- 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.
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Recent Entries
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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
- Because we're not all there
- Behind The Stick
- Best Restaurant Blogs
- Hospitality Formula
- I'm your SERVER NOT your SERVANT
- Jeffrey Morgenthaler
- On the Rocks
- Restaurant Laughs
- Same Food For Every Day
- Squirrel Farts Drink Blog
- Tales From a Bar
- The Real Barman
- The Rogue Wino
- The Truth About Bartending
- These American Servers
- Waiters Today
- Wino on a Ramble
Author Archives: MikeQ
“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
BARTENDER-Larger-Than-Life (Aaron Bardolino)
Everything about Aaron was a bit over the top — the way he acted, the way he dressed, the way he talked. Consider his girlfriend. He’d met her back in junior high when they were both around eleven or twelve … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
7 Comments
CONFUCIUS IN THE HOUSE (and other bar stool philosophers)
“I know it’s early,” Stacey said when she woke me up. She kept gently shaking my shoulder. “I know it’s early . . . and I hate to do this,” she said. It was eight o’clock in the morning and … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
5 Comments
IT’S HIGH TIDE behind the bar
(A couple of weeks ago we told a story about being in the weeds while making fresh-squeezed OJ. That got me thinking about all the difficult shifts that happen on this job. This is another of them . . . … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
15 Comments