Barmen

November 29, 2006
Knock It, Then Try It
By PETE WELLS
NOBODY likes my Pernod and pomegranate Cosmopolitan, but I do.
The name is a part of the problem. In its “Sex and the City” heyday, the Cosmopolitan implied the promise of fresh romance. Now that its promises have been exhausted, it has the bruised and slightly dented air of an ex-husband.
When I offer to make my drink for friends, they act as if I’ve reminded them of something they were trying to forget. When I reassure them it’s not really a Cosmopolitan and tell them what’s in it, things get worse.
“I just don’t see how that could be any good,” one said.
Just after I came up with the recipe, I submitted it along with four others to a magazine. The four others appeared in print. My Cosmopolitan didn’t even make it to the test kitchen.
It is my position that the test kitchen would have loved my drink, given the chance. Its lush dose of pomegranate makes the regular Cosmopolitan seem vapid, but the grown-up element, the thing that makes my drink as cosmopolitan as the Cosmopolitan aspires to be, is the Pernod. It gets along beautifully with the pomegranate juice. For some reason, though, nobody can picture them together.
I am starting to feel a little sorry for my drink. It’s like a lost mutt who has been at the pound for 29 days. So I was relieved to hear that many bartenders — real bartenders, who make a living at this — occasionally invent cocktails that their customers would rather not try.
The trouble may be personal, an aversion rooted in an unhappy memory. “People are scared of gin,” said Scott Beattie, who mixes drinks almost entirely from Sonoma County ingredients at Cyrus restaurant in Healdsburg, Calif. “Brandy, too. They hear brandy and they think of Grandma and her Korbel on ice.” Or the stumbling block may be a partnership of ingredients that sounds doomed. Ryan Magarian, a bar consultant in Seattle, developed a cocktail he calls the Love Unit for the Hyde Lounge in West Hollywood. His clients were deeply skeptical when he told them the Love Unit contains vanilla rum, grapefruit juice, basil leaves and red bell peppers. “Everybody kind of went, ‘No way,’ ” Mr. Magarian recalled.
According to every bartender I know, the quickest way to scare off thirsty customers turns out to be using one of the most common ingredients of all: the egg. Customers seem to think raw eggs are slimy, or unhealthy, or something consumed in liquid form only by boxers in B movies. Jose Miranda, a mixologist at WD-50 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, gets puzzled looks whenever he drops an egg yolk into his Malta Fizz. “That’s the part people don’t understand,” Mr. Miranda said. “It’s like, ‘Egg yolk in a cocktail?’ ” (Those puzzled looks don’t always go away when Mr. Miranda explains that the Malta Fizz is named for another ingredient, malta, a dark brown beverage that is brewed from barley and hops but contains no alcohol.)
And yet the Love Unit and the Malta Fizz have found loyal followings. In each case all it took was some persuasion from the man behind the bar and a little trust from the people in front of it. I am very encouraged by this news. If there are customers out there who will drink cocktails with egg yolks and bell peppers, there must be someone who will try my Pernod and pomegranate Cosmopolitan, which I’ve renamed the Stray Dog. I offer the recipe here, free to a good home.

November 20, 2006
A New Strategy to Discourage Driving Drunk
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 — The threat of arrest and punishment, for decades the primary tactic against drunken drivers, is no longer working in the struggle to reduce the death toll, officials say, and they are proposing turning to technology — alcohol detection devices in every vehicle — to address the problem.
In the first phase of the plan, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, backed by a national association of state highway officials and car manufacturers, will announce here on Monday a campaign to change drunken driving laws in 49 states to require that even first offenders install a device that tests drivers and shuts down the car if it detects alcohol.
Many states already require the devices, known as ignition interlocks, for people who have been convicted several times. Last year New Mexico became the first to make them mandatory after a first offense. With that tactic and others, the state saw an 11.3 percent drop in alcohol-related fatalities last year.
New Mexico was not the only state to record a decline in alcohol-related motoring deaths, and several states showed even bigger drops. For example, from 2004 to 2005, Maryland showed a decrease to 235 from 286, or 17.8 percent. In New Mexico, which has had a chronic problem with drunken driving, state officials cited the new rule on interlocks as a significant factor in their campaign to cut the fatality rate. The rule did not take effect until June 17, 2005.
“It is an integral part of our success,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who thinks others should follow his state’s lead.
Advocates for interlocks acknowledge that they are not foolproof. They can be easily circumvented if a sober person blows into the Breathalyzer tube, for instance.
Officials say interlocks for first offenders are not a panacea but will reduce repeat offenses. They say the next step will be a program to develop devices to unobtrusively test every driver for alcohol and disable the vehicle. The automaker Saab and a medical equipment company already have devices that may be adapted for that job.
Statistics show that about 13,000 people die each year in car crashes in which a driver was legally drunk.
“We’ve seen no progress in 10 years; we’re completely stalled,” said Susan A. Ferguson, a researcher at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Ms. Ferguson said the most promising technologies would work automatically, like air bags. “We don’t want the soccer mom dropping kids off, going to the grocery store and the preschool, and having to blow into something every time,” she said.
Chuck Hurley, the chief executive of MADD, said that automatic sensors might be used first in fleets, and that eventually insurance companies might give discounts on coverage to drivers who had them.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers helped a New Mexico task force appointed by Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, to develop its program, and supports early use of ignition interlocks, a spokesman said. So does the Governors Highway Safety Association, said its chairman, Christopher J. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy said the typical penalty, revoking a drunken driver’s license, did not work because offenders continued to drive anyway; California alone has about one million people driving with suspended or revoked licenses, he said.
He also supports unobtrusive alcohol sensing in all cars. “When 40 percent of all our crashes are alcohol-involved,” he said, “I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult of a sell.”
On Monday, the groups and the Department of Transportation also plan to announce an enforcement campaign aimed at drunken drivers.
Even the Century Council, a trade association of liquor distillers, says it favors the New Mexico approach for first offenders, but only those caught with blood-alcohol levels far above the legal threshold.
Bush administration officials will also endorse research into the use of passive devices for alcohol detection, other participants in the announcement said, but have not decided whether to push for wider adoption of the New Mexico approach.
Two companies have introduced products that hint at future strategies. Saab, which is owned by General Motors, is testing in Sweden a Breathalyzer that attaches to a key chain and will prevent a car from starting if it senses too much alcohol. Taxi companies and other fleet owners are the target market, the company said.
A New Mexico company, TruTouch Technologies, is modifying a technique developed for measuring blood chemistry in diabetics and using it to measure alcohol instead. The appliance shines a light through the skin on the forearm and analyzes what bounces back.
Future devices may read alcohol content when a driver’s palm touches the steering wheel or the gear shift lever, said Jim McNally, the chief executive of TruTouch.
A national campaign against drunken driving began a quarter-century ago with President Ronald Reagan, and the death toll was cut by about 40 percent through a change in public attitudes and an increase in the legal drinking age. But over the past decade, the number of deaths has not changed.
“We have to begin looking at some new, innovative ways to begin to bring this terrible number down,” said Mark V. Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The board has not studied the question of installing interlocks after a first offense, but using them more widely may be more useful than traditional penalties, Mr. Rosenker said. “I’ve always been of the belief we’re looking for a result,” he said. “What is the best way to achieve that result? Punishment doesn’t always do it.”
Troy W. Prichard, a lawyer in Albuquerque who defends people arrested on drunken driving charges, said interlocks for first offenders could be appropriate, or could be excessive.
“There could be the responsible guy that just lapses that one time,” Mr. Prichard said. “Getting the handcuffs put on him might be all that guy needed to know not to do it again.” But, he said, “another guy, it may be his first and he’s on the road to 12.”
MADD’s first step is modeled in part on the approach taken in Canada beginning in 1991, where licenses were taken from drivers convicted of driving drunk but given back sooner if they agreed to the ignition interlock. The objective, said Andrew Murie, the chief executive of MADD Canada, is to “keep them in the licensing system, so you know who they are and where they are, keep them insured and stop them from drinking and driving.”
“The interlock does all three of those things,” Mr. Murie said.
In the United States, drivers required to have ignition interlocks get new licenses that mention the restriction in big letters. The interlocks are rented from contractors who install them and charge about $2 a day. The devices can be set up to transmit reports to probation officers, but to the dismay of some safety experts, not all jurisdictions use that data.

November 7, 2006
From Out of Nowhere, to the Leader of the Pack
By FRANK LITSKY
When the major fall marathons in New York, Chicago and Berlin started lining up their fields this year, there was no rush to sign a 29-year-old Brazilian named Marilson Gomes dos Santos.
Gomes had run only four marathons and had not won. His fastest time was 2 hours 8 minutes 48 seconds, in 2004 in Chicago, and he finished a half-mile behind the winner. Instead of running a spring marathon this year, he ran track races to improve his speed.
For officials of the New York City Marathon, Gomes was almost an afterthought.
“Early in our recruiting process, four to six months ago, I said maybe we needed a Brazilian to add flavor to our international field,” Mary Wittenberg, the race director, said. “We recruited him with absolutely no expectation that he might win.”
Gomes, his coach and his agent debated whether to run in Chicago two weeks ago for a fast time or in New York on Sunday for wider exposure and perhaps a better chance to win. Only weeks ago, they decided on New York. By then, flights from Brazil were booked and he could not get a return trip the day after the race.
Just as well, because Gomes won the race in 2:09:58. Instead of going home yesterday, he spoke at a news conference, posed for photographs with other marathon runners, rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, taped an appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman” and had dinner at the Brazilian consulate.
By then, he knew he would be secure financially. Like most other elite runners, he was paid an appearance fee. While runners like Paul Tergat and Deena Kastor received six-figure fees, Gomes was on the low end, at about $10,000 to $15,000. By winning, he earned $130,000, $25,000 as a time bonus and a Smart car worth $11,000. (Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia, the women’s winner, earned the same.)
Endorsements and commercial appearances await Gomes in Brazil. And as Guy L. Morse III, the executive director of the Boston Marathon, said: “He becomes another major player. He’s a hot commodity. By winning New York, he’ll make six figures a race up front forever.”
Gomes seemed overwhelmed by his acceptance in New York. With his agent, Luis Filipe Posso, translating from Portuguese, Gomes spoke at the news conference yesterday.
“It’s great,” he said. “New York is the best marathon, and this is the best victory I’ve ever had. The crowds were wonderful. When you feel fatigue and tired, the people really help.”
The affection and appreciation was not limited to the race course. On Sunday night, when Gomes arrived at a postrace party for 3,000 at the Copacabana, he was mobbed by admirers, including many of the 241 other Brazilian runners in the race and 682 runners from other South American nations.
Posso said he talked to Gomes’s parents in Brazil yesterday morning. They told him that by 6 o’clock there were reporters and television crews at their door.
Gomes is 5-foot-8½ and 128 pounds. He comes from a small town outside Brasília where his father was a construction worker. At 15, Gomes started running because his brother ran. A club team saw how good he was, recruited him and gave him room and board, he said. He still runs for the club.
He has won the São Silvestre 15-kilometer road race five times. His latest victory there came on New Year’s Eve, when he beat Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya, who won the Chicago Marathon two weeks ago.
Now Gomes is well known, too, and he seems confident he can continue his success.
“You train well and you can do anything,” he said. “I don’t know if the other runners knew who I was. Now they should all know me. I like this a lot. I enjoy running long races.”
And the aches and pains that go with it?
“Yes,” he said, laughing.