The Jet Set Flip

The Jet Set Flip (rocks)
dark rum, tuaca, lemon, egg white, vanilla brown syrup
shake ingredients and strain over fresh ice
sugar rim, lemon garnish

The Jet Set Flip was my favorite drink on the Launch Party cocktail list. Partly due to my love affair with dark rum (well, good dark rum, anyway), partly due to my newfound appreciation for vanilla. And partly because it has egg white in it, because making drinks with egg white in them is not only delicious, but also just cool, for reasons that are either self-apparent or never will be. It's old-school in all the right ways. There really was a golden age of mixology, a back in the day, if you will, when they were better at this whole business of making cocktails, and didn't use all this prefabricated high-fructose corn syrup nonsense that's so prevalent in bars today, because they didn't have it. And when you look in recipe books from back in those days, a staple, especially of tropical sorts of drinks, was the egg white, which turns creamy and frothy when you shake it over ice, and transforms the harsh acidity of citrus juices into a teasing, exotic, velvety-glove kind of feeling that strokes your taste buds in the most tantalizing way.

Found on a Coaster in the Bar

I thank the fuck-ups in the world for showing me how to be a better person and live the life I want to live. Thanks fuck-ups.
-S.B.

Thank you, S.B. Thank you.

To the Late-Night Kids From the Bar Last Night

So, I generally have two responses when people I don't know ask me to hook them up at the bar. The thing you have to understand is this: at this point, you're already an asshole. In fact, even if I know you, and have swung you a little love in the past, you're still an asshole for asking. The reason you're an asshole is that a shot is a shot and the price is the price, and it's up to me, not you, to decide whether and when to bend or break the rules. And if I do decide to do that, it's usually for a good reason: either you're a friend, or a regular, or somebody who's been good to me, who's built up a bit of goodwill through playing the game according to the rules.

And one of the rules is this: you never ask for anything that you do not expect to pay full price for, no matter what your history with the establishment or the person serving you. Period. It's not classy, and it's not okay. It may be that you have some relationship with the place, or the people serving you. It may be that you have been comped a drink or two in the past, or had your bill discounted because the people there like you. Good for you. Probably you did something to deserve it, and you should figure out what it was and keep doing it.

But when you walk in the door, you have your money ready and you expect to pay for what you get, just like everybody else.

St. Patrick's Day

It's funny. I worked open to close yesterday, as I do on Wednesdays. And though I had many customers later on who told me they were Irish (suppose I might lay claim to the sobriquet myself, having received some twenty-five percent of my genetic material from the Emerald Isle), I had only one who was not actually just an American using his great-grandparents' ethnicity as an excuse for their drunkenness, but an actual honest-injun born-in-Ireland Irishman.

I won't give you his name, not that it matters. But he's one of our happy hour regulars, a small coterie of folks, mostly men, who come in during the slow times, in the afternoon, when the place is empty and the beer is cheap. I see him most Wednesdays, and have known him for years. He's a good cat, happy to talk but more than capable of keeping himself entertained, who has three or four beers and then leaves, usually before dark. And he tips well, so we like him even more.

Being that he was Irish, and we were the only two people in the bar for quite some time, we got to talking about St. Patrick's Day, which is an almost entirely American holiday. He found the whole thing rather ridiculous (as do I, but then, after 14-odd years of bars and bartending, I think most American drinking holidays are ridiculous). Apparently the Irish do not celebrate their island's lack of herpetic inhabitants in the way Americans do, by drinking to grand excess and either vomiting, getting into a fight, or having ill-advised and unprotected sex with a new-found friend (or all three, in some cases). Nor, apparently, do they eat corned beef and cabbage, which everyone seems to think is what Irish people eat. I certainly saw more than a couple of people enjoying such a repast.

It's funny. I've been on the wagon for several weeks now, as part of a pretty major cleanse/lifestyle overhaul, and I worked all last night without taking a drink (which is, as you might expect, a comparative rarity in the bar industry). The other bartender I worked with seemed amazed at that, and sad that I couldn't drink with her after hours. St. Patrick's Day is a big deal for her, I guess, and I think that, though she was glad to make the money, she was also a little sad not to be out there amongst the revelry. Call me jaded, but to me, St. Patrick's Day is just another amateur night, worse than most even, because to Americans it's just about drinking (and wearing something green, I suppose). And this year, what with St. Patty's on a Wednesday, it was more amateur than most, because the responsible adults who might normally leaven the youthful dumbfuckery all had to work the next day. Now, I got nothing against the kids these days, as such. But I do with their parents had taught them how to act. And how to drink, too, while they were at it.

I'll spare the details. Suffice to say, stiffing was rampant, as were stupid drink choices, and I had one guy I had to kick out, who got mad when I told him to get out from behind the bar. "I work in the Industry!" he said. I love when people say that. Like it makes it ok when they don't act right.

Still, I suppose I shouldn't complain. As with all amateur nights, I made money. Not as much as I should have (and yes, sometimes I do), but certainly more than I would have almost any other Wednesday night.

But I do wish our Great American Drinking Holidays didn't bring out the douche in people. I know we drink to give ourselves permission to cut loose and let it all hang out, to just relax and have a good time and be ourselves. It's just a shame that so many of us turn out to be assholes.

He Stares at Me Blankly...

The sheer bullheaded stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Even after some fourteen years of tending bar off and on, I still just don't understand how some people just don't get it.

Take tonight's case in point.

So, it's eleven or so at night. Not the busiest night, but the band is playing, people are dancing and ordering drinks; it is, as they say, going on. I'm in the second well making drinks, and there's this yahoo frat boy signing his tab on the lightbox in the middle of the bar, which is our service area. In addition to being not so bright, he's clumsy, and as he goes to grab his card from the check presenter he misses, or drops it, or something. Long story short, I see his card fall off the light box onto my side of the bar. I go to retrieve it for him, but he's managed to drop it in such a way that it's fallen through the crack between the ledge where we make the drinks and the bar itself. I can see it, there down the crack, leaning against the back wall of the space under the light box where the wiring is. It's gonna be a bitch, but I'm pretty sure I can get it out with the proper tools. I hold up my finger, the universal signal for 'just wait a minute and I'll deal with this' and I go over to the POS where there're some random tools and suchlike among the various and assorted useful things that we keep over there. After digging around for a couple of seconds, I come up with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and I go back over.

This is the part where I start to realize that I'm not dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer here.

New Year's Eve

No matter how much I like you in real life, chances are I'm going to hate you tonight, at least a little bit.

It's not your fault. It's just how it is on Amateur Night.

New Year's Eve, St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, and a handful of other nationally recognized American Drinking Holidays are a part of our yearly celebratory landscape, nights that we, as a society, grant ourselves as individuals permission to go forth and party like it's 1999. To really cut loose, get wasted, and dance with the proverbial lampshade on our heads, until the party's over and it's time to pass out, get laid, have breakfast, or, if you're very lucky, some combination thereof. For those of us behind the bar, well, it's the job in a nutshell; the night you dread having to work, right up until it's over, when the door is locked and the sidework's done and you're counting the money and, because it's over, it suddenly really wasn't so bad after all.

But it was. And it's going to be.

For those of you with square jobs, or who are, at least, not scheduled tonight, my advice to you is to stay in. Or, better yet, find a house party. Surround yourself with friends and loved ones in a safe and happy environment, and ring in the new year from there. Leave the bars and the clubs to the amateurs, because they'll be out in force tonight and they'll feel even less responsible for their words and actions than they usually do. Which is no good for anybody.

For those who are going out tonight, please try and observe those few simple rules that help make everything go smoothly. Know what you want. Have your money ready. Pay cash, or open a tab. Make eye contact. Have a little patience. Tip. If you want good service, go somewhere where the bartender knows you. If you don't know the bartender, tip well early. We'll remember.

Don't wave money at me. Everybody else has money, too. Don't try and order if it's not your turn. If you're ordering for a group, know what everybody wants before your turn comes up. If you must pay with a card, open a tab and settle at the end of the night. There's nothing more frustrating than having to spend time running someone's card a second or third time when there're fifty people clamoring for drinks. Don't order complicated drinks when the bar is backed up. It's rude to everybody. Don't drive home drunk. Don't be a dick.

And if you, like me, are going to be in the trenches tonight, then I salute you. Rock that shit hard. Because tonight is the crucible, that separates the pros from the wannabes. Be a pro. Keep your cool. Prove your mettle. Show that sea of thirsty mouths how this shit gets done. And don't take any shit, from anybody. Remember, this is your house. Own it.

Like I always say: have fun, get rich, and don't let the fuckers get you down.

Never Trust a Teetotaler

In vino veritas.
With those three words, Pliny the Elder gave voice to a saying so old its origins were already lost by the time he wrote them. Think of it as the first cliche, a phrase they probably coined about a week after the first human tribe figured out that drinking fermented grape juice could make them happy.
In wine, the truth.
Everybody knows that alcohol lowers your inhibitions; that’s one of the main reasons people drink it. You can say and do things after a few drinks that you couldn’t or wouldn’t normally. It’s liberating and fun, one of the great rewards of surviving to your majority and one of the great consolations for what you lose in getting there. By choosing to drink, you choose to liberate yourself, to shake off the strictures of the routine workaday world and live a little. Also it tastes good.
Yes, it sometimes makes you say and do stupid things, things you wouldn’t normally be stupid enough to say or do, but hey, that’s all part of growing up and learning about life. The worst part is that you probably meant it at the time. Shame on you. But as long as you apologize and learn your lesson then everything is generally alright, as long as you didn’t get pregnant or catch the AIDS.
Used properly, alcohol really is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, just like Ben Franklin said. It’s good for you, body and soul, for more reasons than I have world enough or time to share at present.
But some people don’t drink. And not all of them are Muslims.
(Muslims are excused from the following series of sweeping generalizations. They are prohibited by their religion from drinking alcohol (although the word alcohol is, oddly enough, Arabic in origin), and I respect anybody willing to take their religion seriously, as long as I don’t have to also.)

Now, I’m not saying that everyone who abstains from alcohol is not to be trusted. There are many fine people who, for perfectly rational reasons, choose not to drink.
Having said that, when you meet someone for the first time, and they tell you that they don’t drink, you should immediately become suspicious, and be on your guard with them, until such time as you know them well enough to revisit that judgement from a more informed position.
Let me explain.
Very few people don’t drink because they have never drunk. If you meet one, you shouldn’t trust them because they are too closed minded to find out for themselves what something is all about. People who are afraid to have their preconceptions and received wisdom shaken up are dangerous, because they will usually do and say anything to keep those preconceptions and nuggets of received wisdom from coming into question. A brittle worldview is not the sign of a robust mind, or of a soul at ease with itself. Trust these teetotalers least of all.
But most teetotalers fall into another category, those folks who have indeed imbibed of Demon Rum, and been burned by his fiery kiss. Usually those folks go on to burn others, one way or another.
They usually have a story, or several. They don’t like themselves when they drink. Lots of times they have very good reason not to.
And that’s the problem. And that takes us back to the beginning.
In vino veritas. In wine, the truth.
Alcohol makes us simpler creatures. It burns away the artifice and veneer, the surface persona we cultivate to show to others in the daylight. We become more truly ourselves when we drink, more honest about who we are and what (and who) we want. Some people are happy drunks; some people are angry drunks. Some people are horny drunks. Whatever it is that is truly inside you is all you’ll have left after enough cocktails, and the truth will out, at least until you learn how to handle yourself, which is the crux of the matter. Because people who choose not to drink (or even fantasize about quitting drinking) have usually decided that the person they really are is something they can’t handle one way or another.
We all have our faults and our shortcomings, our peccadilloes and embarassments. We all sometimes get the urge to do or say things that we know we shouldn’t and that we’ll regret later. Alcohol exacerbates these tendencies, along with other, more positive tendencies (we are, after all, as much more disposed to love and generosity in the embrace of lady liquor as we are to violence and depravity, if such is in our hearts). The reason you can’t trust a teetotaler is not that they have evil in them per se, it is that they either have too much evil in them, or they lack the character and determination to overcome that evil through force of will.
The reasons that people decide to stop drinking are generally that they do or say stupid and/or terrible things when they’re drunk, and they can’t manage to take control and stop themselves. And if they have it in them to do or say those stupid and/or terrible things, then you have to be careful until you’re sure they won’t do or say them to you.
Again, I’m not saying never ever trust a teetotaler. There are some generally wonderful human beings out there who simply choose not to drink, for a wide variety of good reasons. All I’m saying is that when you do meet someone who claims not to drink, be careful, because the likeliest explanation is that, deep down, there’s something there they don’t like, and neither, most likely, will you.

what you say: i'll have a long island.

what the bartender hears: i'm a cheapskate jerk.

what you say: i'll have a strong island.

what the bartender hears: i'm the biggest asshole in the room.

bartending haiku #1

it doesn't make you
a bad person not to tip
you already are

what you say: what do you have on tap?

what the bartender hears: i'm an idiot.