The modern speakeasy revival began as a quiet act of rebellion against the neon-soaked, vodka-cranberry fueled loud-fests of the late 90s. In 1999, the late Sasha Petraske opened Milk & Honey on a desolate stretch of Eldridge Street with no sign, a hidden phone number, and a set of rules that demanded you act like a civilized adult. It wasn’t about being "exclusive"; it was about protecting the neighbors and the quality of the ice. For a decade, the NYC "secret bar" was a sacred bond between a bartender and a patron who actually knew what was in a Sazerac. You went to PDT because you wanted a great drink through a phone booth, or to Angel’s Share for the hushed reverence of a library.
The acceleration happened when the industry realized that "secrecy" was the ultimate marketing gimmick. By the mid-2010s, the unmarked door became a mandatory architectural feature for every new bar from Chelsea to Greenpoint. It stopped being about the craftsmanship of the cocktail and started being about the theater of the entry. We moved from legitimate hideaways to bars hidden behind "secret" freezer doors in taco shops and fake vending machines. The media detonated the trend by publishing "Top 10 Secret Bars You Didn't Know About" every week, effectively ensuring that everyone, and their visiting cousin from Ohio knew exactly where the handle was hidden.
The moment it went off the rails was the arrival of the "Instagram Speakeasy." Around 2021, the trend detached from Petraske’s vision of decorum and became a playground for the "vibes" industrial complex. Virality warped the experience into a series of choreographed hurdles: the password you found on TikTok, the neon sign that says something "edgy" about bad decisions, and the obligatory thirty-minute wait in a hallway that smells like a damp basement. The NYC "ugh" reaction peaked when you couldn’t even get into a mediocre hotel bar without a "secret" code that was printed on the publicly available Resy confirmation.
The cultural fallout is a city saturated with "hidden" gems that are about as secret as a Times Square billboard. We’ve traded the quiet intimacy of a dark booth for a room full of flash photography and people filming "reveal" videos of themselves walking through a laundry room. The term "speakeasy" has been stripped of its dignity, now serving as a shorthand for "overpriced drinks in a room with no windows." We aren't hiding from Prohibition anymore; we’re just hiding from the reality that the bar scene has become a copy-paste theatrical production.
It’s no longer a secret if there’s a line of influencers outside holding ring lights. The mystery has been solved, documented, and geo-tagged into oblivion. We used to go underground to escape the noise; now, the noise is the only reason the door is hidden in the first place.
So who ruined it? Sasha Petraske made it. Eater detonated it. TikTok worshipped it. And the rest of us? We were just trying to get to work without stepping over people photographing a fake bookshelf in the middle of a Tuesday night.
Like this? Explore more from:
