Ode to the Citywide, Philly’s Working-Class Elixir
A shot and a beer, that's all it is. A shot and a beer.
You can get a shot and a beer literally anywhere that serves shots and beers. Ask any bartender and they'll set 'em up, side by side, and charge you whatever the market will bear. And you'll drink them — first one, then the other — and you'll think nothing at all of it.
Except in Philly.
Here, it's not just a shot and a beer. It's a Citywide. It's "the Special" if you're ordering it at Bob & Barbara's , the place where it was (arguably, probably, almost definitely) invented. A PBR and a shot of Jim Beam, originally called "the Happy Meal," for $3. (Today, the Special is $5.)
That's where I had my first one, April of 2011. A friend took me — pregaming for an event farther down South Street — and I remember it because it moved me. I'd been in Philly two weeks then, maybe three, and I was nervous. Yellow-duckling new. I knew hardly anyone or anything. But we sat at the bar and he ordered and the beers and the shots came and he said, "Citywide."
"City what?"
"Citywide," he repeated. "Citywide Special. That's what it's called."
It's a blue-collar drink for a blue-collar town. Not a loss leader or a ploy, but an honest deal: cheap and a little bit grimy, but effective."
It was the name that got me. The word, because I've always been a sucker for words. Citywide — a thing that was everywhere, that everyone knew about. A drink (two drinks) that you could ask for anyplace, and no matter who you are or where you were, they'd know what you were talking about. A shot and a beer. But also, somehow, more than just that. And I thought to myself, A city that would have something like that — its own drink, so simple and stupid and good? That's somewhere I can live.
Other cities have their own drinks, official or unofficial. The Manhattan, New Orleans's Sazerac, Seattle's Last Word, whatever. Except they're all complicated or corporatized, brand-forward or slick like a convention center brochure. But the Citywide? That's a blue-collar drink for a blue-collar town. Not a loss leader or a ploy, but an honest deal: cheap and a little bit grimy, but effective.
The Citywide is Philly's automatic happy hour — one that's good all hours and in more places than you can count. It comes in many forms (a can of Hamm's and a shot of Kamikaze at Dirty Frank's , Tecate and tequila at La Chinesca , the Classy at Fergie's with its shot of Paddy's Irish Whiskey and a Narragansett), but they've all got the same gruff heart to them, the same leveling effect, the same equalizing power. They're everyone's special, Philly's answer to every too-long day or too-short night, and they all say the same thing: Life's fucking tough, but don't worry. This'll make it just a little bit better.
Published as "It's Always Happy Hour Somewhere" in the November 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
