Mr. Hamill gave up drink and the drinking life 36 years ago because "I had come to the end of it," he said, adding that "with friends, I still visit pubs, but they all have TVs".
No drink is better suited to this particular moment in New York City's eating and drinking life, because no drink so thoroughly indulges both cheeky mixology and farm-to-table virtuousness.
The drinking life, he thought, was lived moment by moment.
The barmen are well aware that the drinking life will strangle your ambition.
The drinking life has changed in his 27 years in the business.
Even in Pete Hamill's "A Drinking Life," the tone is of rueful necessity more than of recalled hilarity.
Hamill, now 72, is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir "A Drinking Life," about his longtime bout with alcoholism.
Military service is not a requirement to join, but a familiarity with the drinking life is an asset.
And, of course, Pete Hamills book A Drinking Life(1994) and his newest, Forever (2003), about an Irishman in New York.
In recent years, studies have found many ways in which the drinking life takes a greater toll on women than on men.
Jan Steen portrays himself as one of the crass male boozers bullying a waitress in this scene from 17th-century drinking life.
