The crate and the bottle

How a Jamaican dance buys its drink, and what that has said about it.

Through the 1980s and 90s the answer was beer, and beer in volume. It was not unusual to see a full crate of liquor at a man's foot — bought whole at the start of the night and worked through where he stood, a night's supply rather than a round. The women's end of the same bar ran on Dandy Shandy and Babycham. Guinness sat between the two, sold on strength.

The modern answer is the bottle. For the boasy crowd the spend moved to cognac and champagne — Hennessy, Moët, Campari — bought by the bottle, carried to a table and held up rather than drunk down. The crate was consumption; the bottle is display, and it belongs to the same visual economy as the video light and the fashion. The drinks changed, the volume did not, and neither did the fact that what is in your hand in a dance is a message about who you are in it.

This record is built from community recollection contributed to the archive, not from trade or press history, and is filed as probable on that basis.