I'm beginning to get irked by these announcements of expensive drinks taking up newsprint/webpage space. Most of them consist of: Top shelf liquor + Jewelry of some sort. Newest onehere

I realize that a big reason they do it is publicity, but still, it irks me....

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I woner if jewelry stores will start serving drinks to compete.

Saturday Night Live did a mention on it last night. They said, for $800 you can buy a tee shirt that says 'I'm an ......." It was funny!

I used to work in the Jewelry industry and a lot of high end jewelers do have high end liquors in stock as a treat. I've seen very nice scotches and cognacs stocked for their best clients (and vendors ) .

This one is particularly annoying because it's just a martini with earrings in it. Not even any attempt to use rare ingredients.

Agreed. I wonder how long will we see the first $2000 diet coke...

Why would anyone buy something where the quality of the jewelry was not known.

I can't imagine that the vendor is choosing anything more than borderline quality stones.

Now if I were a wealthy person who wanted to make a huge splash, I might consider saying to a concierge, "Look, I want you to get me an xx quality pair of sapphire earrings and put them into a sapphire martini for my guest here... and charge me whatever you like."

But this looks like a ripoff for vanity purposes only.
R.

Even more annoying, each "announcement" implies that no other establishment has come up with the booze/bling combo and that the offering is somehow unique or impossible to duplicate.

This falls into the same category as that $100,000 bra from Victoria's Secret...because there's a big diamond on it right between the boobies...

I guess my biggest peeve isn't that the bars/clubs are offering them, it's that newspapers/websites are bothering to cover it. It is just a publicity stunt that has obviously worked recently. I just don't thing taking $50 in liquor (or less in the case of the latest martini (Bombay Saffire is nice, but it isn't as lavish as others available) and adding $200 jewelery to make a $1000 drink is newsworthy.

Oh, those have been sold for years. Ever been to a political fundraiser?

Apparently there is a market out there for products that people want to reaffirm their status. Perhaps they feel insecure of who they are so they need to remind themselves, and others (of course), of their elevated status and worth.

One example of these status products is sold on the Co-op floor at Barney's at 66th and Mad. It's a line of very casual wear, sweats and t-shirts called Billionaire Boys Club. They have very ordinary looking t-shirts at $150, hooded sweats at $300. The prices compete with Herm�s and Prada, but the look and quality compete with Nike.

http://www.billionaire-boys-club.co.uk/bbc.php

Well, newspapers/tv/radio are for-profit by and large. They need to fill up space/airtime with something. Instead of going out and actually investigating something, they print up press releases because they don't involve any effort/expenditure on the part of the media outlet. One of the contributing factors to the rightward shift politically in the US is because right-wing think tanks, since about the late 70's, have built up infrastructures based on this knowledge about the media to their advantage by issuing PRs and reports that the media can use. Why go out and verify claims, when you can just have some group give you free information that involves no work/expense on your part (this doesn't begin to deal with corporate ownership/advertiser interests, but that argument is a bit more involved. Same basic principle. (Somehow I guess you probably already know this, but thought I'd put it out there for those who don't.)