to build St. Patrick's Cathedral that it flooded the fucking market in New York with marble so all of a sudden the price of marble. Goes down to barely anything.

Because St. Patrick's Cathedral. Think of it. They're making these blocks for the cathedral. So you have all this excess. Useless marble chippings. Tons and tons and tons of it. Market is flooded. Marble costs nothing.

So. All of a sudden what happens. They start building these soda fountains. Because it becomes cheap now. Because you have all this marble. From St. Patrick's Cathedral. That you can mix with your sulfuric acid. And make fizzy fucking water.

So the point I'm getting at. Is the temperance people. Who were trying to shut down the saloons full of drunk Irish labourers who were going to the soda fountains to drink their heroin and cocaine fizzy drinks the only reason they were able to do it was off the back of the labour of the Irish immigrants who were building St Patrick's Cathedral for their community so there you go there's this week's roasting hot take for you all right that makes me want to have a little cocktail

um last week at the start of the podcast actually I told you all about my cocktail recipe for the whiskey sour that you make out of chickpea juice and loads of people did it and sent me their photographs of it on Instagram so thank you so much for that I was glad to see first of all that you believed me that it was a real drink

and secondly to see so many people doing it and that you're enjoying it alright I'll be back next week in the meantime look after yourselves wash your hands don't touch your face, sneeze into your elbow stay the fuck away from other people

we're all going to be grand. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we

play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com Yart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.