December 3: It’s the Bee’s Knees! Cocktail demonstrations, samples and presentations on the Roaring ’20s
Join us December 3 to sample Prohibition Era cocktails while hearing all about the Roaring ’20s.
The day will include special presentations and demonstrations of Prohibition-themed cocktails from some of Las Vegas’s top mixologists associated with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits. Four mixology demonstrations will be held at 30-minute intervals set for 1 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. A limited number of samples will be available to taste for guests over 21 years of age.
Four speakers from the Museum’s content department and UNLV will discuss organized crime during the 1920s and early 1930s, the Temperance Movement, Las Vegas during Prohibition and NASCAR’s ties to bootlegging.
All demonstrations and presentations will take place in the Museum’s courtroom.
Scott Deitche, author and expert on organized crime, will sign books in the Museum’s retail store.
12 P.M.: ORGANIZED CRIME DURING PROHIBITION
Geoff Schumacher, The Mob Museum director of content
Prohibition was the best thing that ever happened to organized crime. It transformed penny-ante street hoodlums into millionaire syndicate bosses. Lax enforcement, corruptible politicians and the public’s insatiable thirst for liquor left mobsters with few obstacles to profit handsomely from making and selling booze. Prohibition laid the foundation for bootleggers to develop into the most sophisticated crime syndicates in the world.
1 – 1:30 P.M.: MIXOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
1 P.M.: THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
Claire White, The Mob Museum education outreach manager
Christian crusaders, female activists, and concerned doctors pushed for a ban on alcohol in the United States for a hundred years before the 18th Amendment. See objects that helped anti-alcohol temperance reformers grow into powerful policy-makers and discover the ways that they portrayed alcohol as a menace to the country.
1:30 – 2 P.M.: MIXOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
2 – 2:30 P.M.: MIXOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
2 P.M.: PROHIBITION IN LAS VEGAS
Michael Green, professor of history at UNLV
Damon Runyon said of a Prohibition-era city that it was “a dry town–as dry as the Atlantic Ocean.” That’s the Las Vegas story during the Prohibition Era: most residents had little interest in following the law. Those who opposed alcohol ignored the law in other ways. And it was an era of great change for the community, as it went through a significant transition during the 1920s and early 1930s that included new federal projects and new state laws that made gambling legal and divorce easy.
2:30 – 3 P.M. MIXOLOGY DEMONSTRATION
3 P.M.: BOOTLEGGING AND THE BIRTH OF NASCAR
Jeff Burbank, The Mob Museum content development specialist
During Prohibition from the 1920s to 1933, when bootleggers who sold illegal liquor had to move their goods fast to outrun federal agents and police, some lightened their automobiles by removing seats and floor boards and “souped up” the engines. In the 1930s, especially after Ford introduced the flathead V-8 engine in 1932, some current and former liquor runners raced each other on weekend afternoons out in the country, mostly in the South, on makeshift dirt tracks. Such were the bootlegger roots of the stock car, and what would evolve into the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR, in 1947.
1 P.M. – 4 P.M.: BOOK SIGNING, COCKTAIL NOIR
IN THE MUSEUM’S RETAIL STORE
Scott Deitche, author and expert on organized crime
Deitche, who has written books on Florida’s Mob and mobsters, delves into the intersection of alcohol and the underworld with his book, Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets. Highlighting the favorite drinks of mobsters, fictional characters from crime novels and award-winning authors of crime fiction and non-fiction, the book also includes recipes for cocktails such as the Gimlet described in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. The book signing will take place from 1-4 p.m. in the Museum’s retail store. There is no charge to enter the retail store.