Coca-Cola Ultimate was made for Maserati

Tonight’s Night Water is another extra special carbonated drink review from writer Peter Scobas. You can find more from Peter at his newsletter, This is bullshit and so can you.

Bisbee, Arizona is a spunky, eclectic city about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The former site of the Copper Queen Mine, Bisbee is a vibrant, rough around the edges, free-thinking rural town nestled playfully in the Mule Mountains—some 5,000 feet higher and 20 degrees cooler than the sprawling Phoenix metropolitan area to the north.

Bisbee is one of those towns you want to keep all to yourself. It can be coarse and angry and compassionate and magical in a way that convinces you to put up with a bit more air and soil and groundwater pollution than you'd otherwise be comfortable with.

There's an old man named Maserati who lives in Bisbee. As I chatted with Maserati outside the Bisbee Grand Hotel this past weekend, he insisted that I (his words) "ask for Maserati if I'm ever in any trouble." He was adamant that Bisbee is the safest place on earth, but—if anything happened to me—he'll (again, his words) "sort everything out."

"I kinda run this place," he says, and I believe him.

Maserati also recommended that I eat at the local gastropub, The Quarry. "Everything's homemade, the ketchup, everything," he says. He reminded me of my Uncle Danny—tough, but frail. A little delirious. The sort of old guy who understands everything but recognizes no one. The sort of old guy who doesn't care for subtlety, or details. Or segues.

Coca-Cola recently released Coca-Cola Ultimate (a limited edition soda flavor) co-created with the online video game League of Legends. Coke's new LoL flavor takes that legendary Coca-Cola flavor and "adds the electrifying taste of +XP."

(Yeah it's me again, the Coca-Cola guy. I'll bring us back to Maserati and my Uncle Danny, I promise).

I'm not a League of Legends guy. One of my friends started a League club when we were in high school, but it was never my thing. To be completely honest, I don't know anything about League of Legends. But I also doubt Maserati or my Uncle Danny know anything about the game, either. And yet—I'm convinced that Coca-Cola Ultimate was made for men like Maserati and my Uncle Danny.

I think the people who drink Coca-Cola Ultimate don't drink it because they want it, or because they like it, but because they are unbothered by it—and, coincidentally—by everything else around them.

Coca-Cola Ultimate is for people who don't remember (or don't care to remember) what regular coke tastes like. The flavor is haphazard. It's chaotic. It's as if a Coca-Cola exec was browsing the Wikipedia page for Hubba Bubba's bubble tape and sent an email with the link to a colleague that said, "new flavor?? LoL."

Six months ago, I quit my job to try and make a go of it as a writer. That decision has been, largely, an unmitigated financial disaster. As my wife and I have been getting fiscally clobbered by the American economic system, we've feverishly embraced the the following mantra: "Fuck it. What's a little credit card debt?"

It's turned into our rallying cry. Our version of Leo's "let’s knock this motherfucker out of the park" speech from The Wolf of Wall Street. I screamed it at my wife at a gas station in Bisbee, hands on my knees, physically doubled over from the stress of our financial situation.

Fuck it. What's a little credit card debt?

Coca-Cola Ultimate are those words, liquified.

I did not like drinking the Coca-Cola Ultimate. I think that much is clear. But, I'm not sure I was supposed to like it. I think Coke Ultimate is less of a soda and more of a... reminder. A reminder that no one (not Coca-Cola, clearly) knows what they're doing or what they're supposed to be doing.

Every sip I took of my one can of Coca-Cola Ultimate was a reminder that life can get messy and that mess might leave a bad taste in your mouth. But adversity is temporary. Misery doesn't last forever.

Is my bank account bone dry? Damn right it is. But I'm good.

I'll be good.

I'm pretty sure you can talk your way out of credit card debt. And if I can't, I've got a guy to sort everything out.

His name is Maserati, and he kinda runs the place.