Tag Archives: alcohol

Senior ditch day

Main description:

AB: “Can you tell me about any traditions from your high school that stick out or seem special?”

DB: “Um, the only thing I can think of is senior ditch day. I don’t know if you wanna hear about that though, it’s kinda dumb.

AB: “Ditch day sounds great! Tell me about it.”

DB: “I mean. It’s what it sounds like. All the seniors ditch school, usually in one of the last weeks in second semester. It used to be that student council would decide when during secret meetings, but now we just have votes in secret Facebook groups. That’s what my year did anyway. Anyway. The teachers and school know about it of course, and it’s really funny seeing who’s cool with it and who’s not. Sometimes, teachers will be like, ‘Oh, I’m showing a movie that day, so I may forget to skip attendance, so hypothetically, I wouldn’t notice if say, half the class was gone, for some reason. Wink wink nudge nudge.’ But other teachers aren’t cool with it at all. They’ll like rant for several hours about how were seniors and should be responsible enough to go to school. Anyway, on ditch day, we all go to Tuna beach. You can only get there by taking this, like, super steep hike down, and we usually spend the night there, which means you’re hiking down on loose dirt on a steep hill with who knows how many pounds of food and stuff strapped to your back. That part isn’t fun, but the beach is super secluded and there’s places to make bonfires, which is why we go there. Anyway, you know what it’s like, lots of drinking, lots of drugs, a few hook-ups that usually cause drama. Oh I just remembered, there was this one girl my year who tried acid I think, but she was allergic to it and started having a reaction so the paramedics had to come get her, but they can’t carry her up the hike in a gurney so they have to take this, like, really long and windy private road down to the beach, and we were super scared because it took them a really long-ass time. Anyway. She survived. But it was super scary. Oh, I can’t believe I forgot… there was also another kid who couldn’t spend the night on the beach, so he drank as much as he could before hand and got alcohol poisoning and was really sick. That was happening at the same time as the acid-allergy girl, so. It was a really chaotic night. I guess they’re always like that.”

Informant interpretation:

AB: “Why is senior ditch day special to you?”

DB: “I mean, it’s the only time I ever did something rebellious in high school. Like actually rebellious, not just staying in my room all day watching TV rebellious.  I was also really proud of me and my friends for… for, ya know, not being a disaster. I mean, I threw up, but it was also my first night drinking, and it felt good to feel like I was becoming a college student.”

Personal interpretation:

Senior ditch day seems to be an important rite of passage for seniors at this high school, who may not have experimented with many substances before. While ideally this can be a safe place to experiment with alcohol and other substances likely to be encountered in college, it can also be quite dangerous because few people present have experience with substance-use and over-use.

Aperitivo – Italian Ritual

Description of Informant

AG (18) is an Italian-American dual citizen and high school student from Berkeley, CA. At home, she speaks primarily Italian, and spends her summers in Italy.

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Context of Interview

The informant, AG, sits in the kitchen with her father and the collector, BK, her step-brother. Text spoken in Italian is italicized, but not translated.

Interview

BK: What’s aperitivo? Aperitivi?

AG: Basically it’s like… actually? I miss Italy *laughing*. Here in America, like, if you want to do something with someone, you have to kind of like have an excuse to do something with someone. Like “Okay let’s go to the movies,” or “Okay, let’s go to an amusement park.” You know? You’re never just walking around downtown, not really. In Italy, you just say “Oh, you want to go out?” Like that’s it. No reason. You just go out, someone walks to the front of someone else’s house, you know, whatever. And you start walking and you keep walking until you sit down somewhere to have a drink. And the drink is called an aperitivo.

BK: Is the activity called aperitivo? Like the process of going to get an aperitivo? And is the aperitivo a specific drink, or just any drink consumed during the activity?

AG: Yes… it’s like… those little midday snacks. Or midday drinks. You usually have them in the evening. The drink can be anything but it’s usually alcoholic.

*At this point, AG‘s father EG (52) interjects*

EG: You guys are gonna disagree with me on this, but I insist, and [AG] I think you’ll agree with me when you get back from Spain… it’s very much like tapas in Spain. Tapas is not a meal in Spain. It’s never a meal. It’s a snack.

AG: What is tapas?

EG: Tapas. Oh it’s very popular. It’s like small plates. But here in America, they completely misinterpreted it as like small plates that are shared, as meals. But in Spain it’s never a meal. It’s aperitivo, it’s a snack. But it’s later, too, because everything’s later in Spain.

AG: That’s similar in Italy. Like the whole culture around eating— everything is different. Like that “gastronomical culture.” Yeah it’s like everything is pushed two or three hours later. Like having dinner in the summer at like 10pm is not abnormal. And then, you have like literally snacks throughout the whole day. And like, yeah you have you breakfast, and then you usually have merenda, and then you have pranzo which is— oh, merenda is snack, and pranzo which is lunch— and then an aperitivo or two in the evening, and then you have cena which is dinner. Sometimes another merenda before dinner. Then desert. And that’s always how it is! 

BK: So going back to aperitivo, aperitivi, what’s the difference?

AG: Aperitivo is singular, aperitivi is plural.

BK: How would you ask someone on an aperitivo?

AG: Prende, take. Would you like to take an aperitivo? Like do you want to go out for one? Or you’d just ask someone to walk to the bar or restaurant with you.

BK: Is there a literal translation for aperitivo? Does it mean appetizer, pre-dinner?

AG: No, no. I would define it as a drink you have in the evening with a friend, usually one friend. You would never have an aperitivo alone. That’s weird. It’s all about the social. In Italy, food is social, period.

Collector’s Reflection

Put simply, aperitivo is a pre-meal drink, usually alcoholic, meant to whet one’s palate or “open the stomach.” It’s an extremely social ritual, as with many aspects of Italian culture. The term seems to derive from Latin for “opener” (as in opening one’s stomach in anticipation of dinner). 

One may immediately draw a comparison to American “Happy Hour” rituals, wherein peers gather over drinks in the early evening: well after lunch, but too early for dinner. These ritual gatherings do not often “limit” the number of attendees; it is interesting to note that the informant specified two individuals to an aperitivo gathering. AG clarifies that more may be present, but in her experience, it has been a one-on-one affair.

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For an in-depth exploration of the Aperitivo ritual, please see:

Mussio, Gina. “The Art of the Aperitivo: The Best Italian Tradition That You’ve Never Tried.” Walks of Italy, 2 Mar. 2017, www.walksofitaly.com/blog/food-and-wine/aperitivo-in-italy-what-it-is-and-how-to-enjoy-one.

Drinking Alcohol to kill Corona

Main Piece: One myth I heard about coronavirus is that tequila or any hard alcohol kills the virus. This is something I’ve heard not just about the virus but when you’re sick in general. It’s based on the fact that alcohol is normally a sanitizing agent so drinking alcohol would sanitize your body. The joke would be set up when someone is feeling slightly ill. Then when someone else hears about the illness, they sarcastically say that they should go take a shot of tequila.


Context: The informant is a current junior at Cal Poly SLO. She is one of many students that were removed from her school due to the Coronavirus pandemic. She encountered the joke from her classmates and peers.

Thoughts: This joke shows off the stereotypical college experience in which people drink a lot. This joke stems from another folk belief that alcohol sanitizes your system for any disease. I think it’s just another excuse for people to drink alcohol.

Corners

Corners is a folk game that is played with cups, ping pong balls, and beer. It is similar to beer pong in the general principle, with slightly different rules. There are two teams, with teammates on opposing diagonal corners across a table. Each corner has four cups arranged in a diamond, all touching and there is one cup in the middle. There is a beer split between each corner and a full bear in the cup in the middle. The concept of the game is that you and your partner share one ping pong ball and must take turns throwing into your teammate’s cups, across the table. If your teammate makes it in one of your cups, you take the ball out and pass the cup to your side for the opposing team to drink. While your team is drinking, neither you nor your teammate can throw the ball. Once all eight cups between the two teammates have been sunk, you must bounce the ping pong ball twice into the center cup to win. The informant plays this game with his fraternity brothers.

The informant learned this through other people in his fraternity house. These types of games differ from school to school and place to place. The informant is still in college, so regularly practices this game, except during the current pandemic. They find it a way to have fun with drinking in a way that is not associated directly with the alcohol content.

This game follows the basic formula for drinking games in college. I believe that it is as much to play the game as it is to drink. Although no one I have talked to plays this with anything other than beer and sometimes hard seltzer, it is preferred over just drinking. The game makes drinking have an interactive element in what otherwise could be considered a solo action. It also normalizes binge drinking by turning it into a harmless game, something that can be dangerous.

So-Maek

Main Piece:

Original script: 소맥

Phonetic (Roman) script: somaek

Transliteration: (Acronym) Soju and Maekju

Full Translation: Soju and Beer

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the interviewer and the informant.

Informant: Koreans love drinking and there are a bunch of drinking games and traditions, but I think the most commonly known one is So-Maek. It’s basically a cocktail, and you make it by mixing soju and beer. Koreans love drinking so-maek because it’s more delicious than drinking either of them by itself, and it gets you drunk quicker for some reason.

Interviewer: Can you describe how you make this cocktail?

Informant: So basically the ratio of soju to beer is 3:7, that’s kinda the golden ratio. Since soju is much stronger than beer, the more you want to get wasted, the more soju you put and so on. A popular way of mixing this drink is you make a row of beer glasses, and place a row of soju shots on top of these beer glasses. You tap on the soju shot, then it has this domino effect and al the soju shots fall right into the beer glasses.

Interviewer: Are there any other variations of this so-maek recipe?

Informant: Another famous one is mixing called so-maek-col, which is basically so-maek with Coca Cola. Or, mixing soju with Yakult (yogurt beverage) is good too.

Background:

My informant is a college student (21 years old) living in Seoul, Korea. Seoul is famous for its nightlife, and with her age, my informant is particularly well versed in drinking culture, as well as being an active participant in it. Another important part of Korean drinking culture is that it’s something you learn from the elders, whether that be your parents or older friends. My informant told me that she learned how to make so-maek from a classmate who was older than her.

Context:

The conversation took place over the phone, while it was 12:30 am (PST) for myself and 4:30 pm (KST). The informant was at her dorm room, no other person was present in her room during the talk.

My thoughts:

Soju has become quite popular in the United States over the past decade, it’s not hard to find this alcoholic beverage at bars or restaurants. Like any ethnic culinary traditions, soju and soju cocktails are becoming a trend for a lot of non-Koreans, with more non-Korean establishments selling these recipes. While I think globalization of a culture is beautiful – the fact that everyone around the world can share this great cocktail recipe is exciting- but at the same time I can’t help myself but to think about the dangers of cultural appropriation- price influx and lack of credit to original owners.