There comes a time in every man’s life where he says, “What I really need to do is stand in a busy road and try to ‘look natural’ and draw standing up, as a camera crew films me and makes me feel even more menaced and uncomfortable.”

For me that time came last year when a crew from Brooklyn’s BRIC TV asked me to do an episode of their Brooklyn Made show. Watch, learn, and enjoy my discomfort!

I’m putting this out now, because I miss these places (Long Island Bar, Montero’s, etc.) from my book and beyond, even more than my discomfort with watching the squirm-worthy results. I am willing to play over it.

If there’s ever been a time when you need your local bar, it’s during a national crisis, and, in a delightful catch-22, this is one crisis where you absolutely can’t go to your local bar.

But we can watch this video, or Cheers, or scroll through our own photos taken at our beloved great good places, now shuttered, and cry in our beers. Or better yet, cry in our daiquiris. I’m going to give you my favorite daiquiri recipe so you can make it and cry in it.

2 oz. Plantation 5-year Rum
1 oz. fresh-squeezed lime juice
.75 oz. simple syrup (Just stir equal parts water and regular old white sugar together till they dissolve and used some of that. Keep the rest in the fridge for up to a week. You’re gonna use it, too. This drink is so good you’ll want another as soon as — maybe before — you finish your first.)

Okay, this drink needs to be cold, and I mean colder than a welldigger’s ass, so first, before you do anything, I want you to take a couple of cocktail glasses (ideally, but whatever you’re gonna pour these into) and stick ’em in the freezer. Way back there, so they don’t fall out and bust at your feet when in three minutes you open the freezer to get your ice, wrecking your whole day and turning happy hour into crappy hour.

Now, I want you to measure this properly. Do you have a jigger? Good. No? Okay, how about a shot glass? The important thing is to get a two / one / three-quarters ratio of those three ingredients. Figure it out.

Then put those three ingredients in a cocktail shaker. You don’t have one? Dammit. You really should get one. These are trying times, my little hombre. I promise you, you’ll be using it often, especially after your see how good this drink is. If you don’t have one, find something that works. Maybe a sauce pot and a tight-fitting lid. Or the pitcher part of your blender and its top.

Anyway, put your three ingredients in the shaking receptacle, then load it with ice. Not three cubes. Not five. But LOTS. You’re going to make this puppy cold, and fast, and to do that you need ice, and plenty of it. Pull your nice, cold glasses out of the freezer now, if they haven’t already been dashed to bits at your feet.

Then shake the bejesus out of your imminent beverage for about 15 seconds. I mean really beat the hell out of it. You want this baby COLD!

Now strain it in your chilly glass, toss in a thin lime wheel for garnish if you’d like, and drink up. Then, because it was so fuggin good you finished it in three gulps, make another. Then stop. I don’t need you ruining your life because I showed you how good daiquiris are.

Take care.

(And thanks again to the good folks at BRIC TV and Brooklyn Made for the invitation to do this. Mark Partridge and Evan Neel in particular. Thanks, fellas!)