- 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)
- JOHNNY D’S IS CLOSING . . .
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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
