- 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
AN OWNER’S FOLLY (The king and the tide)
(One more bar post involving an Aesop’s fable . . . I can’t help it, those old scribes knew what they were talking about.) I’ve known Jake for years. I trained him as a bartender when he was a few … Continue reading
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THE MIDAS TOUCH
(Here’s something from bartending at The Lark Tavern in Albany NY.) “Johnny Walker Black, no ice, water on the side.” The guy was back again, as pompous as ever. He owned a popular bar on the outskirts of Albany, and … Continue reading
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“MOUNTAIN”
It was by far my all-time-worst bartending experience, and it started with a simple but nasty prank among friends. Who knows how long everyone had been picking on the guy they called “Mountain.” His friends had been teasing him at … Continue reading
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A QUICKIE (POST)
Starting in September 2010, we posted weekly at Life on a Cocktail Napkin for three years–then this past year there were a few missed weeks, and a few more, until lately it’s only been once a month. For a good … Continue reading
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TWISTS AND TURNS WITH A BOSTON PLAYWRIGHT
When I first moved to Boston, I worked at The Sunflower Café in Harvard Square and it was a trip. Aside from the expected swarms of students, our crowd included artists and musicians, an occasional Harvard professor, guys just looking … Continue reading
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