What is a 'Long Island iced tea'? From cocktails in Barcelona

Nightlife has reopened and the city is full of people (I am also people) wandering the streets. At seven in the evening, heading towards the Poliorama theater, I cross the streets of El Raval. Two boys carry paper cones, like those of chestnut sellers, full of french fries with ketchup. They eat them with a small plastic fork. Many people eat and drink in the street. I suppose that in other cities in the world (New York, Mexico City, Tokyo...) this custom has existed for a long time. I am not used to it and perhaps I will never get used to it. I like tables and tableware.

On Joaquín Costa street, I pass in front of a cocktail bar that everyone talks about: Two Schmucks. It turns out that on that famous list of the fifty best bars in the world, it occupies number 26. At the door, a girl asks me if I want to come in. "Is there space?", I ask. And she tells me yes, but in the back. To the back I go. They prepare all kinds of classic cocktails (margarita, negroni, pisco sour...) but also modern creations or reinventions. Modern mixology is heading this way. For example, at Paradiso (on Rere Palau street) they make a reinvention of the very strong Long Island Iced Tea. It's a cocktail with the four white spirits (tequila, rum, gin, and vodka) and a little Coca-Cola. It's called that because it comes from the Prohibition era, when people disguised it and pretended it was iced tea.

The Two Schmucks menu is promising. The cocktail I order, an aperitif containing Campari, comes with a small bowl of cheese. The waitress tells me that I have to combine sips with bites. I heard her telling a customer that they "clarify" some cocktails and, in fact, mine has a very fine color. It's very good. And it costs me nine euros.

Down Tallers street, I arrive at Boadas. There, all the classic cocktails. The experience of watching the waiters prepare them with two mixing glasses, like someone pouring cider, with the grace that Dolors Boadas always had (in a photo, now, on the wall of the place). From this cocktail bar, I keep, like a treasure, the photocopies of the cocktail book they published and which the esteemed bartender of the disappeared Harry's, which is now Solange, in front of Dry Martini, and not far from Tándem and Ideal, lent me. His name was Quim and all of us who went to that place will always remember him.

At the Poliorama, a wonderful queue of people going to the theater. The Viena, and I feel very bad about it, is closed.