The famed drunkard Colin Deal (@Dear_Booze) should be followed by everyone who has a Twatter account and does this kind of thing.
I think he deserves a place on Mt. Rushmore Drinkmore. Tonight I shall drink a Captain Morgan and Coke in his honor. Okay, several. He’d want it that way.
I guess it is my age but I am old and kind of cheap when it comes to going to bars to do any drinking. I like a decent Scotch, blend is fine, Johnnie Walker red or even Famous Grouse, nothing fancy but decent and I refuse to pay bar prices for my Scotch on ice, that’s nuts. I also like Wild Turkey 101 and a few other whiskies like that and I don’t need a bartender to mix them.
Now in the old days, many years ago I did my share of that stuff, sitting around during happy hour, trading stories with buddies listening to wild tales of fortunes that could be made in the oil business, etc. Knowing eventually I would settle up the tab, get in my car, close one eye so the road was in better focus and head home to explain to my wife why I was not home earlier to eat with her and the kids. I guess the odds were in my favor in those days 25 plus years ago because I was never involved in drinking and driving. Now I stop at one beer or one glass of wine if I have to drive, you know, just because and at home I have learned how to avoid the self-inflected injury of too much. Age can bring wisdom and I don’t want to go to meetings and listen to boring people talk about not doing too much, I have a few friends who need that and it works for them.
As for good bar tenders there were a few around in the good old days but they were few and far between however when I would go to Chicago and stay in the Conrad Hilton Hotel from time to time there were real, old school bartenders who were very large, not fat, large grown up men who knew their trade and with people stacks two deep at the bar they knew how to look around and as the last sip came out of my glass there would be a bartender pointing his finger at me, as I returned his gaze, lifting his thumb up and with a nod of our heads to each other, I knew another drink was less that 60 seconds away. They knew their clients drink, they could run a tab up fast and count on a very generous tip for a well poured drink.
We could also do a whole story about creepy young bartenders who short pour a bottle so they can make a couple of extra drinks and steal from the house, never knew about that until I was teaching an adult class in the early 1990’s and two young men were sharing their stories about cheating on the customer and bar owner.