- 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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Check out the stories you’ve been missing in our Archives (below). And my sincere thanks to all of you who have visited here!
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Category Archives: Life on a Cocktail Napkin
DANNY
(In the 1970s, I was still in my twenties and tending bar at The Lark Tavern in Albany, NY. I also volunteered one overnight each week at a neighborhood hotline and crisis center, Refer Switchboard, half a block from The … Continue reading
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THE BRUTAL LESSON
(Paul and Sonny were two undercover narcotics cops, friends of Marty, our bar manager at The Lark Tavern. They become regulars at The Lark, and one night they stepped in to help Marty out of a jam. This true story … Continue reading
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JOHNNY D’S IS CLOSING . . .
As Johnny D’s is about to close, a lot of us who worked there have been called for interviews. The club’s upcoming exit made the front page of The Boston Globe. It’s a big deal in this city … Johnny … Continue reading
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CLASSIC BAR LINES
I’m sure you’ve seen Meg Ryan’s famous antics in When Harry met Sally–she fakes an orgasm so well in a restaurant that a lady seated nearby tells her waiter “I’ll have what she’s having.” It’s a great scene, hysterically funny … Continue reading
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WAITSTAFF BANTER (nipple play)
These two short events happened late last Sunday night. During closing duties at the nightclub, one of the waitresses scrubbed the stainless steel counter of the service station. Only she was using an industrial steel scruffie! “Stop!!!” I shouted. The … Continue reading
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