- 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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Category Archives: Life on a Cocktail Napkin
FREE BEER; Part II (A moment in the sun)
At some point, I imagine every blogger wonders who’s out there reading. How many unseen visitors are dropping by? Do they glance at the first few sentences and then move on, or do they stay for a while and continue … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
15 Comments
SOMETIMES A GUN MAKES ITS OWN POINT
I have to thank Beta Phi Epsilon frat brother Harry Waller for reminding me of the stories posted this week, and last (Free Beer.) He stopped into Johnny D’s a while back with his wife and brother-in-law. Harry and I … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
10 Comments
FREE BEER!
One of the bartenders rings the bell, and a unanimous cheer from the crowd rattles the windows. Eight beer taps are thrown open simultaneously as we scramble to shove plastics cups underneath them. One hand yanks the full ones out, … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
12 Comments
BEATING BARTENDER BURN-OUT (with the Dixie Chicks)
Last Sunday at Johnny D’s, the afternoon Blues Jam ended early to make room for our Grammy Awards party. (I actually enjoy the Grammy’s — yes, it’s an awards show, but there’s a lot of great music with performers I … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
13 Comments
STANDING UP
(This post comes from a bunch of notes scrawled on cocktail napkins at The Lark Tavern. In those days I also volunteered an overnight shift each week at Refer Switchboard, a 24-hr crisis center half a block from The Lark. … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
7 Comments
