Rare Mid-Century \"Luke\'s Cocktails Hollydale\" Promotional Smirnoff Mule Mug For Sale

This is about as niche a Southern California historical story as they come. Most of this long history lesson is grabbed from Google\'s search engine and following the threads. Background: Accounts vary, but from early as the late 1940s into the 1960s, Smirnoff distributors marketed the Smirnoff Mule drink, aka the Moscow Mule, by giving to bars and lounges a personalized copper mug. (It\'s an alloy made of anodized aluminum or tin with a coppery finish.) Now the Mule drink was invented in 1941 at the Los Angeles Cock \'n Bull restaurant. See, John G. Martin of the Heublein company (Hartford, CT, headquarters stamped on bottom of mug) had bought ailing Smirnoff, and thus had WAY too much vodka because no one in the US wanted vodka. But wait, there\'s more. Cock \'n Bull owner Jack Morgan was sitting on unsold stock of his house-brand ginger beer. Meanwhile, Russian immigrant Sophie Berezinski arrived in L.A. about the same time with thousands of copper mugs to sell. Stop me if you\'ve heard this one before. So anyway, Cock \'n Bull head bartender Wes Price (or Martin, Morgan and the barkeep in a joint session) combined a shot of vodka with ginger beer and some lime juice. The rest is history. The popularity of vodka took off in SoCal, helped by the association with Sophie\'s copper mugs, which were from Russia but made in Hong Kong for some reason. Google says the libation was called the Moscow Mule before it was named the Smirnoff Mule. Sounds like a start of a bar fight to me.Now along comes Hollydale, California. Uh, it was an unincorporated place from the early 1920s to 1928, when it was incorporated by the city of South Gate. So, not a lot of time to develop childhood memories. Or so you would think. According to the L.A. County Library Org.,\"... Hollydale has not always been completely satisfied with its status and has not lost sight of its unique identity, with some residents agitating for independence [from South Gate] as recently as the mid 1980s.” Which explains why Smirnoff branded this particular mug for Luke\'s Cocktails in Hollydale, not South Gate. Oh by the way, Google says there are ZERO records of Luke\'s Cocktails ever existing, except for bar memorabilia like this, which shows two cherubs fighting over a glass of Smirnoff Mule. I\'d like to link to some of our other listings, but the copy desk said to wrap it up.