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You won't hear about this anywhere else, but today is the tenth anniversary of a momentous occasion. An event that has brought joy to drinkers, confusion to witnesses, and disgust to American food writers.
Ten years ago tonight, during an early Portland Cocktail Week, I sat at the bar at Laurelhust Market with a few new friends. The drinks were flowing. The charcuterie was abundant. We were a little buzzed. And there before us was a plate of bone marrow.
As I gazed upon the marrow, two portentous words took form in my mind: "Bone... luge." I meant them as a joke, but the bartender (who may prefer to remain nameless) replied, “No, we’re doing this.” He grasped a bottle of tequila. My friend grabbed a bone.
That friend is Dänny Ronen, and he goes down in history as the first person recorded to have done a bone luge. I asked him if he could find the photo of this moment. He dug deep into his archives, and by gosh, he did. Behold!
(Astute observers may recognize Eric Nelson, now of Eem fame, responsibly tending to the other end of the bar in the background.)
We all partook of the luge, and naturally there was a tweet. Via Twitter, the bone luge spread to the Laurelhurst Market dining room. It was at this point that the bartender realized we had unleashed a thing we could not contain. https://twitter.com/jacobgrier/status/10919531031560192
The bone luge laid dormant until the next Portland Cocktail Week, when we found ourselves at Laurelhurst once again. This was the time of peak pickleback. We took this as a challenge. If the pickleback could become a trend, could we make the same thing happen with the bone luge?
This is when @rondiggity and @pwillen1 stepped up. Soon we had an Instagram tag, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Tumblr, even a manifesto. http://www.boneluge.com/the-manifesto/
The Bone Luge became a thing. Not a thing that restaurants necessarily approved of yet, but a thing nonetheless, with the cocktail cognoscenti photographing themselves bone luging all across the country.
Some restaurants did embrace it, however, such as Metrovino in Portland with its sherry luge, Ludivine in Oklahoma City with a sherry/bourbon blend, or 320 Main in Seal Beach, California, that took this Disney-inspired approach to it.
There was bound to be a backlash, of course. By early 2012, Gothamist had declared the bone luge to be “the new drinking fad food writers love to hate.” https://gothamist.com/food/bone-luge-the-new-drinking-fad-food-writers-love-to-hate
Food writers couldn’t stop the bone luge, however. Later that year, Anthony Bourdain was bone luging on “The Layover: Toronto.”
“It's extremely anti-social and against all standards of decency,” he said. “So I think we should do it."
“It's extremely anti-social and against all standards of decency,” he said. “So I think we should do it."
Full credit goes to @shame_y for nudging Bourdain into the luge. She asked him what he thought about it at a ComicCon panel. He laughed, and then a few weeks later he was doing it on camera.
After Bourdain embraced the bone luge, there was no going back. By 2018, the bone luge was normie enough to make the front page of the Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-classy-way-of-doing-a-beer-bong-restaurants-push-upscale-shots-1535397268
In 2019, Punch Drink declared that the bone luge was here to stay: “the bone luge apparently answers to no one.” https://punchdrink.com/articles/bone-marrow-luge-shots-bestia-tesse-los-angeles/
Alas, now we come to 2020. If anything could stop the bone luge, it’s a global pandemic. The bone luge is a distant memory of being carefree in bars, packing in close with friends, maybe even sharing the same bone! None of that this year.
So, there will be no bone luge 10th anniversary party. But later in 2021, when we can gather in bars again, this strange, silly, ritual that improbably traveled around the world is one of the things I most look forward to doing again.
Nota bene: Outdoor dining re-opens in Portland tonight, and if you happen to be in town, you just might score some marrow at Laurelhust Market, the place where it all began. And please feel free to post your favorite bone luge memories!
OK, wow, I have to add one more thing to this. There's a posthumous travel guide coming out in April from Anthony Bourdain, co-authored by Laurie Woolever. I just checked out the preview images, and look at this amazing illustration! https://www.amazon.com/World-Travel-Irreverent-Anthony-Bourdain/dp/0062802798
