- 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
“MOUNTAIN”
It was by far my all-time-worst bartending experience, and it started with a simple but nasty prank among friends. Who knows how long everyone had been picking on the guy they called “Mountain.” His friends had been teasing him at … Continue reading
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A QUICKIE (POST)
Starting in September 2010, we posted weekly at Life on a Cocktail Napkin for three years–then this past year there were a few missed weeks, and a few more, until lately it’s only been once a month. For a good … Continue reading
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TWISTS AND TURNS WITH A BOSTON PLAYWRIGHT
When I first moved to Boston, I worked at The Sunflower Café in Harvard Square and it was a trip. Aside from the expected swarms of students, our crowd included artists and musicians, an occasional Harvard professor, guys just looking … Continue reading
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HOW MY COLLEGE ROOMMATE RUINED MY LIFE
I showed a lot of promise as a college freshman. With the exception of a “B-” in a mandatory swimming course, I had straight “A’s.” My grade-point average was 3.95 out of a possible 4.0 . . . I finishing … Continue reading
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THE ENVELOPE (joking around, then serious gangster style)
Last week I was working my usual Sunday night when one of brunch bartenders walked through the door. We always have three bartenders for the Sunday brunch and as it slows down–first one is cut, then another–until by the time I come on … Continue reading
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