Speakeasy was, for me, the place where I first got to test myself without a safety net to fall back on.

I began to learn the necessary art of reinventing myself and personal identity there.

It was the nursery of my personhood and the abattoir of my youth.

I have never again sought the excesses I found there, and I have also never again so freely mixed my work life with my personal life.

But I have also never worked anywhere that did so much with so few people.