The diner is a rightly beloved cultural institution, and yet it remains a curious one. In one sense they all resemble one another—you could order in any diner without referring to a menu. And yet they also reflect their owners and neighborhoods—they may have an unexpected specialty or insist on serving something only one way. (We won’t get into the hash browns v. home fries debate at the moment, though it is a rich one.)

Consider the Viand, on Madison Avenue and 61st Street. It’s near Barneys and Hermes, not the exact provenance of a fried eggs and bacon—unless you’re ordering room service at The Pierre. The Viand is narrow—the booths are only one person wide—and nearly always crowded with one of the more unusual cross-sections of diners in the city. You may sit at the counter next to a high-powered lawyer or a woman who would typically lunch in a far tonier setting. But it’s not always an overly smart crowd, you come across tourists, office workers, shopping Europeans. It’s local and international at the same time, which is to say, it’s a uniquely New York institution.

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The classic Negroni as enjoyed yesterday in Venezia.

The Negroni, along with the baseball season, is one of the most welcome rites of Spring. Its devotees include Gabrielle Hamilton, Orson Welles, and, of course, Count Negroni, for whom the drink is named. According to legend the count wanted a stronger version of an Americano and asked a bartender in Florence to substitute gin for club soda. The result is downright historical. Never has so much been owed by so many to so few. Kingsley Amis, our best writer on drink, declares simply: ‘This is a really fine invention.’

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At a certain point in your life you accept the fact that you need a tailor—a real tailor, who makes a suit specifically for you. It’s going to cost more than $3000, and you respect (perhaps grudgingly) the fact that that quite serious amount of money is going to a craftsman who’s learned his trade over decades; it’s going to buy cloth woven in the finest mills; it’s going to a cutter who’s refined his pattern to create a refined silhouette. Your money is not going to underwrite a luxury goods behemoth, it’s not going to anybody who appears in his own ads—it’s not going to anybody who has ads. You seek a local tailor.

That equation is simple, but difficult to achieve. That’s why New Yorkers are lucky to have Miller’s Oath in our fair city. Kirk Miller, formerly of Paul Stuart and Thom Browne, ran Barker Black with his brother, Derrick. Over the years he’s met suppliers, tailors, and methodically plotted his own venture. He opened Miller’s Oath, late last year in a handsome narrow storefront on Greenwich Street—around the corner from the beloved Ear Inn. And the results couldn’t be better.

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Glenn O’Brien’s position in the cultural firmament is, at this point, unassailable. He’s defined his unique place in the world and no one can claim it from him. But just because there’s not much left to be said about Glenn doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a lot to say himself. His new book, How To Be A Man, comes out later this month. It’s a collection of indispensable essays on everything from beards to snobs, wine to women. In a world suffering from information overload his words, stylish and irreverent, cut to the heart of the matter.

We spoke over a leisurely lunch at Il Buco. Interview by David Coggins.

Glenn O'Brien | Photo by Peter Ross.

David Coggins: How did you come to the idea of writing the book, and why now?

Glenn O’Brien: Well, The Style Guy column has a big audience, and I thought I should write a book for that audience. But I didn’t want to do a greatest series of Q & A’s, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to write some essays. Basically this is all original, I mean there’s a couple of things that appeared here and there in slightly altered versions. But most of this is original, although I did cannibalize a lot of good lines.

DC: Is there some particular moment now that people are asking or asserting how to be a man—is it all these lumberjacks going around with beards?

GO: Don’t you like that? I think we’re at a pivotal moment, I think the yang is returning.

DC: And how do we see that? People certainly care where their clothes are from are how they’re made.

GO: I think culturally we reached a point of the sort of nadir of wussiness, and I think that people are going to be a little more assertive and demanding, and individual. Don’t you think?

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Veronica Falls

Sunday after SXSW is time to repent.  It’s a day to confront questionable decisions—and you made some—and consider the bands missed, the drinks accepted, the morning bb-q indulged.  You ask yourself what it all meant and there’s no good answer, there never is.  Then you remember your favorite acts: Sharon Van Etten, Austra, Veronica Falls, An Horse, and you appreciate the magnetism of terrific, talented musicians.  It’s a basic need.

You still have to overcome some guilt when you look at decent Austin residents who’ve been rampaged by people asking where they can buy The New York Times or charge their phones.  You hear stories from the comely staff at the San Jose about serving drinks for 7 straight hours, confided without a trace of self pity.  Others took a more direct approach—one large sign on the side of a bar (which is nominally in the hospitality industry) read: ‘Thank you/Go home.’

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Resist the temptation to try to come to terms with SXSW logically. These aren’t tax forms you’re dealing with, but 2000 bands, playing in clubs, in tents, on streets, in parks. By design, it reinvents itself every year, and there are countless pathways through the mayhem, all of them leaving you exhilarated and exhausted. You face the assault on your senses and then pick your spots for visceral gratification. The fact that the festival overlaps with St Patrick’s Day is a blessing or a curse depending on your feeling toward public intoxication and fake Irish accents.

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South by Southwest is commercial, chaotic, concentrated. It’s also elemental, extraordinary and the most essential week in American music. In the last few years we saw bands from Au Revoir Simone to Andrew Bird, Beach House to Midlake.  Not in a field with 100,000 stoners or the echo chamber of Madison Square Garden, but in clubs where you’re 50 feet away from Warpaint or School of Seven Bells. At this late date you’re not getting a room at the Hotel San Jose, but you can still road trip to Austin and crash on the couch of your friend who’s still working on their thesis at U of T.  Then head to Marfa check in at the Thunderbird Motel and you’re feeling pretty smart indeed. Don’t worry about tickets, there are free concerts all day, everyday and light beer for everyone.

Every concert needs its audience, so get thee to Austin.

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You think you’re braced for New Orleans’ lax approach toward human frailty, but you’re probably not.  Like an upper classman with a fake ID, the city encourages you to drink with little concern for the consequences.  Many of us don’t need much persuasion in the first place.  You already know the classics: The Ramos Gin Fizz, the Sazerac, the Pimm’s Cup, and, lower down the list (much lower), the Hurricane.

At the indispensable Tujague’s, the astute barman Paul devised something called the Green Rice.  All he would reveal before we tried it was that the liquor was gin, which of course was no problem.  It tasted slightly of citrus, and had an incredibly clean finish, without being bitter.  The reason?  Rice vinegar.  Sometimes it takes vision to invent a new level of vice.

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One of the great stores has no walls and, in fact, isn’t even a store at all.  Consider the Andrews of Arcadia stall at Spitalfields Market in London.  Every Thursday, John Andrews sets up his booth of vintage fishing tackle and it couldn’t be improved on by all the art directors on Madison Avenue.  Antique angling wares—bamboo rods, cork floats, checkered sailing flags, restored reels, the odd canvas bucket—all laid out perfectly, priced fairly, and described with care and not a trace of snobbery.  It’s a very sweet thing.  Then lunch across the street at St. John Bread & Wine, and you’re enjoying the better part of civilized life.

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The internet gives us access to so much graphic misbehavior at a given moment that it’s noteworthy to discover that a small book still has the capacity to shock.  The volume in question, described yesterday in the NY Times, is an 1870 guidebook of the ins and outs of Manhattan’s brothels.  The Gentleman’s Directory is an indispensable tome for those who required knowing details about the houses of ill repute in our good borough.  It couldn’t be more discreet—yet there’s an implicit appreciation of worldly topics that should be known but not discussed.

The Directory makes special mention of Harry Hill’s on Houston where ‘an hour cannot be spent more pleasantly’ while Greene Street is dismissed ‘a complete sink of iniquity.’

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The Champions League—celebrated here in the past—is the tournament for the best club teams in Europe. The final, Saturday at the Bernabeu in Madrid, pits two classic sides against each other: the German stalwarts Bayern Munich against tenacious Inter Milan.

Bayern Munich's Arjen Robben

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