The Icons: The People Behind Our Cocktail Menu
We didn’t name our cocktails after flavors. We named them after people — specifically, the people who made downtown New York the most interesting place on earth for about fifteen years. The 1980s and 1990s, when the city was raw and broke and electric, and the line between art and nightlife and trouble was thin enough to step over.
These are not nostalgia props. They’re the actual inspiration for the drinks. Order carefully.
Al Goldstein
The publisher of Screw magazine and one of the great loudmouths of First Amendment history — vulgar, combative, and impossible to ignore. His drink is moody and low-lit: bourbon, orgeat, lemon oil, and RC Cola, bottled and force-carbonated. It’s the glass as the subject. Bourbon amber against black.
Kenny Kenny
The legendary doorman and club kid who ruled the velvet rope at the Limelight and beyond — the person who decided, on a glance, whether your night was going to happen. His cocktail is theatrical: chili-infused vodka, cranberry, lime cordial, tarragon, cherry bitters, and foam, served in a coupe with a Limelight stencil floated on top. A drink that judges you a little.
Amanda Lepore
The most famous transgender woman in the world, a living Warhol, the muse of downtown glamour. Her drink floats: gin, peach liqueur, and a honey-basil lemonade soda float. Effervescent, a little excessive, completely sure of itself.
Basquiat
The painter who went from tagging SAMO on SoHo walls to the center of the art world before he turned 25. His cocktail looks like it was painted — green and gold, tequila and green apple and Midori and Cointreau, lime and a pinch of saline. Bright, fast, and gone too soon.
Liza Minnelli
Old glamour, the survivor, the showstopper who outlasted the era that made her. Her drink is celebration in a glass: cherry and Angostura bitters, rum, a sugar cube, sparkling wine, and a lemon twist. Candlelight in liquid form.
Why the names matter
You can drink at FKA: and never read a word of this. The cocktails stand on their own. But if you want to know why a bar in the East Village is named Formerly Known As — why everything here is an homage to a downtown that mostly doesn’t exist anymore — start with the menu. Every name is a small history lesson disguised as a good time.
Come meet the icons. We’re at 221 2nd Avenue, between 13th and 14th Street, in the East Village. Good Clean Filth.