Eric Adams may be the mayor, but we are living in the espresso martini’s New York. While that drink has saturated nightlife thoroughly enough to lose some cachet, we are now starting to see what its long influence has wrought within New York’s bars. “What the espresso martini did,” says Ryan Dolliver, a bartender at Palmetto in Bushwick, “is marked the end of the original American cocktail revival.” An official drink of the summer never materialized, though dirty martinis did surge in popularity. But bartenders are reluctant to call that drink a trendsetter, mostly because, when pressed, they had trouble identifying any real trends: Mezcal? Spritzes? Bud Light? And novelty cocktails are back, and nobody is quite sure why. For a long time, there were rules. Drinks were a serious endeavor undertaken by serious individuals who worked hard to procure the right applejack or to infuse bourbon with the right bacon. Things have been trending toward the more chaotic end of the spectrum for a while, but this was the year, many people working in New York’s nightlife industry say, when the shackles finally came off for good. In 2022: Anything goes. Head to the link in our bio for @chrisecrowley's look at why 2022 was the year that ended cocktail trends. Photo: @ichristianrodriguez