- ABOUT THIS BLOG
- Everyone has done it – you’re in a bar, looking for a scrap of paper to write a woman's name and phone number on, or just want to make a note to yourself so you don’t forget something. You grab a cocktail napkin.
- (In the TV series The West Wing, a political consultant decides that Jed Bartlet – played by Martin Sheen – should run for President. He takes a cocktail napkin and writes down the slogan, “Bartlet for America.”)
- I work in bars. Over the years, I’ve accumulated enough of my own cocktail-napkin notes to fill six liquor bottle boxes.
- Here are the people and stories that wound up in those notes -- real-life characters like Jackie Rabbit and Maude the Broad, the narcotics cops Paul and Sonny, mafia guys, some shameless tramps and one suicidal young man. You'll meet an old-time boxer who wants to take me into the gym to teach me his trade, and a woman who thinks God is on the stool next to her, urging her to have one more whiskey and ginger. It's life behind the taps.
Popular Posts
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Recent Entries
- LIFE ON A COCKTAIL NAPKIN, the book—a story of the joyous, free-spirited, and sometimes unsettling early years in the life of a city bartender in the 1970s— is now available on Amazon
- DANNY (sample chapter)
- BLINDFOLDS AND BINDINGS (and then a big step)
- THE BRUTAL LESSON (last sample chapter)
- A PAIR OF LADIES’ PANTIES . . .
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- Life on a Cocktail Napkin has over 30,000 page views per month. Check out the stories you've been missing in our Archives (below). And my sincere thanks to all of you who have visited here!
Archives
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Blogroll
Author Archives: MikeQ
LOOKING BACK . . . personal photos from 9/11
Last year at this time, we talked about the “Quiet Heroes of 9/11” and reprinted a story about the death of Osama Bin Laden — a post titled, “Men with Brass Balls chasing Ghosts”. Like most of us, I watched from … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
8 Comments
“EDDIE C” . . . an old-school guy
(I’ve changed the names and some of the details of the exact location in this . . . don’t want to piss anyone off, if you know what I mean.) I met “Eddie C” (as I’ll call him) at a … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
12 Comments
WHICH IS MORE FUN … office work, or bartending?
August hasn’t been a good month so far. In July, I was set to cut down to two shifts a week at the club . . . so I could spend more time working on the book. It never happened. … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
14 Comments
THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE AYSLUM
I know this is late. I spent too much time this week watching the Olympics, then on Sunday I was called in during brunch — something was wrong with the soda guns. Got stuck there for another two hours in … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
16 Comments
SHIT CUSTOMERS SAY (when they think we’re not listening)
It always amazes me when customers carry on private conversations — when they discuss things they clearly don’t want overheard — while there’s a bartender working just two feet away. They talk trash about their girlfriends or boyfriends, their bosses, … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
15 Comments
