Born to Booze
THE PIANO MAN HAS BEEN DRINKING
Four perfect martinis with Hamilton Leithauser


They say martinis are like boobs. One is fine, two is perfect, and three is just too many. Obviously the person who coined it hadn’t seen Total Recall as a kid. I just had four with Hamilton Leithauser, and we forgot to talk about his new album, This Side of the Island.
I took a train uptown to meet Hamilton at the Carlyle, a fancy Manhattan hotel. I always feel like I’m in a budget version of Paris when I get off on 77th Street: old ladies in fur coats walking their dogs, boutiques, and people so hot it makes you feel karmically unblessed. But I was an hour early, so I called a buddy who works nearby at the Met. He let me chill in their members’ lounge where I had martini No. 1, looked at some European paintings, and killed time envisioning my own Upper East Side life, until I had to make it back over to the Carlyle. I walked back to the hotel and plopped into a booth at their bar Bemelmans, a gold-ceilinged room with a piano in the middle and murals all over the wall painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, who did the art for the children’s book series Madeline. I ordered martini No. 2 and waited for my subject to arrive.