It’s totally unsurprising, then, that the first New York Times’ Sunday Styles section of 2009 declared absinthe “uncool,” with Styles reporter Eric Konigsberg calling it “falsely subversive” and likening absinthe to such fleeting cultural fads as cigar bars, soul patches, women’s lower-back tattoos, the band Interpol, and brushed nickel kitchen fixtures. He writes: “Once the naughty aura of the forbidden fruit is removed, all that remains is a grasp at unearned sophistication.