“You caught me drinking vodka with kid’s juice again,” says my friend Devi Dutta-Choudhury, an architect based in Berkeley, during one of our near-daily WhatsApp chats.
A quick calculation tells me that it’s 5 p.m. in California — cocktail hour. She’s fashioned an ersatz Sea Breeze from one of the cranberry-flavored juice boxes her children used to take to school. After more than a month of sheltering in place, Dutta-Choudhury says she’s out of proper mixers, but the sanctity of early-evening cocktails must be preserved.
Like many people around the world, I’ve been staying in as much as possible, swapping drinks at the bar for at-home aperitivo. The quotidian luxury of a single tipple, sipped in tandem with a tasty snack at the end of the day, feels like a much-needed balm for the soul.