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James Woods
Jul 15, 2003
Greetings Program! And welcome to the new and improved bartending thread. The first iteration of the thread can be found here; http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2682759

It is an amazing wealth of knowledge about the field of bartending and if you're a new or fledging bartender, I highly suggest yuou read it in it's hundred page entirety because SA has a ton of knowledgeable bartenders who can show you the ropes.

This year I will celebrate working in the field of bartending off and on for nearly fifteen years. This field of work has taken me through several ups and downs over the years but overall has been a rewarding experience. I've done dive bars, nightclubs, sportsbars, catering, private clients, you name it.

Those of you who have been on the forums for a while may remember an old thread series I did called "The Bartender Journals". It was quite popular and can still be found in the Forum Archives. I took those posts, made a blog, and was later approached by a publisher and in 2006 The Bartender Journals by Dave Lawrence was published and is still available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.

I abandoned the craft and for the last two years went back to school but have since come crawling back to work nights at a seedy music venue in Sonoma Co. CA where I'm now doing some of the craziest bar work I've ever seen. Expect stories posthaste.

So ask me about the industry. Curious about how to get in? Want to know what the job is like on a day to day basis? Do you get to bang lots of chicks? Whatever.

STORIES AND CONTENT FROM THE OLD THREAD WITH NEW LINKS FOR THE ARCHIVES IMPAIRED
My First Day
Wedding Season
The Stockbrokers Cometh
The Yacht Club
The Evan Williams Rant
My Trip to Spain
The poo poo Storm
A New Beginning

Tips on Barbacking
From Tom Rakewell
From nrr

For those interested in getting a bartending job I've written
The Bartending FAQ

Also, DO NOT poo poo UP THIS THREAD WITH ARGUMENTS ABOUT TIPPING!! If you don't believe American bartenders deserve tips keep it to yourself.

I'M BACK BITCHES!
NEW STORIES FROM 2016-

Back in the Saddle

If anyone was curious how I got back into the game (circa 2012).......

James Woods fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Oct 6, 2016

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James Woods
Jul 15, 2003
Two minutes into the interview and I begin to ask myself if I'm still drunk from the night before. I understand all the words that are coming out of the manager's mouth, there just exists a certain disjointedness about each sentence. A thought will begin and all of a sudden he changes the subject and goes off on some wild rear end tangent I can't follow. I try not to move to much. Not to cross and re-cross my legs, not to touch my face too often, to keep eye contact. Any of these things could give me away at any moment for the fraud that I am. I'm so insecure about my behavior until I realize why this interview is so awkward. His shaking hands. His inability to focus on one thing. The reason he keeps taking off his Giants cap and running his hands through his thinning grey hair. He's the one who's drunk. I've got this.

This time two years ago I was sitting on the other side of the table. I was managing an up and coming bar in a trendy neighborhood in San Francisco. Each week I had a dozen bartenders (or would be bartenders) trying to suck my dick for a shift. In a down economy help is cheap. Good help is harder to find. The manager tells me that their Craigslist ad got over a hundred resumes and that mine is one of twenty interviews they're doing today. The bar is a massive spot attached to a music venue in a quaint little tourist town in Northern California. It has been under the same ownership and operation for over forty years and has been operating as a saloon in this location for over a hundred. The manager tells me that the last time they hired a bartender was sixteen years ago.

* * *

Rob was a piece of work to say the least. Each day I rolled into my bar at 10am and five out of six of those days he was the first one in to order a gin martini and regale me with his bullshit. Rob was a drunk in the most literal sense. A true W.C. Fields, Kid Shelleen, type of drunk that made Nob Hill a more colorful place to live. If his rhetoric was to be believed, he'd once rubbed elbows with Andy Warhol, fought off a bear in Alaska, and at one point lost millions investing in Chinese currency. He also had a bad habit of drinking himself retarded and throwing up all over himself shortly before being 86'ed.

Rob was a headache, a nuisance, a pain in the rear end, and an endless source of amusement in an otherwise hair-pullingly stressful job. Running a bar is a lot like being the Captain of a ship. I can say this with authority because I was never in the military and haven't been able to tie a bowline hitch since I was in the Scouts. It's all about being able to manage chaos. Waitresses playing sexual mind games with your male staff, chefs refusing to work unless you subscribed to some ridiculous demand, liquor distributors trying at every opportunity to steal from you, ABC and the health department hounding you constantly, this is just a Tuesday.

One thing I had to hand to Rob is that he had style. For a guy in his mid fifties he dressed better and attracted the attention of more women than most of the twenty something date rapists that haunted my bar. He was capable of wearing Wayfarers and corduroy in a way that was neither ironic or trendy. This guy had been consistently hip for the last half century and at the same time hag managed to accomplish nothing with his life. He was the one and only customer I have cut off, 86'ed, and banned for life on several occasions that I still welcomed into my establishment. Why?

* * *

It isn't until several weeks later that I get that call from an unfamiliar area code. "Hello is this Dave?" the voice on the other end of the line says. Over a decade of dodging skip tracers and bill collectors has made me a combination of cautious and paranoid so I reply with the same thing I always do to an unfamiliar number. "May I ask who's speaking?" The man on the other end identifies himself as the manager of the bar I'd interviewed with and since dismissed some weeks earlier. He says that he wants me to come back in for another interview. Dammit.

You see, this is both a blessing and a curse. Two years ago I left the bar industry with the crazy idea that I could go back to college and reinvent myself. At this point I'd just completed a two year degree in automotive technology and was dead set on starting my own business building of all stupid things electric cars. I had abandoned the industry that had not only fed me for a decade and a half, but one in which I had slowly crawled my way to the apex only to cast it away. I had built my identity on this character, this super cool bartender man who in reality only existed in the hours that I was on the other side of the wood. I wanted to work with my hands. Do an honest mans living. Something other than being the filling station for peoples mistakes.

I show up for the second interview early in the morning and immediately I can tell that the manager hasn't slept from the night before. He gives me a big rear end speech about how hard the hiring process was and regails me with a couple of stories about his experiences at the local casino the night before when he offers me the job. Again I feel drunk despite the fact that I haven't touched the sauce in weeks. We shake on it and he says my first shift is next week. Here we go again.

* * *

One late night at my bar in Nob Hill I'm doing the books in my office at 3am over a bottle of Jameson when I notice something strange. The owner of the bar, an unscrupulous Russian man who I've had tentative relations with for the extent of my tenure, has been busting my rear end to cut costs despite the fact that I've doubled profits in the year I've been managing the bar. While auditing the payroll I notice that we haven't been paying any overtime pay to any of our "undocumented" employees. This represents about 75% of our workforce over four restaurants.

I write an e-mail to our HR rep and send copies of the time-sheets realizing that we are perhaps liable for tens of thousands of dollars in damages. The next day I get a call early in the morning from HR telling me that I'm not allowed to go into my bar and that I've been transferred to a taqueria two towns south that the owner also owns. At this point I sick my Jew Lawyer wife on the boss and severance negotiations begin. They offer me a half year's salary to keep my mouth shut. The wife tells me it's a good deal.

So I get a big dirty pile of cash and at least two years of unemployment to do whatever the gently caress, so I do. Two weeks later me and the wife are heading to dinner and decide to grab a cab on our way to the Marina. Shortly after piling into the back seat of a musty smelling Caprice, the bald thirty something cabbie looks back at me and says, "You're Dave right?". Normally I would have retorted with a tough guy phrase such as "who's asking" but I immediately recognized him as Ken, on of Rob's old friends who had carried him out of my bar in several stages of drunkenness before.

"I hate to have to break it to you man but Rob's dead." He says. He explains that Rob had drunk himself to death a week earlier and that his funeral was attended by a half dozen people, most of which were his drinking buddies who happened to hear the news. We ducked out of the cab and I remember saying to myself, "That's it, I'm done".

* * *

Yet here I am.

I reach across the table to shake his hand and accept the manager's offer. The worst part of yourself is the part you can't escape. For better or worse, I'm good at this.

James Woods fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Aug 9, 2012

Masonity
Dec 31, 2007

What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?

James Woods posted:

Two minutes into the interview and I begin to ask myself if I'm still drunk from the night before. I understand all the words that are coming out of the manager's mouth, there just exists a certain disjointedness about each sentence. A thought will begin and all of a sudden he changes the subject and goes off on some wild rear end tangent I can't follow. I try now to move to much. Not to cross and re-cross my legs, not to touch my face too much, to keep eye contact. Any of these things could give me away at any moment for the fraud I am. I'm so insecure about my behavior until I realize why this interview is so awkward. His shaking hands. His inability to focus on one thing. The reason he keeps taking off his Giants cap and runing hin hands through his grey thinning hair. He's the one who's drunk. I've got this.

This time two years ago I was sitting on the other side of the table. I was managing an up and coming bar in a trendy neighborhood in San Francisco. Each week I had a dozen bartenders (or would be bartenders) trying to suck my dick for a shift. In a down economy help is cheap. Good help is harder to find. The manager tells me that their Craigslist ad got over a hundred resumes and that mine is one of twenty interviews they're doing today. The bar is a massive spot attached to a music venue in a quaint little tourist town in Northern California. It has been under the same ownership and operation fo over forty years and has been operating as a saloon in this location for over a hundred. The manager tells me that the last time they hired a bartender was sixteen years ago.

* * *

Rob was a piece of work to say the least. Each day I rolled into my bar at 10am and five out of six of those days he was the first one in to order a gin martini and regail me with his bullshit. Rob was a drunk in the most literal sense. A true W.C. Fields, Kid Shelleen, type of drunk that made Nob Hill a more colorful place to live. If his retoric was to be believed, he'd once rubbed elbows with Andy Warhol, fought off a bear in Alaska, and at one point lost millions investing in Chineese currency. He also had a bad habit of drinking himself retarded and throwing up all over himself shortly before being 86'ed.

Rob was a headache, a nuissance, a pain in the rear end, and an endless source of ammusement in an otherwise hairpullingly stressful job. Running a bar is a lot like being the Captain of a ship. I can say this with authority because I was never in the military and haven't been able to tie a bowline hitch since I was in the Scouts. It's all about being able to manage chaos. Waitresses playing sexual mind games with your male staff, chefs refusing to work unless you subscind to some rediculous demand, liquor distributors trying at every opportunity to steal from you, ABC and the health department hounding you constantly, this is just a Tuesday.

One thing I have to hand to Rob is that he has style. For a guy in his mid fifties he dresses better and attracts the attention of more women than most of the twenty something date rapists that haunt my bar. He is capable of wearing Wayfarers and corduroy in a way that is neither ironic or trendy. This guy has been consistently hip for the last half century and at the same time has managed to accomplish nothing with his life. He is the one and only customer I have cut off, 86'ed, and banned for life on several occasions that I still welcome into my establishment. Why?

* * *

It isn't until several weeks later that I get that call from an unfamiliar area code. "Hello is this Dave?" the voice on the other end of the line says. Over a decade of dodging skip tracers and bill collectors has made me a combination of cautious and paranoid so I reply with the same thing I always do to an unfamiliar number. "May I ask who's speaking?" The man on the other end identifies himself as the manager of the bar I'd interviewed with ands since dismissed some weeks earlier. He says that he wants me to come back in for another interview. Dammnit.

You see, this is both a blessing and a curse. Two years ago I left the bar industry with the crazy idea that I could go back to college and reinvent myself. At this point I'd just completed a two year degree in automotive technology and was dead set on starting my own buisness building of all stupid things electric cars. I had abandoned the industry that had not only fed me for a decade and a half, but one in which I had slowly crawled my way to the apex only to cast it away. I had built my identity on this character, this super cool bartender man who in reality only existed in the hours that I was on the other side of the wood. I wanted to work with my hands. Do an honest mans living. Something other than being the filling station for peoples mistakes.

I show up for the second interview early in the morning and immediuately I can tell that the manager hasn't slept from the night before. He gives me a big rear end speach about how hard the hireing process was and regails a couple of stories about his experiences at the local casino the night before when he offers me the job. Again I feel drunk despite the fact that I haven't touched the sauce in weeks. We shake on it and he says my first shift is next week. Here we go again.

* * *

One late night at my bar in Nob Hill I'm doing the books in my office at 3am over a bottle of Jameson when I notice something strange. The owner of the bar, an unscrupluous Russian man who IU've had tentative relations with for the extent of my tenure, has been busting my rear end to cut costs despite the fact tht I've doubled profits in the year I've been managing the bar. While auditing the payroll I notice that we haven't been paying any overtime pay to any of our "undocumented" employees. This represents about 75% of our workforce over four restaurants.

I write an e-mail to our HR rep and send copies of the timesheets relizing that we are perhaps liable for tens of thousands of dollars in dammages. The next day i get a call early in the morning from HR telling me that I'm not allowed to go into my bar and that I've been transfereed to a taqueria two towns south that the owner also controlls. At this point I sick my Jew Lawyer wife on the boss and severence negotiations begin. They offer me a half year's salary to keep my mouth shut. The wife tells me it's a good deal.

So I get a big dirty pile of cash and at least two years of unemployment to do whatever the gently caress so I do. Two weeks later me and the wife are heading to dinner and decide to grab a cab on our way to the Marina. Shortly after piling into the back seat of a musty smelling Caprice, the bald thirtysomething cabbie looks back at me and says, "You're Dave right?". Normally I would have retorted with a tough guy phrase such as "who's asking" but I immediately regognized huim as Ken, on of Rob's old friends who had carried him out of my bar in several stages of drunkenness before.

I hate to have to break it to you man but Rob's dead." He says. He explains that Rob had drunk himself to death a week earlier and that his funeral was attended by a half dozen people, most of which his drinking buddies who happened to hear the news. We ducked out of the vab and I remember saying to myself, "that's it" "I'm done". Yet here I am.

* * *

I reach across the table to shake his hand and accept the manager's offer. The worst part of yourself is the part you can't escape. For better or worse, I'm good at this.

Welcome (back) to the Hotel California.

Having also done the "once a bar manager, now a lowly barman" thing, it's loving awesome. No responsibilities.

Shooting Blanks
Jun 6, 2007

Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade



I would say welcome back, but I'm out of the fold myself still, I just hang out in the thread like the college guy who still goes to high school parties when he's home for the summer.

But hey, enjoy it!

Frozen Horse
Aug 6, 2007
Just a humble wandering street philosopher.
Welcome back, thread and inhabitants. What would it take for you to actually permanently cut off a regular for their own good? Have any of you done so?

raton
Jul 28, 2003

by FactsAreUseless
My cocktail cheat sheet:



I used to work at a well known nightclub in Manhattan and I used to train the new hires. Some of these people were hired simply because they had the right look and seemed like they wouldn't steal, so they often didn't know much beyond opening beers and Cosmos. So I made this thing above. It'd be useful for a brand new bartender, I used it to transition wait staff to the bar as well.

(Imgur converted the pdf to png files but whatever, that's good enough. And since I don't know what an easy to use file host is anymore this is what you get.)




An Exit Strategy

As I mentioned above, I used to work at a well known nightclub in Manhattan. I'd ring 5k a night without breaking a sweat. I was the only non-manager in the building the boss would trust to handle money and do cash-outs. When he opened another club in another location he'd bring the managers from that place to NY and I'd be the one that would indoctrinate them into how this particular club worked from the paperwork perspective to (some of) the back of the house stuff. I was asked on more than one occasion if I'd like to manage one of the new clubs. I didn't, really. For one the out-of-house managers we hired almost invariably quit a few weeks later as the club was run the boss's way and no one elses and that involved paying (literally) for your mistakes, ungodly hours, getting yelled at over the phone for stuff that was just expected at most other venues, etc. But more than that I knew I didn't really want to be a nightclub manager, and I knew I couldn't stay a bartender forever. First of all, how many 40+ year old bartenders do you see that aren't working in a hotel bar somewhere or co-owners of a dive bar that's somewhere in the cycle between hipster-cool, popular, and empty? Second of all, I'd help the boss choose who to hire out of our interviewees and on a particular occasion I remember I suggested one particular bartender who seemed to fit his rubric (willing to eat poo poo, not likely to steal, not a total disaster behind the bar) and he flat out told me "He's too old." He was 30. At the time I was 30 as well.

Some people will read this thread with the thought that they want to be bartenders or work in the nightlife industry. It's easy money comparatively. It seems like it's a lot more fun than other businesses. Other people reading this thread are already working in the industry. Regardless, it's important to realize that there's a reason there's easy money in the nightlife industry for young people, especially young female people. The bar is selling your youth and attractiveness right along with the drinks. You see, a bar isn't really a place to get drunk. It's a social place, and people, especially older American people, want to be part of a social circle that includes young, beautiful people. And the clubs? Don't get me started -- clubs are an engine that generates a feeling of importance for people who otherwise don't feel important (or who are addicted to that feeling) and that's how they sell 30 dollar bottles of liquor for 750 bucks. So what do you have to offer a bar? Your skills? Please. They pay you either literally nothing or almost nothing and will happily just put two people back there to replace you. Your dedication? How many bars do you know of in your town that you expect to close within the year? When you get old you can't sell your rear end any more, at least not like you used to be able to, and since it's mostly your rear end that your bar is selling that means as you age your employment choices dry up, your money dries up, and you start running into Hard Choices.

You see, the nightlife industry is great. But there are no career options in it. If you want to stay in it the only reasonable option is ownership and if you already work in it you know how daunting that is. Million dollar liquor licenses. A throng of neighbors, police, Church ladies, and competitors that would (and sometimes could!) shut you down. Competition that has it over you in every way -- better deals with distributors, better location, better staff, more capital, lower rent, more experience, celebrity backing. Customers that consist almost entirely of drunks, and, by the time it gets to where you have to interact with them as a manager, usually drunken assholes. Your staff will sometimes have you wondering why they're working in a bar instead of as jewel thieves or cat burglars. And the hours. Holy god the hours. You can't go to anything on the weekends and everything is on the weekends. 5am every night that you close, if you're lucky, and everyone is drinking, on drugs, or loving eachother. Drama. Oh lord the drama.

I'm in medicine now. The dregs of medicine, but I'm counting it (I'm an EMT -- soon to be a paramedic). You don't see many 50 year olds on ambulances either but you do see plenty of 40 year olds so I bought myself a few more years to go inside as a nurse or a doc or whatever (I'm a smart guy I swear! I'm just a little lazy. So I guess anesthesiology! harhar medicine jokes). But let me tell you one thing. Ex-nightlife people have people skills in spades and that can be hugely important in other industries. So as you look out into the vast sea of emptiness that now represents possibilities of meaningful employment in the US (banker? someone who cleans a banker's house? oil executive? someone that cleans an oil executive's house? someone that gets shot at? someone that inhales the fumes of either poo poo or toxic chemicals?), if you lack a little direction, turn to your people skills and think "what other businesses can use those?"

Here are some ideas. Medicine. Advertising. Sales (including Real Estate once people start buying houses again). Recruiting. PR. Hospitality. Talent agent / manager. Social services. Teaching. "Oh no no no I can't do X because of Y!" You're still young. Fix Y.

These days when I get a new EMT on my ambulance I tell them that there's one extremely important thing they have to keep in mind while working as an EMT. Above all else. And that is that you don't want to stay an EMT (mostly because we have to carry 400lb diseased and dying landwhales down five flights of stairs on a regular basis). If you're an EMT and you're not in school or setting up to be in school or otherwise working on another career then you're wasting your time. And if I could go back in time and change one thing about what I'd tell all those people I trained for the bar it'd be the same thing:

If you're a bartender and you're not in school or setting up to be in school or otherwise working on another career then you're wasting your time.

raton fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 9, 2012

bloody ghost titty
Oct 23, 2008

tHROW SOME D"s ON THAT BIZNATCH
Mr. Woods, making the same mistakes in new iterations is how we end up in this job in the first place.

I'll get back to ice-chat after breakfast.

Shooting Blanks
Jun 6, 2007

Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade



Frozen Horse posted:

Welcome back, thread and inhabitants. What would it take for you to actually permanently cut off a regular for their own good? Have any of you done so?

Permanently?

Damaging/destroying venue property without paying for it
Harassing staff (as in, following them out to their car - not just hitting on the bartenders, obviously)
Stealing alcohol or cash (from tip jars)
Consistently disputing or refusing to pay tabs
Anything illegal beyond public intoxication (spiking a girl's drink, public indecency)
Fighting, beyond a shoving match (that would get you bounced for the night, not permanently)
Bringing anything illegal into the bar

There's a ton of other stuff I'm not thinking of I'm sure, but you get the gist of it.

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Welcome back, Dave.

Another nail in the coffin of deluding myself that I'm ever going to be able to shed this gig and do something with my life.

Was this taqueria in San Fran the place that did $2 tuesday tacos and had a line out the loving door and around the corner and was somehow jam packed with ridiculously good looking women? Cos I spent a couple of days in San Fran in about july I think of 2010 and one of the locals took us there one evening. I had trouble believing what I was seeing. I was wondering how the gently caress does a place selling $2 tacos of all things get packed with beautiful women in evening wear? It's like someone went back and remixed sex and the city and swapped out cosmopolitans for loving tacos. But I guess if that was your place, then I've got my answer.

Not sure what sort of crazy situations you've got yourself into now, but a drunk for a boss is always a good place to start. Looking forward to seeing how things have turned out.

Perdido
Apr 29, 2009

CORY SCHNEIDER IS FAR MORE MENTALLY STABLE THAN LUONGO AND CAN HANDLE THE PRESSURES OF GOALTENDING IN VANCOUVER

Frozen Horse posted:

Welcome back, thread and inhabitants. What would it take for you to actually permanently cut off a regular for their own good? Have any of you done so?

I assume you mean what would it take for someone to get forever barred, rather than cut off. Here's a short list of things that have resulted in lifetime bans and criminal charges, some of them regulars, others just random shitheads:

- Living in the basement of another regular's house, have scammed them of some of their money and are now selling their expensive classic automobile to try and pay for tabs and other financial fuckery
- Selling drugs
- When they turn in their VIP card to get the same status at another bar that just opened
- Hurling racial slurs at a black bartender
- Going up to a waitress, telling her that you know where they live, how old their kid is and what car they drive and demanding they go out on a date or her other job will find out she works at a nightclub on the weekend
- Attempting to set the building on fire
- Standing around on a street corner about half a block from the establishment, waving a machete, hosed out of their tree on PCP after being 86'd earlier in the evening

EDIT:

- Telling the Diageo rep they have no idea what they're talking about, that they're a nobody and they need to gently caress off. At a huge Diageo sponsored event that was being put on in the bar.

Perdido fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Aug 8, 2012

SouthShoreSamurai
Apr 28, 2009

It is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


Fun Shoe

James Woods posted:

awesome story

Yes! Welcome back! More stories!!

Septic Knothead
Jul 23, 2009

Boris S Wart
The Second Meanest Man In The World
Welcome back, Dave.
Also I'd really like to give a shout-out to everyone who kept the old thread alive. I didn't post much there but I lurked it all the time.

navyjack
Jul 15, 2006



Welp. And here I've been saying I wanted to turn in my keys and get a daytime grown-up job. Maybe wear a necktie.

I'm just hosed, aren't I?

raton
Jul 28, 2003

by FactsAreUseless

navyjack posted:

Welp. And here I've been saying I wanted to turn in my keys and get a daytime grown-up job. Maybe wear a necktie.

I'm just hosed, aren't I?

There might be jobs in America again in 20 years, check back then.

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Repo man jobs must be through the roof right now though

Dirnok
Feb 10, 2005

Welcome back, sir. You've been missed!


As the new thread gets going I would like to put even more emphasis on the wealth of knowledge that is the old thread.

Like most rookie bartenders, I tried to absorb as much as possible from every source of bartending information that I could get my hands on. Books, magazines, blogs, bartending forums, you name it. But nothing really compares to the old thread. Having observations and answers from so many different bartenders who work in so many different styles of venue is magic. It adds up to be less "How to.." guide and more insight into the depths of this industry and what it's really like being a bartender.


Now then, maybe we'll actually get questions to answer instead of discussing the complexities of ice or waving our fists at the mojito!

Nth Doctor
Sep 7, 2010

Darkrai used Dream Eater!
It's super effective!


Am I a loving weirdo for drinking the Old Fashioned? Well over half the time, the bartender looks at me like I grew a second head. Around a third of they time, they lack either bitters or sugar.

Shooting Blanks
Jun 6, 2007

Real bullets mess up how cool this thing looks.

-Blade



Nth Doctor posted:

Am I a loving weirdo for drinking the Old Fashioned? Well over half the time, the bartender looks at me like I grew a second head. Around a third of they time, they lack either bitters or sugar.

at 99% of bars in the US, that drink is ordered very infrequently, if ever. You're not a loving weirdo, you're just part of the 1%.

navyjack
Jul 15, 2006



Nth Doctor posted:

Am I a loving weirdo for drinking the Old Fashioned? Well over half the time, the bartender looks at me like I grew a second head. Around a third of they time, they lack either bitters or sugar.

And, as was pointed out in an earlier thread, don't go to your local hole in the wall or sports bar and order classic cocktails, because you will be disappointed. Save your Old Fashioned and Manhattan drinking for a nice lounge, or go to the bar at the nicest hotel in your city and you'll make better practice.

kecske
Feb 28, 2011

it's round, like always

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

Applebees Appetizer
Jan 23, 2006

navyjack posted:

Welp. And here I've been saying I wanted to turn in my keys and get a daytime grown-up job. Maybe wear a necktie.

I'm just hosed, aren't I?

Hey you know I've tried grown up jobs and came back to bartending crying like a little bitch. Don't do it, you'll only get hurt.

Tom Rakewell
Aug 24, 2004
Check out my progress!

Baboon Fiesta posted:

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

I like to use this distinction. A "mixologist" comes up with drink recipes and sends them to magazines and things, and might even make drinks every now and then at events. A bartender is someone who actually works in a bar and does all the work entailed in it, which may or may not include making high-end cocktails.

Obviously, you can tell which term I prefer.

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Baboon Fiesta posted:

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

A mixologist is like a regular bartender, except they don't just make drinks like normal bartenders, they make drinks. Mixologists are better people than regular people, most definitely beter people than other bartenders, and most of them sing in barber shop quartets. While of course, the ones that don't, could, however they just choose not to. It has often been said that mixology was an artform first handed down from druids and wizards to DJ's of the time, who used it to make boring regular music better by adding a house beat to everything.

Over the years these techniques were carefully refined and now, mixologists use these honed skills to look down their noses at anything that doesn't have the word "craft" added mixed in to it, and will occassionally take a break from coming up with fancy new words to distinguish themselves from everyone else who serves booze, to mash enough of the current fad ingredients together to make a beverage.

James Woods
Jul 15, 2003

Baboon Fiesta posted:

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

A mixologist is to bartending as a custodial engineer is to being a janitor. Molecular Mixology however is a whole different story and something I'm planning on getting into when I have the time.

nrr posted:

Was this taqueria in San Fran the place that did $2 tuesday tacos and had a line out the loving door and around the corner and was somehow jam packed with ridiculously good looking women? Cos I spent a couple of days in San Fran in about july I think of 2010 and one of the locals took us there one evening. I had trouble believing what I was seeing. I was wondering how the gently caress does a place selling $2 tacos of all things get packed with beautiful women in evening wear? It's like someone went back and remixed sex and the city and swapped out cosmopolitans for loving tacos. But I guess if that was your place, then I've got my answer.

That was the place and that was when I was running it.

James Woods fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Aug 9, 2012

minya
Sep 7, 2004

SUN RA WAS HERE IN HIS ELEMENT
he invited me back for a ride

James Woods posted:

That was the place and that was when I was running it.

What are you favorite bars in SF?

James Woods
Jul 15, 2003

minya posted:

What are you favorite bars in SF?

Zeitgeist - Beer Garden/Dive bar
The Hemlock - Rock Venue/Dive bar
Doc's Clock - Mission Dive Bar
Lucky 13 - Castro Dive Bar
Li Po - Chinatown DIVE bar
The Cinch - Gay Dive Bar

To be honest I can't really think of any other places I actually go to these days. I don't really hang out at bars that much any more. I usually spend my days off driving down Skyline or up the PCH and my nights down at my warehouse wrenching on one of the old Porsches or BMWs I can't stop buying off craigslist.

James Woods fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Aug 9, 2012

Dirnok
Feb 10, 2005

Nth Doctor posted:

Am I a loving weirdo for drinking the Old Fashioned? Well over half the time, the bartender looks at me like I grew a second head. Around a third of they time, they lack either bitters or sugar.

No, you are not a weirdo.

You are probably just in the wrong type of bar. Most bars lack both the proper ingredients and a bartender with the knowledge to make an Old Fashioned correctly. You have a good chance of finding a bar that has a bartender with the knowledge but he is stuck working with inadequate ingredients and he really, really doesn't want to make you the half assed Old Fashioned that he is limited to. But sometimes you get a bar that has the proper ingredients but they've got some Mr. Boston's studying, convinced he knows everything there is to know about cocktails but really needs to be beat upside the head with a bottle, makes you an Old Fashioned with this muddled slush at the bottom of your drink which you can't decide if it's fruit or slime mold, and he is down right offended if you don't think it's a work of art.

Best way to judge if you're in the right bar for an Old Fashioned, is your bartender wearing suspenders? If yes, does he ask you what type of whiskey you'd prefer? If neither, order something else.


Baboon Fiesta posted:

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

poo poo Bartenders Mixologists Say

Mixologist is a term that got thrown on bartenders who became focused on bringing back the cocktails that were the foundation of what we're doing now. These are bartenders who have dug up books from the 20-50's, studied every incarnation of a particular drink with the intention of finding the original recipe, annoyed the poo poo out of their distributors trying to buy the ingredients bartenders were using eight decades ago, and have ultimately revitalized the cocktail concept.

It's evolved to where any cocktail bartender gets lumped into the mixologist classification. In my experience, most of them loving hate it. Every single cocktail focused bartender that I know put in years as a high volume or regular Joe bartender. But instead of continuing on with that, they shifted their focus to making traditional cocktails. And good for them! But they are still loving bartenders. They've never claimed to be mixologists. They don't want to be called mixologists. They're loving bartenders.

So, yeah. Mixologist is a bullshit term that we'd all like to fade away. There are some pretentious fucks that glorify it but it's because they have no business calling themselves bartenders to begin with.

Nth Doctor
Sep 7, 2010

Darkrai used Dream Eater!
It's super effective!


Dirnok posted:

Best way to judge if you're in the right bar for an Old Fashioned, is your bartender wearing suspenders? If yes, does he ask you what type of whiskey you'd prefer? If neither, order something else.

When I explain to friends, I say they generally need to find a 70 year old bartender named Murray to get a good Old Fashioned.

raton
Jul 28, 2003

by FactsAreUseless

Baboon Fiesta posted:

What exactly is a mixologist? Google doesn't really go into much more depth than 'they are basically bartenders but sometimes engage in cocktail-alchemy'.

It's a bartender with facial hair from the 1800s.

Applebees Appetizer
Jan 23, 2006

James Woods posted:

To be honest I can't really think of any other places I actually go to these days. I don't really hang out at bars that much any more. I usually spend my days off driving down Skyline or up the PCH and my nights down at my warehouse wrenching on one of the old Porsches or BMWs I can't stop buying off craigslist.

Weren't you just in a thread in AI driving an old 80's Corvette? That is a nice ride, how's it running?

The Tinfoil Price
Jun 19, 2012

Calamari Express
If you had to throw a party where all the serving containers you had consisted of three large plastic crates and red solo cups, what three jungle juice recipes would you serve? I hope I'm not insulting your mixology credentials by asking for drinks to make for college coeds.

bonus point if chocolate or coffee is involved.

The Tinfoil Price
Jun 19, 2012

Calamari Express
double post

Slum Loser
May 6, 2011
The last thread was better than knowing bartenders and I have high hopes for this one. Awesome.

Also the OP pt.2 is amazing. Mind you my odds of tending bar are about as low as getting out of wage slavery in the next year, and either way it's kind of the same thing. Most bartenders I've known are dissolute and stupid with their money even when they're not spending it on drugs. Most are also real bastards until they get to know me, because bar hierarchy, etc.

Their stories of loving over bad customers are good enough to get me out of bed.

bloody ghost titty
Oct 23, 2008

tHROW SOME D"s ON THAT BIZNATCH
A mixologist serves drinks, a bartender serves people.

Respekt
Aug 8, 2007
la la la
Is sparkling water and club soda essentially the same thing? People seemed so shocked that we don't stock mineral/sparkling/bottled water at our bar. Can I just serve them club soda and a lemon and say its house sparkling water?

raton
Jul 28, 2003

by FactsAreUseless

Respekt posted:

Is sparkling water and club soda essentially the same thing? People seemed so shocked that we don't stock mineral/sparkling/bottled water at our bar. Can I just serve them club soda and a lemon and say its house sparkling water?

Mineral has a flavor, seltzer has a flavor, tonic has a flavor. The others (sparkling/club) are acceptably interchangeable. If someone asked for mineral water I'd say "club soda with a lime is as close as I can get, that ok?"

James Woods
Jul 15, 2003

The Tinfoil Price posted:

If you had to throw a party where all the serving containers you had consisted of three large plastic crates and red solo cups, what three jungle juice recipes would you serve? I hope I'm not insulting your mixology credentials by asking for drinks to make for college coeds.

bonus point if chocolate or coffee is involved.

I'm assuming you want to keep this on the cheap so I'd say get handles of cheap booze at your local liquor purveyor along with a ton of fresh fruit and frozen fruit juice concentrate to make the following recipes. I'd start with 10-1 ratio of mixer to liquor at first and then dial it in from there to taste/desired inebriation level. While at the liquor store get a hand juicer like this http://www.amazon.com/Amco-Enameled-Aluminum-Lemon-Squeezer/dp/B0002V23BG/ref=sr_1_1?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1344560733&sr=1-1 to juice any fresh fruit you have and then throw the husks in the mix.

Margarita
2 measures Tequila
1 measure Triple Sec
Mix with a combination of frozen Orange Juice, Lemonade, and Limeade concentrate and a liberal amount of sugar. Add in fresh limes and lemons.

Lynchburg Lemonade
2 measures Whiskey
1 measure Triple Sec
Mix with a combination of frozen Lemonade concentrate and Sprite/7up. Add in Fresh Lemons.

Hurricane
1 Measures Vodka
1 Measure Rum
1 Measure Gin
Mix with frozen Fruit Punch and Orange Juice concentrate. Add in fresh oranges and whatever other fruit you have leftover.

As an added bonus see if you can get your hands on some dry ice to toss in the buckets just prior to serving. Another cheap and easy idea is Sangria, of which you can find a ton of recipes online but is basically just wine, liquor, and fruit juice/fresh fruit mixed together. I wouldn't suggest doing anything coffee or chocolate based for this kind of thing.

leica posted:

Weren't you just in a thread in AI driving an old 80's Corvette? That is a nice ride, how's it running?

I've still got it, its a bit of a long term restoration project that was serving as my daily driver for the last year until it threw an axle. I've been too busy preparing goon McMadCow's Ratrod BMW 2002 that we just finished a Frankenstein engine swap on for a vintage on-road rally to get the Vette' back together.

James Woods fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Aug 10, 2012

The Tinfoil Price
Jun 19, 2012

Calamari Express
What's your opinion on Everclear? It's my go to likker for jello shots and jungle juice. I mix to taste using fruit juice/fresh fruit/ whatever else I have laying around and then spike with ever clear.

Also, what would you recommend as far as fruit liqueurs go? I've been using Marie Brizard, but I feel like there are better brands out there.

Last question. Beyond the crappy camera work, feedback on these please.


Rosewater panna cotta with strawberries and homemade strawberry liqueur (cachaca based)

El Marrow
Jan 21, 2009

Everybody here is just as dead as you.
As far as watering down liquor goes, is this and industry accepted practice, or is it just reserved for lovely bars? Is this something that's more common than we believe?

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Dirnok
Feb 10, 2005

isomerc posted:

As far as watering down liquor goes, is this and industry accepted practice, or is it just reserved for lovely bars? Is this something that's more common than we believe?

It is not an accepted practice. It's illegal as gently caress. In my state I'm not even allowed to marry two near empty bottles of the same liquor into one, let alone put anything else in a bottle. It occurs at only the shittiest of bars run by the most unscrupulous of managers/owners.

I can't speak with certainty as to how common it is but I'm willing to bet it is even rarer than you think. It's illegal. It's bad for business when people eventually figure it out, and they will. And it will run off the bar's better bartenders because none of us want to work in a bar that is trying to gently caress over customers like that. If I heard about a bar doing it I would assume they are a few months out from closing their doors for good.

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