Your aunt's West Coast Cooler

During the recession, there was a trend for drinks companies to make short videos of young female creatives based in Dublin and, at a stretch, the rest of Leinster. I used to work adjacent to this content creation, as they call it, so these videos have imprinted on me, probably more so than on you. They were a whole genre. God, I adored - no, I adore - them.

They had a specific aesthetic. Close-ups of hands. Drone shots of streets in Dublin 7 and 8. Red brick fetishes. A woman looks at something interesting, something which is inspiring her. She walks alone to a door. Finds her workspace in a tidy state, only the most compelling objects out and framed by the camera. Nothing is ever said about the drink. The video is always hosted on Vimeo. Very serious. Legitimate.

I rewatched a bunch of them a while ago because I wanted to show someone how a knitting machine works and I remember one of these videos showing a machine in hypnotic clip-clop action. Some of the women featured in these videos are still, if not household names, frequently profiled or mentioned in mainstream media and remain famous in their fields. Some have moved away and or on. A rare few have next to no social media presence anymore. Or the account on which they hocked their wares and potential are dormant. I went looking. It is never an easy time to build a small company and often, as is the way with commerce, hard work is not insurance.

I was walking down a quiet laneway in Dublin a few nights ago and passed a dark building where there had been, around the time of all those Vimeo spotlights, a ridiculous pop-up bar for one of the alcoholic brands. Flower walls, special edition bottle labels, so much balayage. A very specific aesthetic. Everything was fake. I suppose I should say ‘me included I guess’ but I’m actually a big fan of my present and past incarnations. Also, your twenties shouldn’t count towards any reckonings.

At these events, the drink was very free and back then my liver worked fast. I’d wake up in hell, but a shower and beetroot juice later I’d be upright and moving. I used think the juice was the secret cure, staining my lips and guts cerise, but at that age recovery takes as long as a soft-boiled egg.

The evening of this drinks company event in that particular building, we’d had a heatwave. We stood outside under a beautiful Irish sun and sky. Talked complete and utter shite. It was silly, that old world. I’ve moved on and away. Still, at this relatively short distance away, I can say that it was actually a great time in my life. Even if I never want to go back there. The body isn’t designed to consume that much beetroot during the workweek. The photos of such frenetic and sugary evenings are probably resting and slowly decaying on an old phone.