Through our merchandise sales and fundraising efforts, we have raised money to assist various organizations in the following areas: Education, Undocumented Youth & Immigration Reform, Women’s Reproductive Rights, Wildlife Animal Protection, and LGBTQ Advocacy.
Join host Travis Ross as he gets an intimate peek into the lives of inspiring creatives pushing the boundaries in art, music, fashion, business and more. Each episode gives viewers an exclusive inside look when Travis meets up with guests in their natural habitat in the iconic city of Los Angeles.
The “after party” moves to The Lost Cove Co. headquarters in Inglewood, California (also known as “The Cove”) to partake in a late night drink of choice while taking a deeper dive into the drive and passion of what makes these individuals a force to be reckoned with in their respective industries. At The Cove, anything can happen, and anything goes! Almost.
Additional segments vary each episodes and include live musical performances, in-studio tattoos, billiards, games, and comedy, showing viewers the raw, uncensored personality and real-time reactions of each guest. Check out the episode featuring Ilegal Mezcal Brand Ambassador Gilbert Marquez, and head to their YouTube channel to watch the entire series.
The artist’s works will be for sale and on display, weekends 12-5pm, at 38 Greenpoint Ave through July 10th. In conjunction with our annual ‘Celebrating YOU’ fundraiser / 10% of art sales goes to benefit wayOUT, a non-profit organization focused on empowering gender expansive youth by investing in centers in their local communities.
On June 16th, the Ilegal Mezcal Showroom in Greenpoint, Brooklyn hosted the opening party, featuring a silent auction, flash tattoos by Shannon Virginia, music by Bryrell the Great, and plenty of neat mezcal pours. The party continued down the street ’til late at Pencil Factory. Kudos to Social Impact Manager Lindsay Rexer, Design and Creative Manager Kïa Tavernier, and the NY team on an electric opening party!
Opened by John Rexer in the early 2000s, Café No Sé has become the beating heart of an international music scene in Antigua, Guatemala. This is the original home of Ilegal Mezcal + the first mezcal bar opened outside of Mexico.
Bar Ilegal is an experiential outpost of Café No Sé. Bar Ilegal 2022 began with four straight weekends in snowy Hunter, NY, two stops in Florida in March, two in California in April, and San Antonio and Fort Worth, TX in May.
On June 15th, the Bar Ilegal crew rolled into Nashville, hosting a performance SUSU, live painting by Chris Tuorto, and plenty of Joven and Reposado mezcal cocktails at William Collier’s, the whiskey bar attached to premier Nashville venue Marathon Music Works.
Photos by SUSU touring photographer Sarah Craig. in the gallery below!
Our Greenpoint Showroom is now the New York home for the Paste Studio on the Road, and in 2022 our stage has hosted iconic artists and rising acts. On May 12th, 2022, we had the distinct thrill of hosting two legends, Shaggy and Sting, as they promoted their new record “Com Fly Wid Me,” which reimagines the Sinatra songbook in a reggae style.
According to Sting, “This idea of getting my friend to sing ten iconic songs from the Frank Sinatra songbook in a reggae style had been brewing for a while…I know, it sounds crazy! But every time the idea crossed my mind, it made me smile. And what does the world need now, more than anything else…something to smile about!” [from Sting.com].
Watch the whole performance above, which includes a throwback to Shaggy’s unimpeachable classic “Boombastic.” Check back for announcements of more to come with Paste Magazine, and discover more about our connection to music, including our Musician’s Breakfast series, here.
The recent global glass shortage has impacted the spirits supply chain worldwide. We suddenly found ourselves with no access to the bottles we had used for years. What could have thrown off production, however, ended up a silver lining – we took swift action to identify and shift to a new partner.
All Ilegal Mezcal bottles will now be made by a family-run company that recycles 10,000 tons of glass each year at its facility in Jalisco, Mexico. Fusion y Formas’ production process emits less CO2 emissions and saves energy during the smelting process, since recycled glass is more malleable. Compared to newly-made bottles, those at Fusion y Formas require about 30% less energy to create.
A brief meeting between Ilegal founder John Rexer and Fusion y Formas Director Andrés Hernández Romo sealed the partnership deal.
“We measure success at Ilegal not just by cases sold, but also by our partners and environmental initiatives we can enact. We share the same vision with Fusion y Formas to build sustainably and scale responsibly, while maintaining quality above all else,” said Rexer.
“My family has long taken glass that would otherwise go to a landfill and crafted it into bottles and more, with the goal of minimizing waste. I enjoy Ilegal Mezcal and am happy to help move them to bottles that are better for the environment,” said Romo.
Ilegal was created with a commitment to sustainability and biodiversity. Using only fully mature 100% sustainable espadín agave, our mezcal contains no artificial colors, yeasts, flavors, or additives. Waste water at the distillery is treated and then re-used for distillation, and agave fiber waste is transformed into adobe style bricks used at the facility.
As of April 1, 2022, the new post-consumer recycled (PCR) bottles, both 750ml and 375ml, are now the only Ilegal Mezcal bottles shipping out of Mexico.
Opened by John Rexer in the early 2000s, Café No Sé has become the beating heart of an international music scene in Antigua, Guatemala. This is the original home of Ilegal Mezcal + the first mezcal bar opened outside of Mexico.
Bar Ilegal is an experiential outpost of Café No Sé. Bar Ilegal 2022 began with four straight weekends in Hunter, NY, followed by two March dates in Florida, two stops in California in April, and a night in San Antonio in May.
On May 19th, the Bar Ilegal crew took over Tulips in Fort Worth. Rexer, the local Texas team, and much of our national team were in attendance for an unforgettable night. SUSU ripped through another set, and John Clark and Outlook Tattoo provided Ilegal flash tattoos.
See how it all went down in the video by Renato Rimach, and in the gallery of pics by Sarah Craig.
Participating locations are serving the Celebrating YOU cocktail with Ilegal Mezcal, with part of sales going to wayOUT: a non-profit organization that partners with local gender expansive LGBTQ+ programs across the US.
On May 15, 2022, 4100 Bar hosted a Los Angeles Celebrating YOU event, raising funds towards wayOUT. At the helm were 4100 Bar GM Erica Saturno, bar manager Rachel Babel, lead bartender Rory Mahon, and bar back Marley Jones.
The event was a collaboration between Ilegal Mezcal, 4100 Bar, and District Productions – Omar Rivas and Andy Garcia organized local 12 artisans, pulled in local traffic, and 4 bands with sounds to keep an amazing crowd of people from 5-midnight.
Ilegal Mezcal Celebrating YOU flash tattoos were provided by artist Fernando Garcia. A total of 76 Celebrating YOU cocktail were sold at the event, and the cocktail continues to be sold at the venue.
Check out photos by René Banuelos from the event in our gallery below!
Opened by Ilegal founder John Rexer in the early 2000s, Café No Sé has become the beating heart of an international music scene in Antigua, Guatemala. This is the original home of Ilegal Mezcal + the first mezcal bar opened outside of Mexico.
Bar Ilegal is an experiential outpost of Café No Sé. We kicked off Bar Ilegal 2022 with four straight weekends in Hunter, NY, two March dates in Florida, and two stops in California in April.
Enter any of our spaces, be it Bar Ilegal in Oaxaca or our flagship space Café No Sé in Antigua, and you’ll find a familiar friend lurking underneath the dim candlelight. If you look carefully, you’ll find yourself in front of a nook replete with flowers, cigars, sweets, money and shots of mezcal left in reverence. These offerings are for a man of many names, a small Mayan man in a hat, a colorful scarf, and sunglasses who could drink you under the table.
He’s a regular, and he goes by many names: San Simón in Guatemala, Don Monchito by disciples, El Gran Abuelo by family. More widely, and to the Ilegal family, he’s known as Maximón. His story is a winding one. Mainly revered these days as a folk saint of vices, he’s gone through several incarnations, taken many guises, and left quite a reputation.
We describe him on our website as sitting “at a crossroads between deity and trickster, friend and fiend.” Indeed, he’s known by those who revere him as both mischievous-maker and protector. Morally sitting somewhere between the Greek god of communication Hermes and the Zulu troublemaker spirit Tokoloshe, Maximón is the embodiment of the two-sided coin of good and evil that is humanity. He is a womanizer who is also the protector of couples. He is a grandfather and a partner-in-crime. Perhaps the most important aspect we associate with him is Guatemalan Indigenous resistance.
His syncretized mythos spans Mayan history, the horrors of Spanish colonialism, and the life of a Mayan elder named Ri Laj Mam. According to one legend, he encouraged an uprising against the Spanish colonizers who were attempting to take Guatemala in the late 1500’s and was executed for revolting. He is said to have reincarnated as a judge named Don Ximon, a steadfast advocate for landback policies for Indigenous Guatemalans. Another myth speaks of a picaresque Don Juan figure — hired by traveling fishermen to protect their wives while they were at sea, he went on to sleep with all of them before skipping town. Others whisper of a trickster spirit who was subdued by the shamans of Santiago Atitlán and went from being a terrorizing force to a protector of evil. In the temple attributed to him in the Guatemalan town of Santiago Atitlán, special attendants accompany his effigy by drinking and smoking the night away as they stand guard alongside it.
That Maximón’s following continues to be so fervent in Guatemala speaks to the tight-knit nature and love present in the contemporary Indigenous Maya community. During the early 1980s, the Guatemalan military undertook a notorious “counterinsurgency operation” targeting Maya peoples and alleged communists. Now known as the “Guatemalan Genocide” — to some, “The Maya Genocide” or “The Silent Holocaust” — the mass-killing left between 30,000 and 166,000 Maya dead or disappeared by the government amid the backdrop of a civil war and targeted anti-Indigenous sentiment. The survival of Maximón’s mythology — that he is a protector of lovers and freedom fighters alike — and his reverence is proof positive that they failed.
His feast day is October 28th. On that day be sure to pour one out and raise a glass to an icon of Indigenous communities thriving in Guatemala, our protector of the bar, our jokester elder. Maximón’s totem is present at Café No Sé and Bar Ilegal because he is present where a good time is happening, where music rings from the windows and out the speakers, where people are meeting and drinking and talking of resistance and falling in love.
Originally published in Ilegal Mezcal Newspaper, Vol. 5.
