Category: Devil’s Desk

One Tuesday a month we carry a milk crate or two into the bar.

Or, sometimes it’s someone’s weathered cardboard box that’s survived three apartments and two divorces. Sometimes it’s a pristine record bag with sleeves worth more than the whiskey in our back bar. Sometimes it’s just one LP tucked under an arm because they absolutely, positively need the room to hear Side A.

And every time we think the same thing:  There are easier ways to listen to music.

Our phones themselves contain more songs than any record store in America did in 1978. Spotify tries to predict what you’ll want to hear before you know it yourself. If convenience were the goal, Turntable Tuesday wouldn’t exist.

But convenience has never been the goal. Records ask something of you.

You have to choose one. You have to carry it here. You have to hand it to another human being. You watch them lower the needle. Everyone in the room hears your choice—not through earbuds, not in the privacy of a car, but together.

For the next twenty minutes, the room belongs to that record.

That’s a remarkably vulnerable thing.

You aren’t just playing music. You’re saying, “This is something I love. Maybe you’ll love it too.”

Sometimes it’s Miles Davis. Sometimes it’s Motörhead. Sometimes it’s Dolly Parton, Curtis Mayfield, Outkast, Tom Waits, Steely Dan, Japanese city pop, obscure Ethiopian jazz, or a one-hit wonder that instantly sends someone back to high school.

The point isn’t agreement.

The point is discovery.

We’ve watched strangers become friends because someone asked, “Who is this?” We’ve seen conversations begin because of a B-side. We’ve watched people who had never met argue—politely—about the better pressing of Kind of Blue while sharing a cocktail.

None of that happens because vinyl sounds better. It happens because vinyl slows us down.

A record has two sides. It asks for patience. It refuses to be skipped after fifteen seconds. It reminds us that albums were once sequenced journeys instead of playlists assembled by goofy algorithms.

It creates little pockets of attention in a world determined to fracture it.

That feels increasingly valuable.

Speak of the Devil has never really been in the cocktail business. Cocktails are simply the excuse we use to gather people around tables.

Books & Brews isn’t about books. Cocktail Karaoke isn’t about singing. Our booze schools aren’t really about booze.

And Turntable Tuesday isn’t ultimately about records.

It’s about giving people permission to share the things they love with people they’ve never met before.

The cocktails help.

The records do the rest.

There are cocktails. There are classics. And then there are drinks so old they blur the line between history and folklore.

Every Fourth of July week, we haul out the punch bowl and mix a batch of Philadelphia Fish House Punch. We’ve been doing it for years, and we’ll probably keep doing it as long as there are thirsty people willing to gather around a bar.

Why?

Because this isn’t just another old cocktail. It predates the United States itself.

The story begins sometime in the 1730s along the banks of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, where a group of prominent merchants, politicians, outdoorsmen, and all-around bon vivants formed what became known as the Schuylkill Fishing Company—better known as the State in Schuylkill. Despite the name, they seemed to spend nearly as much time eating, drinking, and debating the affairs of the day as they did fishing.

Legend says their clubhouse became a regular stop for some of the biggest names of the Revolutionary era. George Washington is often mentioned. So are Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Whether every story is true hardly matters anymore. Like all good drinking tales, history and mythology have become inseparable.

What we do know is this: they created one of America’s great punches.

Made with rum, peach brandy, fresh lemon, and sugar, Philadelphia Fish House Punch is deceptively smooth. Contemporary accounts warned that it was far stronger than it tasted. One nineteenth-century writer famously claimed it was “so delicious that one hardly realizes how much has been taken.”

History seems to back that up. The punch earned a reputation for quietly humbling diplomats, politicians, and distinguished guests who underestimated its cheerful appearance.

Long before Americans were ordering Martinis, Old Fashioneds, or Manhattans, punch was the social drink. A bowl sat in the center of the room. Friends gathered around it. Conversations stretched for hours. Deals were made. Arguments settled. Toasts offered. Communities built.

That’s probably the part we love most.

Sure, we appreciate the history. We appreciate the recipe. But what keeps us making Philadelphia Fish House Punch every Independence Day isn’t simply that it’s old.

It’s that it reminds us what bars are supposed to do.

A good bar isn’t just a place to order a drink. It’s a place where people gather. Where strangers become regulars. Where neighbors become friends. Where stories are traded as freely as cocktails.

Nearly three hundred years after someone first ladled this punch into a waiting glass on the banks of the Schuylkill, we’re still doing exactly that here in Lorain.

Some traditions are worth keeping.

So if you stop in this Fourth of July week and see a punch bowl sitting on the bar, know that you’re not just ordering a drink.

You’re taking part in one of America’s oldest drinking traditions.

We think that’s worth raising a glass to.

People often ask us what Speak of the Devil is.

The easy answer is that we’re a cocktail bar.

And that’s true, I suppose.

We have a wall full of whiskey. We spend an unreasonable amount of time talking about vermouth. We make drinks from recipe books older than most of us and occasionally become obsessed with obscure ingredients that nobody can pronounce and only a handful of people seem to care about.

But that’s not really what we do here.

What we do here is gather.

That may sound overly simple, but in an age where most of our conversations happen through screens, where loneliness has become an epidemic, where people can go days without a meaningful interaction with another human being, we’ve come to believe that gathering is one of the most important things people can do.

The cocktail just happens to be the invitation.

The drink is the excuse.

The real purpose is everything that happens afterward.

It’s the couple on a first date sitting nervously at the corner table. It’s the retired teacher catching up with former students. It’s the jazz musician finding an audience. It’s the book club arguing over a novel. It’s the stranger who walks in alone and leaves having met three new friends. It’s the old friends who haven’t seen each other in years and somehow pick up exactly where they left off.

We have watched marriages begin here and weddings happen here. We’ve watched anniversaries celebrated here. We’ve watched friendships form. We’ve watched people find jobs, find opportunities, find community and, sometimes, find themselves.

That’s what we actually do here.

The cocktails matter. We take them seriously because craftsmanship matters. A well-made drink is an act of hospitality. It’s a signal that someone cared enough to get the details right. But the drink has never been the destination.

The destination is connection.

That’s why the room is small.

That’s why we host jazz.

That’s why we started a book club.

That’s why we spin records on Turntable Tuesday nights.

That’s why we teach classes about whiskey, gin, amaro, bitters, syrups, and the stories behind the things we drink.

That’s why we keep inventing strange little programs like Ports of Call and passport adventures and cocktail schools.

Not because they’re clever.

Because they give people a reason to sit together.

To talk.

To laugh.

To listen.

To belong.

The best moments in this room rarely happen behind the bar. They happen across it.

They happen when a table of strangers becomes a table of friends.

They happen when someone says, “Pull up a chair.”

They happen when a musician starts a song and the room collectively goes hush to listen.

They happen when a group of people realize they are participating in something increasingly rare: a genuine community.

Long before Speak of the Devil existed, bars served as gathering places. They were where neighborhoods celebrated victories, mourned losses, shared stories, traded news, and made plans. They were living rooms for people whose homes weren’t large enough to hold everyone they cared about.

We’ve always liked that idea.

So yes, we are a cocktail bar.

But more than that, we are a place to gather.

A place to celebrate.

A place to learn.

A place to listen.

A place to meet.

A place to belong.

Good drinks bring people in.

Community gives them a reason to come back.

And that’s what we actually do here.

So, welcome, feel free to drop in and be a part of what we do.

suggested further reading:

David Coggins on What Makes a Good Bar

Sean Kenyon on the Importance of Neighborhood Bars

Why Bars Matter