Prohibition was enacted in 1919 to end alcoholism, to safeguard the American family and re establish the supremacy of the values of 'small town' America. But by 1925, Prohibition had helped fuel the very transformation its champions feared; somehow the same country that had banned the sale of alcohol had become the biggest importer of cocktail shakers in the world. Prohibition had done away with the 'Saloon' but Speakeasies replaced them - seemingly almost everywhere; from lavish nightclubs where waiters served champagne on silver trays, to tiny apartments in run-down tenements. No one really knows how many nightclubs operated in New York City; one police commissioner estimated 32,000 , one for every 250 inhabitants.
Amongst this bootlegged booze fuelled underworld, women found themselves going places they had never gone before. Forbidden from the saloon, women rarely drank publicly before Prohibition, but these illegal drinking establishments enabled women to achieve new freedoms in their social lives, courtship and sexuality.
In 1925 Harold Ross, looking to increase readership for his struggling new sophisticated humor magazine, 'The New Yorker', theorized that any truly modern magazine needed to appeal to both men and women. In the witty, high-spirited, beautiful, and independent 23 year old Lois Long, he found the perfect writer to cover the city's nightlife, under her pen name 'Lipstick'. Long was working as a staff writer at Vanity Fair, and before that at Vogue. She came from academic stock in Stamford, Connecticut, and graduated from Vassar.
'It was customary to give two dollars to the cab driver if you threw up in his cab.'
From the '21 Club', 'The Lido' and 'The Day Breakers', to 'The Cave of the Fallen Angels', 'The Hole in the Wall', and 'The Irish Veterans Association', Long was paid to review the speakeasies of New York with the magazine footing the bill. Her witty, satirical column was called 'When Nights are Bold,' the title of which changed to 'Tables for Two' with the issue for September 12, 1925. Since her identity was hidden behind the page, she often had a bit of fun with her readers, describing herself as a plump middle-aged woman, or a distinguished gentleman. Long had a great sense of humor and adventure – perfect for 1920s Manhattan. In one review of a nightclub she said there was no need for a floorshow because 'In a place as dark as that people ought to be able to entertain themselves.'
Speakeasies were too expensive to be truly inclusive, and Long's column became a sensation amongst women who couldn't afford to experience this nocturnal existence. Instead they lived it through this young single liberated woman who knew all the right people, who went to all the right bars and drank all the right liquors.
According to historian Joshua Zeitz, author of Flapper: Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, Long’s exploits often found their way to the office:
'She would come into the office at four in the morning, usually inebriated, still in an evening dress and she would, having forgotten the key to her cubicle, she would normally prop herself up on a chair and try to, you know, in stocking feet, jump over the cubicle usually in a dress that was too immodest for Harold Ross’ [the founder of the New Yorker] liking. She was in every sense of the word, both in public and private, the embodiment of the 1920s flapper.'
In addition to her observations on the patrons of speakeasies, it also included criticism of public officials, such as Manhattan District Attorney Emory R. Buckner, who conducted raids on speakeasies. As the archetypal flapper, Long's columns offered women a glimpse of a glamorous lifestyle where they could enjoy many of the same freedoms and vices as men. This new liberty was prompted by women gaining the right to vote in the United States in 1920 as well as the ways in which they defied the Victorian and Edwardian roles proscribed for women.
The Stock Market Crash of 1929 changed American culture away from a devil-may-care attitude, and 'Tables for Two' jitterbugged for the last time on June 7th, 1930. The last few columns have a wistful tone – intoning how everything was once better than it is now:
'They have become so charming, these speakeasies de luxe, that there has been a trend among the bright young drinkers toward a glass of sherry before meals instead of cocktails, a bottle of wine during dinner, port with the cheese, a liqueur with the coffee — instead of one highball after another. If things continue to progress in this alarming way, we are going to have a nation of gourmets on our hands who never heard of drinking for the effect and not liking the taste. Apparently, satiation with a hard-liquor diet can accomplish the same temperance that light-wine-and-beer laws promise to.'
A great archive of her wonderful work can be found HERE