Neat profile on one of NYC's speakeasies.

I wish I lived during this era so I could hang out in a speakeasy and say stuff like "23 skidoo!" Maybe I'll be a flapper for Halloween... From ABC News:

The club opened as a speakeasy in 1929 and was one of the swankiest of the city's approximately 32,000 illegal clubs during Prohibition. It's one of the very few that still exist today.

[...] But it wasn't all good times and glamour for 21 Club. Federal agents targeted the bar during Prohibition. In fact, a gossip columnist was banned after he penned a column noting that Prohibition agents had never raided 21. The next day, law enforcement agents decended on the speakeasy and the owners vowed that day in 1930 never again to lose their precious liquor in a raid.

They hired an architect to design an ingenious and intricate system to hide and destroy liquor in case of future raids.

"If they knew that the feds were coming in -- which they always did -- because the New York City police used to tip them off -- they would just press [some] buttons," said Food and Wine author John Mariani. "The first button would set off an alarm, alerting patrons to down their drinks."

"Then the barman inside, he would press the button under the bar and the back shelves would flip upside down. And all of the liquor and wine bottles would slide down and break into the New York City sewer system," McGuire said.