- 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
BY THE SKIN OF HER TEETH
Here’s something that might amuse those of us who work in restaurants and bars — although it will probably offend just about everyone else. It’s a real-life story about dodging a complaint bullet, and getting away with something when you’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
6 Comments
A TALE OF TWO WORMS
Here’s two stories about my least favorite industry type — the low-living (slimy) restaurant worm. I won’t say where the following incidents took place, but they both happened a long time ago, and definitely not where I work now . … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
4 Comments
“BOOM-BOOM” (Pauline; Part II)
(Click here to read Part I) Pauline and I continued to get together in our irregular way–once a week, then maybe not again for a month. Then back to once a week, or at least every couple of weeks. Once … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
9 Comments
“BOOM-BOOM” (Pauline; Part I)
I was back to strictly bartending again . . . this time at an Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End. For the last two years I’d been working 60-70 hours a week as a GM — working so much that … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
9 Comments
DON’T READ YELP!
Below is a real-life case study of a Yelp! review — first the reviewer’s lengthy and numerous complaints, and then a look at the facts. Unfortunately for the reviewer, everything happened to be recorded on camera . . . ). … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
13 Comments