Allowing for the possible exception of Mick Jagger, we’re all destined to awaken one morning and find that we’ve pole-vaulted the invisible line in the sand that delineates fashionability.
Whether or not we ever cared about it, hitherto the choice is withdrawn, and popular culture no longer comforts.
Rather, it antagonizes.
Examples that remind me of my eligibility for social security include the bizarre veneration of AutoTune, rendering pop music unlistenable (and making singing into a lost art); the mobility cult of brain-dead chain Buc-ee’s (why, exactly?); and the lesser-known of the CO-prefixed pandemic waves: cosplay, or the prevalence of 24-7 pretending to be something, someone and somewhere else to the exclusion of one’s residence in the real world.
And then there is the contemporary speakeasy, which is a contradiction in terms, although it hasn’t stopped the Indiana Pacers from announcing that Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis is adding one of them.
Perhaps wearing a jock strap or sports bra around your head is the signal for entry.
Better yet, the rules governing the basketball game might revert to those requiring a center jump after each score, just like in the 1920s, seeing as the 1920s were the last period in American history when the word “speakeasy” could be used non-ironically.
And yet there it is, popping up several times a year, and about as meaningless as the Instagram page of the downtown whale oil vendor who keeps municipal street lamps lit.
Me?
Well, I adore dictionaries, because the job of those charged with writing them is to mercilessly filter flagrant inaccuracies in order to get down to a granular level about the actual meaning of words. Thankfully, Merriam Webster does precisely this for speakeasy, one of the most abused words in the American English language.
Speakeasy (noun)
»speak·easy ˈspēk-ˌē-zē (plural: speakeasies)
A place where alcoholic beverages are illegally sold; specifically: such a place during the period of prohibition in the U.S.
Synonyms include alehouse, tavern and dive; while familiar, and periodically prone to misuse (don’t get me started on “dive” bars), there is nothing about these that suggests the defining characteristic of illegality.
Much closer to the mark is “blind pig” (sometimes blind tiger), the back story of which establishes a suitable link with illicitness in the sense that if alcohol cannot be legally sold, tickets can be vended for folks to come inside and see the blind pig — and while there, receive free drinks after the viewing.
Hence the modern conundrum, which produces...Read more