The spritz, in this city, has lost its plot. Once a thing you ordered because the day had earned it — sweat on your collarbone, the sun still indecent, a chair in the shade you had earned by sitting in it long enough — it is now something you order because it is on a menu and you have a phone to photograph it with. The result is the same orange beverage. The premise is gone.

I do not begrudge anyone an Aperol. I begrudge them the circumstances in which they drink it. To be clear: the spritz is a 5pm drink. It is not lunch. It is not after dinner. It is not, my god, brunch. It is the moment when the day's industriousness has run out of road, and a person admits this with grace, and orders something the color of a Vespa.

What I see instead, walking from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg and back, is a city of people drinking spritzes at 11am in a tank top with airpods in. This is what we call, in the old country, a tragedia. The drink wants to be a comma. You have made it a period.

The proposal is small. Drink your spritz at 5pm. Sit down. Put the phone down. Talk to whoever is across the table from you. If no one is across the table from you, look at the sky. The drink will tell you what to do next. It always has.