- 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
Category Archives: Life on a Cocktail Napkin
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
NO PIZZA! (The way things are done)
Sal’s shop was just down the street from The Cantina Italiana. Sal was one of our regulars at the bar. He was a tough man who had grown up in Boston’s North End, all the local wiseguys were his friends … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
13 Comments
A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT
My apologies, but there won’t be a regular post this week. I’m behind once again. Starting next week I’ll be dropping one shift on the bar, no more Thursday nights — so hopefully I’ll be able to still make a … Continue reading
Posted in Life on a Cocktail Napkin
5 Comments
