!
is Certificate of Authenticity represents the genuine article and the
Limited Edition of !
e Long Pour, Volume 1. !
e book you are holding in your hands has been crafted from select, triple-distilled A-grade paper; hand-cut by happy foresters from the choicest, ecological trees available on the planet. Each book has been prepared with love and commitment by the Master Printer and touched by precisely four and a half pairs of hands to inspect for flaws, defects or printing errors. Once printed, it has been aged carefully atop of oak barrels for three whole days to obtain its characteristic aroma and book-like smell, before finally being polished by seven semi-naked European hotties, each of which have blown virgin air kisses into the pages so as to improve the performance speed of each page turn. It’s just how we roll.*
!
is genuine article you’re holding in your hands is one of only 3000 copies in the entire universe. !
e certificate is signed by the editor and in doing so he has personally penned each certificate with its individual number.
.......................
/ 3000 Editor: Adam MacDonald
..................................................................
* Events referred to within this Certificate of Authenticity may or may not have occurred. !
ere has been a lot of wine drunk. Events referred to within this Certificate of Authenticity may have been presented in a slightly altered fashion for dramatic purposes and piss taking. Virgin air kisses may not have been performed in a sober state at the time of event and may not have been performed by actual virgins. Hotties do like their booze. Master Printer not actual title. Conditions apply. If you are not the intended reader of this message, look away. Now.
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eBartenderBook.com

Legal Mumbo Jumbo
!
e opinions and views expressed within this book do not reflect the opinions and views of Working Mixer AS or any of its employees, agents, directors, representatives and a ffi liates. !
e stories may or may not relate to any actual and/or living and/or fictional individuals, events and/ or venues. !
e names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals, events and venues may have been changed.
Paul Flair, International Bartender of Mystery is a registered trademark owned by Paul Flair Publishing , a subsidiary of Working Mixer AS ,
Org.nr: 989 924 672.
!
e Long Pour, © 2012 Working Mixer AS. All Rights Reserved.
Printed in the E.U.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information, send post to this address:
Working Mixer AS, Waldemar !
ranes Gt 84B, entrance C, 0175 Oslo, Norway.
Attention: Paul Flair Publishing.
www.thebartenderbook.com
Norwegian National Library Publication Data
ISBN 978-82-998508-1-0 !
e Long Pour, limited edition 3000 copies.
ISBN 978-82-998508-0-3 !
e Long Pour, booklet edition.
ISBN 978-82-998508-2-7 !
e Long Pour, e-book edition.
!
e Long Pour, Volume One
Limited Edition, November 2012.
Compiled by Adam MacDonald
Stories edited by Adam MacDonald
Cartoons by Rafal Bartlet
All other contributions (read: not much help at all) by Christo ff er Nicolin

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, golf club in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up hollering ‘what a ride’.”
- unknown .

For Mum and Dad, thanks for being so cool about all of this. Love, Nicoljohn.

- Adam MacDonald, from Australia
- Tug van den Bergh, from South Africa
- Michael Chambers, from USA
- Guido Sorrentini, from South Africa
- Alex Kama, from Australia
- Paul Flair, in Norway
- Paul Flair, in UK
- Paul Flair, in Romania
- Stephen Harman, from UK
- Michael Chambers, from USA

- Tom Dyer, from UK
- Simon Rogers, from UK
- Tug van den Bergh, from South Africa
- Paul Flair, in New Zealand
- Christian Kruse, from Denmark
- Neil Garner, from UK
- Paul Flair, in USA
- Jay Tucker, from UK
- Guido Sorrentini, from South Africa
- Jonathan Jones, from USA
- Paul Flair, in Canada

- Tom Dyer, from UK
- Michael Chambers, from USA
- Tug van den Bergh, from South Africa
- Dean Serneels, from Canada
- Paul Flair, in (location withheld)
- Paul Flair, in Norway
- Paul Flair, in Australia
- Detlef Jager, from Switzerland
- Paul Flair, in USA
- Paul Flair, in Spain

- Adam MacDonald, Australia
- Paul Flair, in Canada
- Paul Flair, in (location withheld)
- Martin Hallberg, from Sweden
- Jan Rennen, from Holland
- Adam MacDonald, from Australia
- Dean Serneels, from Canada
- Tyson Marshall, from Australia
- Paul Flair, in Greece
- Stephen Harman, from UK

We have always been gatherers. Gathering food, tools or one-of-a-kind collectables: like this fine piece of chewed up tree you are currently holding in your hot little hands. We have also gathered together, in small or large groups, to form that sacred bond, that sense of community and belonging. In the good old days, it was the waterhole or the well that drew us in. We would stand around discussing life, the neighbours or the interpretations of the freshly painted works of rock art. As times have changed though, so too have our places of congregation. We have progressed from simple wells to marbled forums, from brick town halls to majestic shopping malls. But even in our modern day lives, connected as we are through mobile phones and online chats, the urge to gather still remains a strong and primal force.
How fortunate for us, then, to have available perhaps the greatest gathering place of all times—the public bar. !
ere isn’t a street corner anywhere in the world that wouldn’t be improved by the addition of a grand old pub or a downtown loft that would serve as nothing better than a cheeky little cocktail lounge. Pubs, clubs, bars, gin joints or whatever you want to call them, and wherever in the world they may be, these are the places in today’s day and age where we choose to gather in droves. We go there for any number of reasons: to catch up with mates, cheer on our team, celebrate, commiserate, or speculate.

10 The Long Pour
!
ese are the places where the beverage reigns supreme— where social interactions are lubricated by a little Dutch courage, and the shackles of real life are shaken o ff on sweaty dance floors. And who, pray tell, are the cogs that keep these wheels of evening entertainment turning? !
ey are, of course, the bartenders. !
ose highly prized social facilitators who firmly stand their ground between punter and product, between nervous sobriety and drunken bliss. Wedged as they are between piles of cash, bottled beer and hot-bodied patrons, somehow these guardians of all things fermented and distilled find a way to keep the good times rolling.
!
e Long Pour is a unique insight into the remarkable world of bartending for the gatherers. From Seattle to Reykjavík,
London to Singapore, we’ve collected some of the wildest and most hilarious of bartending adventures, as told by the men and women on the front line. !
e events of these stories are all true—the bartenders are all real people. However, in order to bring you the juiciest of juicy details in even the most contentious of circumstances, there were a few occasions where
I thought it best to alter the names of venues or characters in question. !
e brave souls wishing to take full credit for their antics have been duly rewarded with a cartoon image of themselves at the beginning of their story.
!
ough each bartender presented in these pages is a legend in their own right, our greatest appreciation is perhaps reserved for the original International International Bartender of Mystery®—the one and only Paul Flair. Paul is famous within the ranks of elite bartenders lucky enough to have crossed his path. His name has long been whispered in the darkened corners of downtown bars, filling the role of both hero and villain; it is a role the bar industry neither needed nor asked for, but duly got nonetheless. Paul clocks in at regular intervals during the book to bestow upon us his own unique take on bartending for the masses. !
ough we are strictly compelled

Editor’s Note 11 to keep his identity under wraps, his exploits are also 100% true. !
e man is an enigma; some say he couldn’t possibly exist, while others swear they were working with him just last week. On a side note, if you see him, hear from him, or are indeed served a refreshing beverage by him, please drop us a line at www.WhoIsPaulFlair.com. Confirmed sightings could be generously rewarded, you never know!
Some people may find this book controversial; others may well be outraged by the confessions told within. I merely hope that, whatever your take on these stories, you look upon your local bartender with a renewed sense of understanding, respect and an ounce of vigilance. I sincerely believe these classic tales have been ‘in-house’ for far too long and that something had to be done about it.
!
anks for forking out some of your hard earned cash to buy one of these limited editions—it’s very much appreciated and as always, I’ll see you at the bar! It’s probably my round.
Adam MacDonald,
!
e Reluctant Editor.

14 The Long Pour
N o one likes being the newbie. When you start out fresh in the cocktail universe, those with all the knowledge and skill above you have the uncanny ability to make you look and feel both ridiculous and naïve for those first six to ten weeks.
Not only does the youngling have the hundreds of recipes to memorise, the flavours and brands of all the spirits, the daily procedures, the free pouring techniques, the regular’s names, the rules, the laws and the cash handling, but they also have to deal with their very own bar trainer, who relishes making the life of the newbie hell for their own sadistic personal amusement.
Amongst a whole host of other things, for several weeks mine had me watering all the plastic plants on the bar because he knew I would take absolutely everything he said as gospel, and would never have the guts to question his wisdom and worldly ways. And he was right. But with the pranks, came great guidance. Amazing experiences that you can only get from months of dedicated one-on-one training. Bartending, and even life lessons, that can stay with you for…well, life.
Unfortunately though, many new bartenders are given a totally di ff erent start up experience. !
ey are pushed onto the bar, in the middle of the shift when the shit has already hit the fan and are lucky if they get two minutes of pep talk...
‘ !
e bottles live here, the ice is over there…in my right hand I’m holding bourbon in my left is vodka, we don’t give credit…if a fight breaks out push this alarm or grab that bat.
!
at guy there is cut o ff , so is she! Try not to break anything.
Good luck, go!’
If they survive the madness and want to come back, then it’s
‘watch and learn’ for one more night and that’s pretty much it.
Congratulations, you’re now behind the bar!
But no matter if the bar training is long and complex or fast and carefree, there is, to a certain extent, a bond, a mentoring or big brother relationship that forms between Master and Ap-

Masters vs Apprentice 15 prentice. Likened somewhat to that of a Jedi Knight and their
Padawan learner. Yes, I said it, and you just read it. I compared learning the ropes as a bartender to becoming a Jedi! I like to think it has to do with all the Star Wars quotes my own trainer used along the way but secretly I think it’s got more to do with the fact that I’ve always fancied my bar blade as being somewhat of a cheap substitute for a light saber. Both pieces of kit just ooze coolness. So whether you work the bench of an old
Irish pub, or you’re bartending has taken you to cocktail mecca, the stories that follow in this first chapter should ring a bell or two about that unweathering bond between the experienced pourers—the Masters, and the newbie, still wet behind the ears—the Apprentice.

!
is story comes courtesy of South African bartender Tug van den Bergh. ‘Lord Tugworth’ as he is known in certain circles has ‘been there done that got the t-shirt’ in pretty much every facet of bartending. What he doesn’t know about flair bartending isn’t worth knowing, and his cocktail skills have stood up to the ultimate measure of excellence: a tour of duty behind the wood at the original LAB, London. He now spends his days perched atop Mt. Fuji, mastering complex Sudoku puzzles, drinking green tea, and running the World Flair Association.
I remember a weekend , back in the day, when I was doing this gig to help out a friend. He was nervous and new to the event world and by some stroke of genius had landed a massive gig. By this stage in my bartending career, it’s fair to say that I was de fi nitely more master than apprentice. My days of being ‘the new guy’ were well behind me; thank God! I had steady work in a London cocktail bar, but I loved being shipped in for these extra little jobs on the side. I was like a gun for hire, exclusively sought out by a small band of elite forces to carry out missions of the highest calibre. I revelled in the role. There was

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder 17 nothing better than standing ready at arms with an arsenal of highly potent liquids—primed to dispense wave after wave of quality drinks and good-time vibes.
It was also a brilliant way to make some extra coin. Most of these missions were o ff the books, cash in hand. A small brown paper bag slipped to you at the end of the night. We called them Black Ops , fl ying as we did, under the radar of the taxman. I was a mercenary bartender—ready to pour or throw bottles—whenever and wherever the war e ff ort needed me.
Bar work in the event world can give you access to places that you wouldn’t normally have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting into. Backstage passes, secret tunnels, green rooms, and VIP tents at the swankiest of gatherings. And just as cool as all of that is, they’re a great way to break up the regular routine. Eighty percent of the time the event turns out to be more hype than hard work, so you end up having a very easy, relatively relaxed shift. This particular weekend, I was working a private party somewhere between Manchester and Leeds. It was a 50 th birthday for some ultra rich dude, held on an historical estate complete with its own 18 th century mansion. Proper posh.
As I was admitted through the iron-clad gates, I took a moment to take in the place. The mansion itself was made of old grey brick with a string of thick green ivy growing up the walls. A huge white marquee had been erected on the manor lawn, fully equipped and ready to cater to 150 VIP guests. I had some time to absorb all this grandeur while the touchy-feely security guards had their way with me. My audible sighing didn’t help with the awkwardness of the man-to-man pat down—but
I swear it was less to do with the roaming hands of the burly security, and more to do with the impressive vision of the Maybach 62 and the
Aston Martin DB9 parked on the cobblestoned driveway. I got the distinct impression that this was going to be one hell of a sophisticated jamboree, with no expenses spared.
As I was getting settled in behind my portable bar, I noticed one small di ff erence. Rather than a large selection of alcoholic products and an impressive stock of fresh fruits and juices, I found only an in fi nite

18 Masters vs Apprentice supply of one ingredient. It appeared that all of the cocktails for the evening’s festivities were to be made with absinthe.
‘Seriously?’ I asked, looking dubiously at the list of beverages my promoter friend had invented. It was an unimaginative and, to be honest, a rather disgusting mix of absinthe-infused concoctions which I’m at pains even now to describe as cocktails.
With one eyebrow raised, I pushed him further, ‘Mmmm, yummy!
You sure know how to pick ‘em,’ I said, the sarcasm dripping from my chin.
‘Seriously dude, this is a birthday party. Shouldn’t the drinks be a little more, you know, uh…wholesome?’
Looking around to see if anyone was within ear shot, my aspiringevent-manager friend, who was clearly the rookie in this story, said with a hush, ‘Just make all your drinks pretty weak. Actually Tug, better make ‘em really weak. I had no idea absinthe was so strong. You can fi x this, right?’
‘Whatever you want, man.’ If he wanted me to cut the pours—go short—then I was only too happy to oblige; no one enters into the world of mercenary bartending without fi rst fully understanding the intricate inner workings of a pour spout. Besides, serving up fullstrength, long-pour, absinthe-soaked cocktails was a one-way ticket to troubletown. Absinthe had just made somewhat of a comeback in the
UK, and many bars were serving the aptly named Green Fairy under a ‘one drink only’ policy—a fact that I was now realising had washed over this newbie of the event world. My friend’s absinthe fetish was clearly part of some promotional thing he had going on, some kickback deal which I imagine was a nice little extra earner. Whatever the case, I wasn’t there to critique his integrity or question his piss-poor decision making skills this early on in his event management career. I had a bar to prep, and the guests were already starting to trickle into the marquee.
They appeared to be a rather random assortment, from ninety-yearold grannies in their Chanel cardigans, blue hair, and walking frames, to pimple-popping teens in their oversized designer denims. There was a bunch of well-to-do aristocrats, a few polo players, and a gloomy, squarefaced group whom I guessed to be the birthday boy’s legal team. The

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder 19 one thing that these people all had in common was their familiarity with wealth. As far as the eye could see, the money just kept rolling in.
This was no doubt the biggest gig that my aspiring promoter friend had ever been hired for. Then, just as the bar was about to open, he pulled me aside: ‘Oh yeah, one more thing Tug,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna need you to get up on the bar and do a fi ve minute bottle-throwingfl air-routine thingy. I don’t know when exactly, but your cue will be the song Addicted to Love .’
‘I’m sorry, what now?’ I asked, clearly not amused.
I instantly froze and stared at him blankly in disbelief. Performing the bottle-throwingfl air-routine-thingy was not the issue at hand. It was the shite track selection that had me gagging. He had to be joking.
I tried to fi ght it, but my mind fi lled with disturbing, blurred visions of
Tom Cruise’s karaoke attempt in Cocktail .
‘And that would be Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love”?’ I asked.
There stands Tom, behind the bar of an Upper-East-Side saloon. He turns down the music, the lights dim, and in the butchering that follows can be found the reasons why bartenders the world over share a deep and welling hatred of Robert Palmer’s top-of-the-table hit from ‘86. Cheers, Tom!
I kept staring at my friend, waiting for him to crack up. Nope. Then waiting for that tiny hint of a smirk to play upon his features and give the game away. Nada. Then, waiting for any sort of sign that he was full of shit, that he was taking the piss—but again: nothing. He continued his staring back at me blank-faced, not even a glimmer of sarcasm.
‘Robert-fucking-Palmer? You’re serious, aren’t you?’ I couldn’t think of anything more humiliating. ‘Forget it man. No fucking way.
Not happening.’
‘Oh come on, Tug,’ he whined. ‘The old bag throwing this party could become a really big client for me. There’ll be loads more gigs if we keep her happy.’ I saw the fl icker of panic in his eyes, but I was not convinced.
Last minute changes to the battle plan never work out for the best.
It went on like that for a while: I kept refusing, and he kept pleading. ‘But, they speci fi cally requested it,’ he said, ‘and I promised you’d do it. I told them you were the best in the business!’

20 Masters vs Apprentice
His arse-licking was starting to wear me down, and fi nally—with the promise of a pay rise and my very own bottle of over-proof Schultz absinthe—I agreed to his musical madness.
However, unbeknownst to him, and in a desperate attempt to salvage at least one shred of dignity, I called forth the power of my experience and made some slight adjustments of my own to the battle plan. If I was going to be performing a fl air routine to Robert Palmer’s
‘Addicted to Love’ on a wobbly bar counter at this bullshit birthday party, then nobody—and I mean nobody —would be watching it sober.
I didn’t exactly have a lot to work with. ‘Stacked to the max’ was how this portable bar was supposed to come, but not this night. Clearly the rookie had some work to do with his preparation lists. I found orange juice, Tabasco, and even half a bottle of Frothee in the bottom of an event kit, so not much help there. But like any elite soldier, when you fi nd yourself in the shit, with nothing but your experience to draw upon, there’s really only one question you end up asking yourself: What would MacGyver do? The answer, in most cases I suspect, comes down to duct tape, a tooth-pick, and a ball of belly button fl u ff .
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of these things on hand for the moment. However, I did have the bartending equivalent of duct tape— freeze dried powder-form sour mix. I had packets and packets of the stu ff . Used strategically, with a good range of other ingredients, it had gotten me out of tricky situations in the past. Unfortunately, for yours truly, the cocktail gods were conspiring against me and I didn’t have a lot going in the way of ‘other ingredients’. All I could fi nd in the fox-hole I was tending from was Sprite, grenadine, and Lucozade, and even these munitions were in short supply.
The sour mix would seriously have to be top notch to get these absinthe drinks to sing. For anyone who knew anything about liquor, bartending, or recipes (or who had been within sni ffi ng distance of a half decent cocktail lounge), my fl imsy pre-made packet sour fl avour
‘cover-up’ would be spotted immediately; I’d be found out and labelled a fraud in seconds. But this crowd of drinkers seemed more like the types who were used to their crystal stemware and stirred cocktails

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder 21 arriving on a silver tray. I fi gured it was highly unlikely they had any understanding of the molecular structure of powdered sour mix and where it does and does not fi t into the world of cocktail mixology, so I proceeded with con fi dence at full speed.
As soon as the bar opened, my stealth mission began. I sent cluster bombs of absinthe-loaded sours throughout the room. I didn’t give a shit. I served ‘em up to kids, to grandmas and to everyone in between.
The dancefloor was packed with zombies...

22 Masters vs Apprentice
The speeches came and went and there was even a slurred attempt at singing happy birthday. Yep, these drinks were hitting the mark. People were happily slurping down my well-disguised doubles and triples and the Green Fairy was sprinkling her magic all over the marquee. Within three hours I had achieved pandemonium. Teenagers were spewing in bathrooms, mums and dads were openly groping their signi fi cant other
(and in some cases, someone else’s signi fi cant other), and the dance fl oor was packed with zombies. A couple of well-dressed gents took advantage of the general merriness to call forth the attention of their friends and colleagues, and announce to the entire room that their fouryear secret was now over. ‘We’re lovers!’ they declared. Now that was a speech I won’t soon be forgetting.
As the opening guitar chords of ‘Addicted to Love’ rang out around the party, I climbed atop the portable bar and looked down upon the mayhem I had created. A sea of glassy eyes stared back at me and I was pleased with what I saw. I happily obliged my friend’s request and commenced my ‘bottle-throwingfl air-routine thingy’, while Palmer’s voice crooned the drunken crowd into an even deeper stupor. I performed my routine with military-like precision, not that the crowd would have noticed otherwise; I could have been blowing an entire rainforest of balloon animals for all they cared.
Some might say that my reckless free-pouring skills and creative drink mixing ruined that party, but I like to think that my little contribution made it a night to be remembered—albeit through strobe-like, fl eeting fl ashbacks. And when they try to recall, ‘who was that guy throwing bottles on the bar while that rubbish 80’s song was playing?’
Well, I also like to think I just might have managed to duct tape that little voice in their heads that might otherwise have remembered such details. Kudos MacGyver: Mission accomplished. Report back to base.

62 The Long Pour
‘I
got more pussy as a bartender than I ever did as an actor…’ is a great one-liner probably said by Bruce Willis, former bartender and major start-up investor in Demi Moore’s second marriage. I say probably said by Bruce Willis for legal reasons, but come on, deep down we all know he definitely thought it!
!
is is the side of bartending that most of us sign up for. It’s not talked about in the glossy cocktail books or bartender manuals, and there are definitely no pamphlets being handed out at industry trade shows, but boys and girls let’s face it: the bar o ff ers you a limitless world of flirting, fornication and inappropriate behaviour! If you want to work the late nights and deal with the party crowds, then it’s purely for one reason— you actually enjoy being the center of attention. And that’s okay! Let’s celebrate this, because being in the spotlight brings us the two things we all secretly want: sex and fame
(or notoriety, depending on performance). Face up to the facts, if you love working a bar and slinging drinks, then you live for hearing those words ‘that was the greatest drink I’ve ever had…call me when you finish work tonight!’ !
at sort of shit does not happen for people sitting in an o ffi ce pouring over tax audits. !
ose poor souls have to wait until the company
Christmas party for even a glimmer of a slice of action; we only have to wait until…tonight.
!
e bar industry gives the inner child in all of us that perfect place to play, a place where we can escape almost anything and, at times, do things that in a normal job would have us sued, disgraced, or even fired on the spot. I’ve been fortunate to have met and worked with some of the funniest and most perverted minds you could ever want to associate with. You could say that without a doubt, the tolerance level of owners and management in the hospitality industry just seems to be a little higher than that which you’d find elsewhere. Praise the Lord! Working nine to five—and I’m talking about the

Sex Babes and Debauchery 63 alcohol-infused, nocturnal habitat, nine to five—pretty much guarantees a lifestyle of sex, babes and debauchery, so why not get on board? Embrace it I say, or run along to the photocopying room. I’m sure there are plenty of ink cartridges that need replacing.

!
is story is retold in all its glory and fame by the
International Bartender of Mystery, Paul Flair.
It is said that Paul employs a personal chef just to look after his daily intake of toasted ham ‘n’ cheese sandwiches. !
ough we think this is a great idea, it is, at least at this stage, unfounded gossip. However, we can confirm that 90% of the time Paul’s stories are always entertaining—and always, always, 100% true. Well, almost.
T o this day , I don’t know what I was thinking. It happened while I was in Romania for a bartending competition. This was to be my fi rst stop in a long string of trips that I had lined up over the summer: New York was next, then Amsterdam, and fi nally a road-trip south to Italy. With my suitcase bulging and my passport stickered with visas, indeed the journey looked promising. My ‘Hell yeah, I’ll be there!’ response to everything and everyone had left me with an overbooked schedule and no room for mistakes, missed fl ights, or mistresses—well, maybe the odd mistress.
I’d been booked a room at the Marriott in Bucharest, all paid for by the sponsors of the bartending competition. From the outside, the hotel seemed unassuming enough, but when I walked into the gigantic lobby,
I almost had a nervous bowel movement. I was in heaven! The place

The 20 Euro Shag 65 was, pardon the crass language, o ff its fucking head: golden lobby, huge chandeliers and marbled walls—you could practically smell the scent of wealth fl owing through the air vents. It was one of those moments that
I felt completely satis fi ed with my decision to choose the red pill that plunged me into the matrix reality that is the world of international cocktail bartending. When I got to my room, my eyes were treated to even more extravagant candy. The fi rst of which was the fourteen plump pillows lined up on the bed—why does anyone need so many pillows?
I answered myself with the satisfying thought of the all-girl orgies and pillowfi ght sequences that were surely to follow. Glancing around the room a bit more, I saw a fully loaded mini-bar. Now, when I say fully loaded, I mean like no other hotel mini bar I’d ever laid my eyes (or grubby little hands) on. Opening the door revealed an entire backbar of booze in mini bottles, imported beers, champagnes and pretty much every chocolate bar Godiva has ever invented. Brands of peanuts and crisps that you’ve never heard of and just know with the way they are packaged are designed for Royal lips only. Yep, dinner was looking good!
I continued to pan around the room and it was clearly a cornucopia of delicious eye candy. Very tidy indeed. It was an abode fi t for a king, and
I was well and truly ready to rule over this private realm—I was Kubla
Khan with his pleasure dome. Oh, how quickly things were looking up after my fi rst impressions of Romania’s dodgy airport and my wild and raucous taxi driver. Like a colony of E. coli on room temperature beef, this country too was beginning to grow on me.
This magni fi cent hotel was largely responsible for this turncoat opinion, proving to be quite the trump card in this winning hand. Best of all, everything I looked at and everything I touched was all fully paid for by some random liquor company trying to get their brand on the scene. So, in retrospect, was dropping out of my bullshit arts major to become a full time bartender a good decision? I most de fi nitely think so!
On my last night in fi ve-star-Romanian-luxury, after the festivities of the bar competition were complete, I went out with all the other bartenders and accidentally ended up getting completely shitfaced. This is classic behaviour for bartenders after any sort of competition—being

66 Sex Babes and Debauchery in some random city only adds to the appeal of getting fully loaded.
Of course we don’t call it “getting fully loaded”, we brand it with a little more class—“research and devourment”. The quest for global knowledge and dominance in the fi ner points of beverage alchemy is a continual work in progress. And I ask: ‘How are we, the bartenders, supposed to help ourselves when everywhere we turn there are sponsors, sales reps, and global brand ambassadors lining up to pour an unlimited number of brands down our necks all in the hope of fattening us up like foie gras-yielding geese?’ And when all the fantastic fare happens to be gratis —free as the air you breathe—naturally, we don’t wish to be seen as rude for turning down their generous o ff ers. While I’m sure you’ve heard people preaching the ideals of ‘serving responsibly’, nobody in this business actually abides by this practice. The only thing vaguely responsible is that some of the time, if you’re in the right city and the right country, that empty bottle of booze you’ve just polished o ff will end up in a bin marked: GLASS RECYCLING. Trust me, that’s about as far as the responsibility goes!
This night started out no di ff erently from any other post-bartending gig, but as events began to unfold, it started to become a little loose, even for me. At some point during the post competition celebrations,
I left the bar for a breath of fresh air and a chance to slow the intake for a few minutes; shot after shot had taken its toll. As I’m sure many of you can appreciate, often the fresh air you think you’re in such need of does nothing more than accelerate your buzz—sometimes beyond the point of no-return. I was at a medium level drunk, ‘slightly pickled’, when I left the bar. Two big mouthfuls of fresh crisp night air later, I had slipped into ‘shitfaced’ mode. I picked up my time card, clocked out for the evening and made a beeline for the Marriott. I could feel that my brain was beginning to shut itself down, with all non-essential cells killed o ff by those last fi ve shots of After Shock. Why did we do fi ve?
Why was it After Shock? And why was every other bartender from the competition taking photos of me slamming them back? These would be questions I would need answers for, but right at that moment I was in a self-defensive free-fall. The shapes, sights, and sounds so familiar to

The 20 Euro Shag 67 me during the daylight hours now seemed to dance around me in a montage of colour and light. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a creation of my own messed-up state of consciousness. But I knew one thing to be true—one lesson of survival I’d picked up after watching way too many episodes of Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls—the only thing that would bring me back from this slippery ledge would be a salty, juicy, fatfi lled, late night kebab. I had to keep moving.
As is normal in these parts though, it wasn’t too long before I was approached by a sexy working girl.
‘Hey, hot lips, want some action, baby?’ she cooed, breaking my attention from the one-minded, over-complicated task of placing one foot after the other whilst trying to feed my face with a kebab. ‘Only
20 euros’ she continued, moving a little closer. I’m sure I wasn’t the fi rst poor sucker in these shoes. It’s worth noting at this point that beer is like Gatorade for my cock, and I’d had more than my fair share of brewskies this particular evening. Even though my brain was logging out, other parts of my body were still functioning—palpably so, in fact.
But I think, more than anything else, it was the basement-bargain price that turned me on: an incredible o ff er of only 20 euros for a fuck! I almost sobered up. I hadn’t bothered with a prostitute in years, but damn, at this price, who could resist?
‘20 euros? Sure darling, ya gotta’ deal.’ I slurred back at her, after taking the full two seconds to concentrate on tightening my lips and tongue just enough to form the words. And with that, the game of seduction was over and the transaction was complete. With my hooker fi rmly attached to my arm, I zigzagged my way back to base camp, not before making yet another cheeky stop for yet another survival kebab.
Despite my inebriated state, the injection of fatty ‘mystery meats’ had sobered me up to a point of remembering with complete clarity that her body was amazing. Long legs, an arse you could bounce coins o ff , and a rack you could hang your coat on. That’s what made the whole deal so unbelievable! As for her face though—to be honest, I couldn’t really say either way. She could’ve been as ugly as a hat-full of arseholes.
A real BOBFOC—Body O ff Baywatch, Face O ff Crimewatch. At this

68 Sex Babes and Debauchery particular juncture in time, however, I felt close to breaking what I’m sure was a Guinness World Record for the consumption of alcoholic beverages, so to sit here now and say that she was Angelina Jolie or
Elisabeth Shue (for fans of the 80’s), might not be the most accurate appraisal. Truth be told, if sober I couldn’t pick her in a police line-up,
I hadn’t bothered with a prostitute in years, but damn, at this price, who could resist?

The 20 Euro Shag 69 even if she was standing next to three Furries, Divine Brown and the entire Chinese woman’s volleyball team.
Somehow I managed to navigate us back to the Marriott, and I remember getting a few concerned looks from the hotel sta ff (the concierge in particular) as we made our wobbly entrance. But by this time,
I’d convinced myself that she wasn’t a working girl at all. This gorgeous beauty on my left arm was my new girlfriend! I’d met her at the bar, bought her a drink, taken her out for a late night romantic dinner, and had charmed her with my wit and intellect. Who were these plebs to look down their noses at us in our rosy bubble of new-found love?
As I had done the past four nights, I staggered on, passing under the ginormous chandelier, through the golden lobby, then past the marbled walls and into the waiting elevator.
Of course, as expected she started ooh-ing and aah-ing over my room the moment I opened the door. It had probably been a long time since her eyes had been treated to such splendour, and I was feeling like daddy big-bollocks. Here I was in this ridiculously expensive deluxe suite, fully loaded from a record-breaking night on the drink, with an absurdly hot love bunny for company (who I’m sure by now was wishing she’d at least asked for 40). It all seemed too good to be true. We started getting down to business, and right away she noticed the bulge in my pants: the latest edition smart phone.
‘Wow!’ she coughed, in a voice revealing her 25 years of nicotine abuse. ‘That looks like a really nice phone.’
‘Fuh, fucking besht on the market, shhhhhaweetheart’, I bragged, like a complete moron, and got back to the task at hand. I shagged her a couple of times that night (which in my state was a monumental e ff ort
I’m still proud of) and, let me tell you, she was worth every cent. After a moment of post coital bliss, in which I imagine she was re fl ecting on my manly prowess in the sack, she rolled over and, in her thick, street-hardened accent, purred, ‘Do you want me to leave now, Paul?’
I would like to digress from this story for a moment to suggest to the novice reader out there, that if a cheap European hooker ever asks you the question ‘Should I leave now?’, your automatic re fl exive

70 Sex Babes and Debauchery response must be, and I implore you to remember this: ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, honey.’ For the seasoned veteran out there, you’re probably shaking your head in pre-emptive disappointment, and in knowledgeable anticipation of what is coming next, knowing, surely from experience (read: patronage of the trade) the murky, sordid waters into which this tale is about to deeply dive. In any case, I shall continue.
‘Nho, it’sh, all right,’ I said, ‘shtay!’ And with that, I gave her a good old cuddle like some dumb-ass Casanova on my way to La La Land.
Yes, that’s right folks—I fell asleep while happily spooning my new
20-euro-hooker-girlfriend. Did I mention how drunk I was already?
Damn those free-pouring, triple-serving bartenders to hell! Five shots of After Shock. Whose idea was that?
The next morning I woke up with a headache so bad I couldn’t see straight. I could just make out that the bed was empty, and a few moments later, as my eyes adjusted, I realised I was all alone. I looked at the clock, and waited patiently for my eyes to bring the numbers into focus: ten o’clock. My fl ight was in an hour and a half. Fuck! I leapt out of bed with newfound vigour, but my legs weren’t having any of it. I ended up facefi rst on the plush carpeted fl oor. This didn’t do my headache any favours at all. I tried crawling, inch by inch, eventually traversing the bedroom fl oor and making it to the bathroom. Damn those huge deluxe hotels and their spacious suites! To hell with them too, I say. I heaved myself up o ff the cold tiles, using every ounce of leverage the porcelain wash-basin could muster. Finally after almost pulling the whole bathroom fi xture down on top of myself, I was able to splash some cold water on my face with the little strength I had left. The chill of the water shocked my skin and I felt my body involuntarily convulse. As it slowly dripped from my bearded chin, I used my pinkie nail to pick bits of carpet from my teeth—or at least
I hoped they were bits of carpet. I turned my aching head ever so gradually and glanced around the room. That’s odd, I thought. My
Cartier watch was not where I remembered leaving it. I was sure I had placed it next to the sink. Maybe I was still wearing it. Painstakingly,

The 20 Euro Shag 71
I angled my head towards my wrists, allowing my eyes a moment to bring them into focus. No watch on either wrist.
Suddenly and painfully, the events of the night before came fl ooding back like a tsunami of regret. Flash after strobe-lit fl ash, the night unfolded in my mind. What the fuck had I been thinking ?
I whirled around to survey the rest of the room. Watch—gone.
Wallet—gone. Phone—gone. The adrenaline rush woke me up like a slap in the face and I ran back into the main room. Even the clothes I’d worn the night before were gone. My suitcase had been all but ransacked, except for a fi lthy t-shirt and some dirty underwear. Everything else had been taken. She didn’t even leave the trophy I’d won in the competition the day before. Bitch! Instinctively, and possibly because I’ve watched way too many movies, I even checked to see if one of my kidneys too was missing. Phew! All clear. As I was sighing in relief over seeing that at least my vital organs were still intact, I saw the site of true nightmares: a white beam of light shining from inside of the mini-bar, the door slightly ajar. I took a deep breath, leaned forward, and slowly pulled it open. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t have…but she had. It was completely plundered. Do you know how much a fucking Mars bar from a fi ve-star
Marriott mini-bar costs? I sure as shit do.
There I was, sitting naked on the bed, with an empty mini-bar, one pounding heart, and the remaining half of a severely damaged brain-cell hammering inside my head. And just then, a heart-sinking memory hit me like a speeding bus: my passport was in the pocket of my jacket.
And my jacket? You guessed it—gone. I’d have to cancel all of my trips.
My mind was spinning with numbers and exchange rates. How much would all of this end up costing me? With the plane tickets all booked, the bartending competitions arranged, I now found myself stranded in a fi ve-star hotel suite, not a cent to my name, and with dirty underwear and an old t-shirt for company. If I could just get to the States, I’d be fi ne. But not even I could get on the plane without a passport; a cheeky grin and a sack full of charm can only take you so far. I envisioned myself begging for loose change on the streets of Bucharest. I’d steal a bottle from the bar downstairs, drown my sorrows, then fl air for my

72 Sex Babes and Debauchery supper. Tourists would throw coins into my paper cup while yelling at me, ‘Dance monkey, dance!’ But then, just as I was about to vomit, something came into my vision. Standing tall, proud and upright on the night table and leaning against the lamp, I saw my passport.
A gift! A precious gift from the bottom of her thieving hooker-ing heart. I immediately lunged for it, feeling an overwhelming need to touch it, caress it in my hands, and con fi rm that it was real. But I was now on edge. A broken man. And again, from watching way too many movies, I found myself checking the areas around the passport for wires or booby traps. This was simply too good to be true. It must have been a trick, she’s probably cut out my picture. It couldn’t possibly be real. But it was. ‘Thank you!’ I screamed, as my empty room nodded right back at me in quiet approval.
Even now, years later, I can still feel the relief and gratitude I felt in the sobering light that morning. There are times in life when everything stops, and fate itself rests on a single decision. I suppose I got lucky that time—in more ways than one! I take this opportunity to repeat my message as it sang through my heart back then: ‘Wherever you may be, you cheap Romanian whore, your act of kindness has never been forgotten. If I ever see you again, I will gladly pay you another 20 euros just for that one thoughtful gesture; you slutty little klepto.’
I made it to the plane with only minutes to spare, dressed in my
Sunday best: one dirty white t-shirt, stained pyjama pants, and a pair of terrycloth Marriott slippers. All done and dusted though, between the
Cartier watch, the phone, and all my clothes, that impromptu night with the Romanian ‘basement-bargain priced’ street hooker ended up costing me a few pretty pennies to say the least. As for the old ‘everything
I touched was paid for by some sponsoring liquor company’ line, yeah, well, that one turned out to be not quite entirely true. Consequently, it was the mini-bar tab that screwed me over the most; the miniatures of Jack and Belvedere, the Godiva chocolates, the Voss water and those ridiculously overpriced quarters of Moët! At the end of the day, my supposed 20 euro shag ended up costing me well over two grand. But hey—at least I shagged her twice!

130 The Long Pour
E very job has its rough edges. Every job has its landmines.
Bartending is no di ff erent, except that for the most part, the occupational hazards we face are the very same people we care about and deliver our delicious cocktails and evening entertainment to. Bless the general public for handing us a never-ending supply of priceless moments—the kinds that leave us speechless, shaking our heads, and racing for the
CCTV footage. But picking on the guests, the gullible or the weak, well that’s just too easy. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still going to do it. In fact, there are several stories in this next chapter that are pure gold!
!
ere are times, however, when the friendly job of tending bar is given a swift kick in the arse. When the occupational hazard decides to get right up in your face and push every button you have, things can really go sideways, fast. Female bartenders get the magnificent trophy of knowing that whenever they serve up a double shot of cheap bourbon to pretty much every ‘testosterone filled man-whore’, that he will soon be morphing into either a trucker-hat wearing son-of-abitch, or a fully blown chauvinistic pig with wandering hands and steely eyes. Both forms of the male specimen will end up spraying saliva all over the poor girl the next time she leans in close to hear him mumble an order for ‘ a bowel of bar shhnacks, shweetheart !’ Yep, occupational hazard indeed.
As for the fellas working the bar? What about the hoards of bachelorette parties who storm the venue like they’re taking a fortified bunker and letting loose with a volley of high-pitched, ear splitting squeals? All of them in search of a free strip show with their orders of ‘Screaming Orgasm’ and ‘Sex on the Beach’.
Feel free to roll your eyes, but every weekend, this shit really happens! But, to be fair, not only are the hazards to our health provided by the dickheads, deadbeats and drunkards (which are secretly and bizarrely loved nonetheless), but an honourable

Occupational Hazards 131 mention must be made to the random pieces of equipment lying around on the average bar. Ever seen what the high-powered blades of a Hamilton Beach blender can do to a few wandering fingers? I have! !
e Margaritas never quite tasted the same after that splatter-fest. Perhaps you’ve muddled mint with the flat end of a bar spoon? Ever had the spoon part snap o ff , leaving you with a long arrow-like piece of metal skewered straight through the chunky part of your hand? It goes straight through like a hot needle and as a result you hardly feel a thing, right? Wrong! It’s not hot and it’s not a needle—it’s a swizzled piece of rusty metal that’s now carved itself a brand new home in the middle of your hand. Blood is oozing freely from both the back and palm side of your hand and I don’t care how hard you might be or how much coke you’ve snorted, that hurts like a biyatch and a ‘MEDIC!’ will be shouted for.
And then we have my own personal favourite and some would even say, sadistic, piece of bar kit. !
ose nasty little predators, provoking violence with every turn. !
eir shininess and their stealthy attitudes a constant thorn in our sides.
Sitting high and mighty on top of each and every liquor bottle standing behind the bar. I speak, of course, of the polished metal pour spout: elegant in design, simple to understand, yet so incredibly complex to master. !
e medium flow ‘Spill Stop
285-50’ to be technically precise, is the focus of much of this pain. !
is glorious tool provides smooth precision and grace with the flick of a wrist, and in the hands of a professional, the 285-50 can be a celebrated weapon in cocktail combat, delivering accuracy and potency time and time again. But these puppies don’t come with safety switches or medieval chainmail gloves. Instead, they lurk beneath the surface, lying in wait, ready to penetrate the soft flesh of any unsuspecting passer-by. It’s safe to say, ironically, that these qualities make the humble pour spout both admired and feared in the

132 The Long Pour same ‘bubble, two, three’ count sequence. Most bartenders interviewed for !
e Long Pour had a tale of woe when it came to handling the 285-50, so I threw in a few of these gruesome stories too. It would’ve been a travesty not to! After all, you’re here to learn the truth, no holds barred, right? Let’s march on.

!
e following tale is brought to you courtesy of
English bartender Neil Garner, who has lived the life of a jet-set bartender that many could only dream of. He has been to so many cities in the name of bartending, that his frequent flyer miles are o ff the charts. His greatest statistic is not the copious amount of cities seen or people met however, but rather the 87 missed flights and still counting. All due to his ‘I’m sure I’ve got enough time for one more pint’ approach to his standard preflight routine. Disorganised as he may be, his contribution to bartending is outstanding and remains second to none.
T he lengths to which some people are willing to go, all in the name of a free drink, are often way beyond my grasp of reality.
We had this regular at a bar I worked at in Melbourne, and by ‘regular’
I really mean a complete fucking lunatic. In fact, I’m sure he was the outcome of some undercover government cloning experiment gone horribly wrong. Anyway, this bar fl y hardly ever had any cash on him, but he pretty much always had an unquenchable thirst for both drinking

134 Occupational Hazards and doing outrageously stupid stu ff . He was constantly undergoing these crazy, self-in fl icted bar bets, all in an attempt to acquire a free pint of ale. He was a tram-driver by trade, and he used to come in after his shift (still in uniform) and stand at the bar, annoying the hell out of the sta ff , his girlfriend, and our real regulars. For the sake of this story, let’s call him ‘Stewie’.
Stewie’s bar bets just got crazier and crazier. By the time I’d joined the team, Stewie’s bets were well past what the rest of us would consider
‘normal’. To give you an example, a normal bar bet could be something like balancing an empty glass on the edge of a two dollar coin, or coming up with a puzzle involving a few matches and a beverage napkin. But
Stewie’s bar bets were unlike anything I’d ever heard of or seen. Think
MTV’s ‘Jackass’ in an inner city public bar.
One day, Stewie wandered into the bar, fl at broke, desperate, and even more beady-eyed than usual. He declared in front of all and sundry that, for a pint of free beer, he would down a pint of Tabasco sauce. At the time, the Football World Cup was showing on the telly, so the real regulars’ attention was drawn to the antics on the fi eld. As I fi lled up an entire pint glass with spicy Tabasco, fi lled to the brim, one by one the eyes of the regulars turned away from the football and focused onto a new spectacle: me versus Stewie. England versus Australia. I’m sure they were thinking the same thing that I was—there was no way this guy was going to do this; surely he was all talk. And then, defying all reason,
Stewie held up his pint glass of Tabasco, said a silent prayer to the big guy upstairs, yelled ‘Cheers, big ears!’ to anyone who was listening, and began working his way down the long fi ery road to Tabasco hell! Well, he didn’t exactly throw the pint down his neck. He took it slowly, but by about half way through, he was getting fi dgety. His moon-like face was changing color and sweat was soaking through his shirt. A crowd had formed around him to see this madness in close up action. He was fl apping. This was the make or break point. He took the bottom half of the pint, and in one desperate go, slammed down the empty glass in triumph. The crowd roared. Australia 1, England 0. I began to pour
Stewie his victory pint, for a bet is a bet after all. But when I looked

Down the Hatch 135 up from the beer taps, the big man was on the move, seemingly bolting for the toilets. I stopped the fl ow of beer mid pour and adjusted the scoreboard back to 0-0. The crowd booed.
An hour later and still no Stewie. I felt a slight twinge of guilt and decided I should probably go and check on him. There he was, on the fl oor of the stall, covered in shit and piss, sweating like a beast with his clothes scattered everywhere. His face and chest were covered in a disgusting red gooey drool. ‘I’m calling an ambulance!’ I shouted out to him from the doorway. This breaking news seemed to spark him into action. He staggered to his feet, picked up his clothes, and marched back out to the bar. People actually scattered as he took up his regular spot, steaming, and reeking of Tabasco vomit. This guy was de fi nitely the weirdest bloke I’ve ever encountered, but I paid up in full and gave him his pint of ice cold Carlton Draught. He’d successfully saved himself
$4.50. He fl ushed his beer in about seven seconds fl at, and then charged for the front door. It turns out he ended up requiring sick leave after his little Tabasco fi asco. The sheer amount of the fi ery sauce had totally destroyed his insides and, to add insult to injury, on hearing about the incident, his boss at the tram company gave him the boot. Doctors certi fi cate or not, he was shown the door!
Five weeks later, Stewie found himself back at the bar. He was now broke, jobless, practically unemployable, and on a king’s quest for another free beer.
‘What came fi rst, the chicken or the egg?’ he blurted out of nowhere.
‘Umm, okay. I’ll bite. I’ll say the egg.’ I replied, rolling my eyes at the thought of what was coming next.
‘Neil, I’ll eat these three raw eggs, the shells and everything, for a free pint.’ Now, truthfully, I should probably feel sorry for people like this. I’m sure the gentlemanly thing to do in this situation would be to say something like, ‘No, Stewie, you don’t have to do that. Here, have one on the house.’ But as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m not really that much of a gentleman. Besides, this was free amusement during a quiet part of the shift, and was de fi nitely going to make a great story for the lads. Like a puppeteer, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat in

136 Occupational Hazards control of his destiny, and consequently, my own short-term entertainment as well. Yep, this was bartending’s fi nest hour.
He cracked open the eggs, tilted his neck back, and poured the whole lot straight in. Then he dropped in the shells too. Yummy! For a second there, it looked like the eggs were coming back up, but miraculously, they all stayed down. I shook my head in sympathetic bewilderment, then duly paid up and gave him his free pint. But Stewie was far from fi nished. He reached into his shopping bag and pulled out a paper parcel.
‘What have you got there, Stewie?’ I said, leaning over the bar.
‘Well, this is for my second bet, cause I think the chicken came fi rst.’ As he unwrapped the paper parcel, two raw chicken breasts came into view. Suddenly, a wave of curiosity swept the room and a crowd began to form. ‘I’ll eat these two chicken breasts for another free pint.
Deal?’ I shook my head. Raw chicken, as every rational thinking person

Down the Hatch 137 knows, is notorious for salmonella poisoning. I couldn’t believe this whackjob. But what the hell? He was over eighteen and more than capable of making his own decisions. After all, the city of Melbourne once trusted him (very recently, in fact) to drive its citizens around on trams for fuck’s sake! Surely he’d passed some sort of psychiatric or mental background check, right?
‘Okay Stew, you fi nish o ff those two raw chicken breasts, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do. You do it, and I’ll get you a free pint.’
Immediately, he sunk his teeth into the chicken. Gasps and screams emanated from the surrounding crowd. This wasn’t Bear Grylls; this was Stewie the ex-tram driver and full-time lunatic. Surely it was only a matter of time before the bacteria would get the better of him. Just the sound of him ripping into that uncooked fl esh was enough for some onlookers and thrill-seekers to start dry-retching. To his credit though, and my utter astonishment, he polished o ff every last morsel, washing it back with a smile on his face and his free pint of lager. But, surprise, surprise, not unlike the Tabasco fi asco, it turned out those two whole breasts of raw chicken didn’t do old Stewie too much good either. He was back in hospital later that night, and then out of action for another three weeks.
All in all, I served the guy three free pints. It ended up costing him his health, his job, and, as I later discovered after the Tabasco-episode, his girlfriend too. But you know what? I get the distinct feeling that he’d do it all again just to save a few dollars. Well played, Stewie. Well played.

194 The Long Pour
T he cash, the loot, the folded up bills in a secret handshake.
Making good money can be the entire reason why bartenders stay in the game for so many years—why so many of us start out by saying ‘I’ll make drinks for a few months whilst going through school’ only to discover their degree sucks and they can’t let go of the addictive work hours and tax free cash payments. Whether the bartender works for a massive conglomerate, a franchised chain or a single corner bar, the issue of tips and freebies, giveaways and side bets is always precarious. Some places have predetermined concrete rules for giving away drinks, whilst others leave it up to the bartender’s discretion. Some organisations, and even some local laws, strictly prohibit the giving away or promotion of any alcoholic beverage whatsoever. !
en, in other cultures, it’s an unwritten rule that a good regular guest should receive a drink or two on the house. And herein lays the crack in the system that is open to interpretation. For this look into the dark side of the bar business, Paul Flair o ff ers his years of wisdom and personal sticky-finger experience. Lifting the lid on how some (but not all) drink makers keep their pockets lined with loose cash. How they keep shoe boxes filled with unmarked bills and he might even throw in the keys to his o ff shore bank accounts. Actually, on second thought, he won’t be doing that! However he will be sharing some eye-opening stories of schemes, scams and entire underground systems that are even put in place (on purpose) by upper management.
For the most part, I have a sneaking suspicion that you’ll enjoy this voyeuristic look inside the tip jar, but I suspect it won’t be too popular with the bean counters and tax collectors.

This story is credited to the International
Bartender of Mystery, Paul Flair. It is said that
Paul is never without his titanium bar blade which is twice as strong and half the weight of regular blades. He is able to mow down rows upon rows of unopened, unsuspecting beer bottles with lightning speed and deadly accuracy. !
ough we think this is a great idea, it is, at this stage, unfounded gossip. However, we can confirm that 90% of the time Paul’s stories are always entertaining—and always, always, 100% true. Well, almost.
D uring my career I’ ve worked under pretty much every rock on this glorious planet. You could say that bartending has been my obsession. One of those rocks used to be an extremely exciting and busy nightclub in a capital city that shall, for reasons that I’m sure will become evident, remain nameless. It was a city where the beer fl owed freely, birds sang joyfully, fl owers blossomed in springtime, and a large portion of the population were stunningly gorgeous women with high cheek bones, crystal blue eyes and big plastic tits. It was fantasy camp.

196 Liquid Assets 101
Unfortunately though, once the sun went down, this particular city’s bar-going customers—guests, regulars, clientele, whatever you want to call them—took on a completely di ff erent persona. The vast majority morphed into venomous alien-like creatures, resembling an uncompromisingly rude, crude, and aggressive pack of Neanderthals.
Happy hour wasn’t like feeding time at the zoo—happy hour was feeding time at the zoo. Now although we were making decent money
(they were the kind of Neanderthals that tipped, after all), it was still hard to come to terms with how incredibly rude most of these people were. In the two years of working there, I was forced to develop an ongoing policy: anyone who came to the bar and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ (in any language) would receive their drink on the house. In two years, I gave away the colossal amount of three drinks under that policy.
That’s right, thousands served and three were free. The irony of this is that I openly advertised the policy when it happened, encouraging the bemused guest (who was shocked to be getting a free drink) to spread the word: ‘Anyone using manners will be drinking for free.’ It sailed straight over their heads, and straight over the heads of the guests standing right next to them. They just couldn’t grasp the concept. ‘Be nice to me, you drink for free.’ Again, swing and a miss!
So, as you can now imagine, the customers were one of a kind, out of control meatheads that had no grasp on human communication skills, especially after midnight. I’m sure they were very nice people during o ffi ce hours, but wait for the sun to go down, add a drop of alcohol and hello , those nasty fuckers fl ipped out their fangs and started scouring the streets for bartender blood. Their negative attitudes started to a ff ect me, and my bartending was su ff ering. I am in the service industry after all and, and even though I have my own unique way of working the wood,
I still pride myself on how well I look after my guests. But these heathens were breaking me down. I was becoming a moody prick and starting to mirror their rudeness. I knew I’d reached my limit the night a guy walked in, made his way over to the bar, and whilst I was in the middle of making someone else’s drinks, he leaned over the woodwork, grabbed my shoulder and yelled, ‘You’re putting too much ice in that glass! Why are

DHT 197 you fi lling the glass with ice? We want our drinks strong, stop watering them…’ My immediate reply was o ff the cu ff and although it put him in his place, it was the moment I realised that they had gotten to me. ‘…
Look here pal, I don’t come to your work and knock the sailors’ cocks out of your mouth, do I?’ I had to rise above it. Thankfully, I became aware of this early on, and with a bit of soul searching was able to dig deep and snap myself out of it. I’ve seen many a great bartender go down in fl ames with this kind of infectious disease.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom however. We did have a few nice people too, the good quality regulars who came through the doors each night who truly deserved to see me at my best. So, to counteract the deep feelings of hatred and vile I had built up against the utter morons (that made up the majority), I said to myself: ‘What makes you smile, Paul?’ The voices in my head shouted back at me: ‘Cold, hard, cash!’ So from that day forth, until the end of my term, I implemented a new kind of policy between myself and the patrons. I o ffi cially titled this legally binding agreement
‘Dickhead Tax’, or DHT for short. Any person, male or female, acting like an o ffi cial dickhead was smacked with a percentage of DHT equivalent to the o ff ensiveness of their behaviour. Some quali fi ers included (but were not limited to): tugging on my shirt, poking my shoulder, pushing their way to the bar, shouting out names, poking my shoulder, pulling my hair, whistling for attention, knocking over drinks, using my ice well as their own personal ashtray, or just displaying a universal persona of rudeness and—poking my fucking shoulder!
Dickhead Tax would range between 50 cents to 15 euro, depending on the level of dickheadedness. Usually, this meant that around an extra
10-25% would be added (discreetly of course) on top of the purchase price. Because this bar was so busy, the cash drawers were left open pretty much all the time. The computer system hailed from the dark ages, so the name of the game was to punch everything into the system at the end of the night. A slight crack in the accounting procedures perhaps, but during service hours, the instructions from the Commander in
Chief were to ‘serve, serve, serve and sell, sell, sell. We take care of the computer screen at the end of the night!’ Whatever you say, boss.

198 Liquid Assets 101
As soon as a few of the bar team got their grubby little hands in on the game, these tiny cracks in the system quickly combined to become the San Andreas Fault Line of cracks. It meant it was quite easy to sell a round of three vodka cranberries for, say 13.50 euro, but with the Dickhead Tax Act of 2004 fi rmly in place, that price would be bumped up to, say 15.90 euro. That’s an increase of just over 15%, and we bartenders are working on percentage points. Because very little was being punched into the system, hands were in the tills at lightning speed and everyone was working o ff memorised pricelists. All you had to have were the balls to say out loud the amount that you thought appropriate, and people paid it. The extra 2.40 euro was slammed straight in the tip jar and that went a very long way to keeping a smile on my face.
Multiply this by a few hundred guaranteed dickheads every night, and there was a considerable amount of tax to be collected my friends.

DHT 199
Multiple orders and multi-tasking kept it all too busy for the customers or management to really question what was going on. You could look square into their bloodshot eyes and add as much DHT as you dared.
My record amount of DHT was dished out to a complete knob who pushed his way to the bar, screaming and hollering, looking for attention and immediate service. The guy was clearly on something, whether from his dealer or from his pharmacist I couldn’t say. He was a big boy too. I remember seeing this overweight behemoth come crashing through the front doors and head straight for the packed-out bar as I was in the middle of multi-tasking: pouring a beer with one hand and writing down my phone number with the other. Instinctively, my mind switched on its built-in tax calculator and began warming up for a hefty sum of DHT. As the elephant pushed his way to the bar, elbowing one girl in the face and spilling two drinks all over my bar top,
I knew I had two choices: ‘Security!’, or ‘ka-ching’.
I served him quick-smart just to get rid of him. He ordered a round of beers, a few shooters, and of course (surprise, surprise) forgot to ask nicely or apologise to the poor girl next to him, who by this stage was picking her face up o ff the bar top. Needless to say, I ramped up the DHT on that one. I later worked out that the DHT amounted to an extra 87%! Rough justice maybe, but he was an utter cock and
Dickhead Tax does not discriminate. To add insult to injury, I waited until he’d vacated my area, then I called over a just-as-large, just-asangry member of our security team. The elephant was soon escorted out of the building hollering something about not getting a chance to fi nish his drinks. Oops!
I should point out though that DHT was not implemented in every instance; it was saved up for when those ‘Super Dicks’ would walk up to my station. It was a great motivator for sta ff morale too. There’s nothing quite like counting the tips at the end of the night knowing that you’ve been duly rewarded for enduring the seemingly endless barrage of cock smokers. Something tells me though, you’re probably not going to fi nd too many references to DHT in your typical run of the mill, goodietwo-shoes cocktail guide—but lucky for you, that’s not what this is!

236 The Long Pour
T his chapter is much like its subject matter. It’s not for everyone; it’s limited. However, if you’re reading this it means that you are indeed one of the elite 3000 members to have acquired a copy of the Limited Edition version of !
e Long Pour .
Congratulations. You’re awesome! !
is next chapter is only found inside this version of the book, so consider it your little extra something for being one of the cool kids. Now, because you are one of the cool kids, I fully expect you already know all there is to know about the subject matter of this special chapter, but just in case you don’t—just in case you’ve never seen or perhaps even heard of the American Express Centurion card—then allow me a quick introduction so you two can get acquainted.
Also known around the traps as the ‘Black Amex’, she’s machine crafted from anodised titanium, making her much heavier than your regular credit card. Should you ever feel the need to bend her, scratch her or break her in two, you would need to be wearing a long flowing red cape with a yellow ‘S’ stitched into it to have such luck. !
e card is only o ff ered to a select number of American Express Platinum members, and is said to make its associates feel like they belong to a secret society.
Numerous services unavailable to regular Amex cardholders become instantly accessible for these elite few. Such things as the 24-hour dedicated concierge and travel agent, or personal shoppers at high-end retailers such as Escada, Gucci and Neiman Marcus. A flash of the Black Amex gets you into airport lounges, Sony’s select shopping program, and exclusive nightclubs that, ordinarily, would require you to be escorting a herd of stiletto wearing super models to enter—not to mention the dozens of other elite club memberships you’d normally have no chance of getting. Want to sit courtside at the next Laker’s playo ff game? Give your friendly concierge a call and he’ll get

The Centurion 237 you those tickets that everyone else tells you are sold out! If you ask nicely, he’ll even arrange a seat next to Jack Nicholson. !
e average net worth of a Centurion member is US$6.1 million, so when you see one, you know there is some serious spending power backing it up. Feel like buying a private jet but don’t happen to have the US$40 million on you in cash? Just give the
Black Amex a swipe. Flying over a tropical island in your private jet and feel like that tropical island needs a new owner? Stick it on the card. You get the idea.
So, as you can imagine, the Black Amex to most bartenders is somewhat of a unicorn. For those who have seen one though, it’s often only once or twice, therefore behind every rare sighting there’s usually an enthralling story.

!
is next tale was written and played out by
Australian bartender Adam MacDonald, a 6 ft 3 inch carnivore from Victoria who once had a bar stool thrown at him by a pumped up, steroid abusing meat-head because he sarcastically enquired if the pumped up, steroid abusing meathead would like a protein shake with his shot of
Jack Daniels. Fortunately for Adam, the bar stool flew straight past his head and connected with the face of a five time world Jujutsu champion.
Violence ensued. It was awesome!
T he year was 2001 and I was fresh o ff the boat, my fi rst time in London.
I was thrown in with a legend of the bar world, Ray Weeks, the 1995
World Bartending Champion. He had taken me under his wing for a week or two. He taught me words like ‘tottie’, ‘bollocks’, ‘jubblies’ and when and how to use the term ‘you mug’. I was just a gangly Aussie, wide-eyed in a chaotic and fast-paced city. I landed at his apartment (his ‘ga ff ’), and before I could drop my bags to the fl oor, he gave me the news that his consultancy company, ‘Movers and Shakers’, was in need of a bartender for the night.
‘Cash in hand me boy, 100 quid straigh’ in your sky-rocket. Welcome to London me son,’ he said, with his broad Cockney accent and English enthusiasm.

Fabba the Hutt 239
I jumped at the chance to get my hands dirty and earn my fi rst handful of pounds sterling. This had been something drilled into me since my very fi rst shift behind the stick. ‘You must go to England. You must earn the pound.’ Ray gave me a map and military-like instructions on how to get there on the tube. Problem is, I’m beyond shit when it comes to directions.
The Cub Scout badge for Navigation and Map Reading was a badge that never passed through my hands. Somehow though, by asking every stranger
I met along the way for directions, I steered my way to the event located roughly between Oxford Street, Regent Street and Park Lane. I was right in the middle of the most famous of Monopoly properties: Mayfair!
The gig was for a wedding reception of some English aristocrat and his 300 closest friends, and this celebration was just for the friends that couldn’t attend the actual wedding. Needless to say, the building the event was held in was spectacularly British in all its extravagance. There was a huge ballroom, adjoining dining rooms, libraries and conservatories, not to mention billiard rooms, servants, butlers, a huge catering crew…and me.
There was a band setting up in the large ballroom when I arrived at eight o’clock. The bar was set up at one end and o ff to the right of me was another large room—the gigantic dining room. This was where the 300 guests were enjoying their twelve course wedding feast, frosted fruit cake and speeches with the bride and groom. The dining room was partitioned o ff and would be opened up after the cake cutting.
Then the bar would open, the band would kick in and I’d be on hand crafting cocktails of excellence until the wee hours of the morning.
The band for the night was called Fabba, the o ffi cial Abba cover band.
Not being a massive fan of the Swedish Pop icons’ work, it didn’t do a whole lot for me, but they looked good and all the guests seemed to enjoy them. One song in particular did get my attention though. During the song ‘Money Money Money’, a well-to-do English gent of middle age— and possibly from Middle Earth—was dancing his little legs o ff with an extremely beautiful woman half his age and twice his height. She was in a slim fi tting, sparkling red gown and knew exactly how hot she looked. He was in his best tuxedo and reminded me of a cross between Jabba the Hutt and Benny Hill. This guy was fl irting his little heart out and, to be fair, he

240 The Centurion knew he was vertically challenged and so he was cleverly going for the comedy approach. This was all happening just two feet away from where
I stood making the whiskey sours and dry martinis. I couldn’t help but critique his performance. During the chorus of ‘Money Money Money’, the pocket rocket English gent reached into his left jacket pouch and produced a handful of fi fty-pound notes. As he was dancing and grinding, moving and grooving with this stunningly attractive young woman, he was waving the cash around singing ‘Money Money Money’.
‘Red Dress’, playing coy, turned her back on him. She was dancing away from him, all the while edging closer to the bar. She shot me a seductive glance. For a second there I thought she was into me:—hang

Fabba the Hutt 241 on a second—she is! She gave me the eye again. I didn’t know where to look. This chick was way above my pay grade. Even knowing this, my mind started bizarrely justifying it. Maybe we could hook up. Maybe there was a chance. I was lost in the moment, lost in her eyes. Then in an instant, she fl ung her perfectly formed head around and danced o ff in another direction. My pipe dream was shattered. Damn it.
‘English Gent’ sco ff ed, then chuckled inwardly as he pocketed the cash.
The song continued and more fl irting and dancing ensued. The chorus burst through the speakers once more, and just as it reached its crescendo, he lunged into both jacket pockets and produced not one, but two handfuls of cash. Easily, two or three thousand pounds. Again, sticking to the script of a Shakespeare drama, she played the role of hard-to-get and danced away from her leading man. Once more, her eyes met with mine. Sucked in like a tractor beam, again she came dancing over to me, closer and closer. My heart skipped a beat. DAMN YOU, WOMAN! Such a tease.
‘English Gent’ looked a bit dejected this time and I actually started making him a sti ff drink. Once the song was fi nished, I was anticipating a mad dash to the bar to wash o ff the fl ames. I began the preparations for a tasty Sazerac.
The third and fi nal chorus started up, and it was as if the spirit of Nathan
Rothschild himself had switched a light bulb on in his head. Eyes widened, a smug smirk appearing on his face. He reached into his right trouser pocket and produced something that looked like a business card. He then slapped it straight onto his balding forehead. Only it wasn’t a business card. The perfect mixture of sweat and titanium kept the symbol of endless credit fi xed in one place and, just like that, smack bang on the top of this guy’s face was the black
Centurion American Express. He fi nally remembered his trump card, his ace in the hole. His membership card to the premier league whilst I looked on from fourth division. This was the power move that got the attention of the hot piece of ‘tottie’, and she danced over for a closer look. She beamed with delight and grabbed his arse, slow dancing with him for the rest of the night.
Game, set, match. She was like putty in his hands from that moment on, her eyes never leaving the grand prize.
I drank his Sazerac in spite, and couldn’t help but think, ‘well played
Sir, well played indeed…you bloody mug.’

262 The Long Pour
W hat is island life? Actually, before I get into that, I think we should spend a few seconds chatting about what constitutes normal life.
Normal life, for me anyway, is where there are rules, commitments and accountability. Normal life is where 99% of us spend 99% of our time. Normal life is where most girls demand to be charmed and taken out for dinner. It’s where most guys are a little shy, a little intimidated and would sooner stay at home playing World of Warcraft than spend yet another night being rejected by a female of the species, who was probably way above their pay grade anyway.
However, taking one small step for man through an airport metal detector seems to be the perfectly placed invisible barrier that, for many normal folk, is the ideal excuse to leave ‘normal life’ in their dust. Leaving town on an aeroplane has a romance about it that leaving town in a car, or on a train can simply not compete with. Flying somewhere o ff ers the distinct possibility that you will be further away from your normal life, further away from your normal friends and putting distance between you and your normal life is just the ticket for a little naughty behavior.
Well, that metal detector’s invisible powers are multiplied by a factor of 5000 when someone strolls through it wearing flip-flops, bound for a sunny, tropical island for a week or two of cocktails and deckchairs. Like a smack junkie on a constant teeth-grinding search for utopia, that blood soothing rush from booking an island vacation is one that regular folks spend all year fidgeting and craving for. Escaping to an island is the perfect excuse to try something new, be who you’ve always wanted to be, and get sunburnt beyond recognition! Let’s face it, the instant that auto-reply button to all future emails is pushed, you can practically feel the hot grains of white sand squeezing and crunching between your toes. You’re on vacation, and it feels good. And guess what? All normal

Island Life 263 reasoning will shortly be flying out the window. !
e moment you hear that first ‘ beeeeep ’ and ‘please empty your pockets and remove your shoes’ is the exact same moment your brain switches o ff . Don’t feel bad though; this idiotic Neanderthal behavior happens to everyone heading for island vacations.
How else can you explain the daily inner monologue heard by millions of vacationing commuters all over the world: ‘Hmmm, this cappuccino, from my favourite co ff ee chain, is only about
200% more expensive here in this airport than what I’d normally pay for it down at my local…ahhh, fuck it…I want a co ff ee…and I’m on holiday!’
All normal thought processes have just exited the building, and you haven’t even left the country yet!
International travellers with their brains switched off, no responsibilities, pocketfuls of cash and a quest to leave normal life far behind them, flood to island destinations all over the world, every summer. !
ey are to a bartender what a bunny rabbit is to a hungry leopard…easy lunch! Week in and week out, planes filled with new party seekers arrive oozing fun, filth and frivolity from all their pores. All the while, the confident bartender patrols this faux and surreal environment, setting the tone, being that familiar face in a sea of unfamiliarity and even becoming a reliable friend. If you’ve ever had an amazing island holiday, then chances are you owe a lot of it to the bartender, or team of bartenders, at your favourite nightly hang-out.
While being bestowed with creating the energy level for their holidaying guests’, bartenders living on an island and playing host to this never-ending summer party have also passed through the same metal detectors as everyone else.
!
eir brains are just as switched o ff to normal life as yours!

264 The Long Pour
!
is is where we find that perfect fusion of sun drenched party people, meeting with naturally charismatic and entertaining booze hounds. It can surely only lead to one thing: trouble with a capital T— !
at would be T for paternity test!
Living this high amped drink-pouring lifestyle on an island, far away from home, isn’t for everyone. !
e work schedule alone can be enough to see a bartender fall on his sword.
Seven nights per week, zero nights o ff for five months straight is a monster workload that takes no prisoners. !
e long nights of island life have definitely chewed up and spat out more than their fair share of bar keeps. And yet, some soul shakers have flourished in this elicit environment, racking up 10+ seasons of drunken debauchery, bad tattoos and unrequited loves. While the rest of the general public head back to their respective countries and the normality of that long inbox of unanswered emails, the island bartender welcomes in another week just like the last.
!
is final chapter of !
e Long Pour , Volume 1 o ff ers a peek through the metal detectors from the safety of your living room. You’ll read about gun wielding US border agents to the misadventures of swallowing mouthfuls of Viagra. One thing will become a consistent theme in this chapter. !
at is, when you step o ff the plane and walk into the world of island life, you say ‘auf wiedersehen’ to normality and say ‘hello tiger’ to sunscreen, Smirno ff Ice, sluts, shitloads of Sex on the Beach,
Swedes, shocking comments and scandalous behavior (and any other ‘S’ I may have forgotten)—from both sides of the bar.

!
is story was contributed by Dutch bartender and part time male model, Jan Rennen. Jan is best known for his super-human performance which involved drinking five di ff erent flavoured ice-cold thick shakes in under a minute (for charity, of course), then bouncing back the very next day to present a face and body for a Calvin
Klein commercial—‘give us Blue Steel, Jan.’
G rowing up in H olland , the usual thing for my family and a bunch of our neighbours was to spend up to three weeks of our summer vacation on the Greek islands. Even as a kid, I remember thinking the place was amazing. The sounds of the mopeds zipping down the road, the crystal blue water and the taste of my very fi rst greasy souvlaki. As soon as I was old enough, I knew that this was exactly where I wanted to be working in the hotter months. In fact, the dream of being a bartender in Crete had gotten me through to the end of high school.
Well, that, a massive bong named ‘Fast Eddy’, and my ex-girlfriend’s yummy mummy—but that’s another story for another book.
I quickly fell into the regular routine of working in Crete: mixing drinks, drinking drinks, giving away drinks and, naturally, loving every minute of it. We worked seven days a week, we drank seven days a week,

266 Island Life and somehow, we even found an extra drinking gear in the engine room to celebrate birthdays and welcome in the weekend. No doubt about it, that island (and I’m sure the rest of the Greek islands) is home to one of the largest populations of alcoholic bartenders on the planet.
However, while drunken bartending can lead to some of the funniest moments in your career, it can also lead to some of the most awkward.
Like the night when I was clearly more hammered than usual.
The endless run of Ursas Rotter (red vodka) shots I was doing with my guests had taken its toll. It may have only come in at 21%ABV, but the sloe berry vodka ends up being the perfect ‘giveaway and drink with’ shot for bartenders all over the island. Every fi ve minutes it’s
‘YIAMAS’ with another group of guests as we all slam down a shot together. It was a long night. I must’ve done a whole bottle of the stu ff by the time I mistakenly zigged when I should have zagged and as a result, ended up wearing one of my much loved souvlakis like a berka!
Let me explain. Sober.
Late in the night, or early in the morning (however you want to look at it), a good looking girl in her early twenties strolled into my section—all happy and smiley and clearly ready to party. She’d obviously spent a few hours in front of the mirror, making sure her eyeliner was perfect, her lips looked plump and her hair was dead straight. The music was loud, so I leaned in close to hear what she wanted. She smelled nice. Real nice, unlike the stinking bartender working next to me who had come to work directly from the beach after a day on the jet-skis. She asked for a Bacardi Breezer and a double shot of Blue Curaçao as a chaser; I know, I know, not exactly a combo that inspires the saliva glands in your mouth to burst with anticipated wetness, but nevertheless a surprisingly popular mix in this part of the world.
With a single swipe of my trusty bar blade, I knocked the top o ff her Breezer, reached casually for the Bols Blue, and gave her the long pour. I carefully slid the tall shooter glass, fi lled to the brim, with the tasty blue liquid across the bar to her waiting hand. I took payment, returned her change, and went about looking for another customer. Standing at the bar, she took a swig from her Breezer, and then in one fl uid motion (pun intended) slammed back the large shot of Blue. What happened next will haunt me forever…

Bols Blues 267
The girl lunged over the bar and grabbed my tattered t-shirt. This girl had the grip of a gorilla. She grabbed so tight her nails went straight through the fabric and clawed into my chest. Adrenalin surged through my body as her face came racing towards mine: she was about to deliver a Scottish style ‘back-alley-head-butt’ and I had nowhere to go. She had pulled so hard on my t-shirt that I was o ff balance, my feet skidding on the wet fl oor a la Fred Flintstone starting his car. Bottle caps, straws and wet napkins fl ew from under my feet as my shoes fought a losing battle for grip with the fl oor. I squeezed my eyes shut, screwed up my face and braced myself for impact, fully expecting her to smash my nose in with her fast approaching forehead. Instead though, it was much worse.
She vomited—all over me. Yep, that’s right, from head to toe; I got hit with the whole damn lot. The bits of bile that managed to splash o ff me landed in my ice bucket, on the bar top, and in my straw caddy. Her spew was everywhere.
It was, in appearance however, rather unlike any other vomit I’d seen. There were the usual bits of carrot along with unidenti fi able prechewed goodies, and de fi nitely last night’s souvlaki had returned for an encore, somewhere. Instead of being heavy on the regular beige-ish, snotty-ish, porridge-ish, consistency we know and love, this particular brand of vomit also had a glistening element of liquid—and a radiant shade of purple-blue-ish liquid at that. Yet, despite this odd appearance, there was something strangely familiar about the way it all smelled. It wasn’t that sour reek of innards’ that you’d expect; instead it carried a hint of freshness. A hint of rainforest fresh perhaps. A familiar scent indeed, it was like…like…like washing detergent?
As I stood there, frozen to the spot, only my eyes slowly moving around to survey the scene, the penny gently dropped. No doubt about it, in my hazed, blurry little world, I’d somehow mistakenly picked up the bottle that stored the blue washing detergent and not the Blue
Curaçao. How had I done that? To this very day, I still have no idea why washing detergent was sitting in a glass bottle, armed with a pour spout.
I blame it on the drunken English bartenders working alongside of me.
Klootzakken!
However it came to pass, it was the poisonous taste of

268 Island Life industrial strength washing detergent that hit the back of the throat of this hot young lady in my service, not the sweet orange goodness that she was eagerly anticipating.
As a result, I was publicly bathed in an ocean of sick, in front of a packed out bar no less. It must be said, that giving me a thick blanket of vomit to wear was absolutely the correct response. As a self-in fl icted punishment, I took the next couple of nights o ff the booze, resigning myself to drinking water, and keeping well clear of any Bols Blue bottles!
Lesson learned, and one I hope I can save you from having to endure: whether you’re working the pine or you’ve just landed on an island and are looking for a tasty shot, think twice about anything blue!

Last Call 309
Last Call
I t would be idiotic for anyone to think that moving a book from
‘idea in your head’ to ‘published perfection’ is a one-man sport, or that it is something that is achieved quickly. And this is exactly the idiot I found myself being in 2008 as I watched the soon to be President Obama receive his Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo. Watching the motorcade drive by,
I was suddenly hit with inspiration. When I fi rst sat down that night to start this project I said out-loud ‘Adam, write a quick E-book, with great stories from the bar industry, write them down, throw them through a spell checker and hit the publish button. It’ll be easy-peesy Japaneesy!’
Well, it must be said, it didn’t quite turn out like that. The more
I looked, the more I researched and the more I discovered how much
I was way over my head. The more bartenders I talked to, the more awesome stories I was told. The more awesome stories I was told, the more work I found on my desk. Soon enough, this side project of mine had grown to a beast that was consuming my every spare minute. The whole thing was almost binned several times!
However, thanks to a few people that I would now like to mention below, the light stayed on during the late nights, the interviews continued and the editing and editing and re-reading eventually came to an end.
Four years later and about three years over-due. Sorry it’s a bit late.
Having never written an entire book before, I’m really not too sure of the standard practice of acknowledgement so I’m going to do it short and sharp and hopefully not leave too many people out. If you are left out, ‘bugger, sorry ‘bout that, I will buy you a beer the next time I see ya.’
A huge thanks to all the contributors who shared their stories and confessed their sins. This book would not have been possible without you. Thanks for getting involved, for taking the time and I hope we did

310 The Long Pour your story proud. As promised, you were all turned into cartoon images, which puts you right up there with He-Man and the Ninja Turtles.
For the hundreds of other bartenders I interviewed who do not see their stories in volume 1; it was almost impossible to narrow down the tales, but the good news is we have enough material for at least 4 more books, 3 movies and a reality show. I’m sure many of you will get your stories into print in the next few volumes.
Tyson Marshall , who was the sole source of inspiration the
19-year-old version of myself needed to get into this bartending caper.
He was there at my most proudest of bartending moments, and was also present at some of my worst. He has not only been a legend to me (and hundreds of other bartenders) but even believed so heavily in the book he graciously accepted an all expenses trip to Norway to help me write it, plan it and fi ll it up with some golden tales of his own.
Paul Flair , what can I say about you? Thanks for returning my calls, for eventually emailing me back and for being the fall guy. The International
Bartender of Mystery, you truly are, but also, hands down, the coolest bloke
I have ever met. Stay in the shadows and don’t ever reveal yourself!
Holly Brickley , was the fi rst writer I found on my travels who would help me with the stories from the interviews. She was able to listen to the interviews in her home in L.A., work out what was crap and what was gold, then scribble that down onto a blank canvas for me. Awesome job under some pretty tough audio conditions, not to mention the salty language and the plethora of accents she had to deal with.
Kellie Thomas , worked on the writing with me because she needed cash to pay a speeding fi ne. This ended up getting her involved with many long Sunday morning Skype sessions until fi nally, her laptop was washed away in the Queensland fl oods. Thanks Kel for all the e ff ort you put into the stories and especially the story “20 Euro Shag”. I think we must have spent two whole days just trying to portray the correct level of neediness that Paul had for that late night kebab.
Jodie Blaney , took on the job late in the game to help push it over the line. Proof reading and copyediting ‘till the wee hours of the morning was her job, and she did it well. Thanks for your massive e ff ort Jodie.

Last Call 311
Olivia Egea , and her never ending smile was involved right at the start and helped me come up with an E-book plan. The project kind of became a little larger than we fi rst thought, but either way, she was there to help out from word one, so thanks Olivia!
Magan Singh , the travel writer and sommelier who I found in a bar in Barcelona. The only guy in the room to laugh at my Michael
Jackson joke, so I knew from that moment right there, we would get along. He was the guy who worked the stories over and gave it a polished readability, and for that, I can not express thanks enough.
Christo ff er Nicolin , (Son of Professor Jens * ) for being the legal brains of the operation. Thank you for possessing the talent of turning a 20 second story into a 4 hour saga. Although his candour and ability to fi nd cartooning talent was very much appreciated, let’s hope we all stay out of court Harvey.
Tim Goodwin , was involved early on and with his script writing experience gave a voice to the characters and helped the stories fl ow. I think more booze was drunk on that trip than words were written but either way, we got there in the end!
John “Crouton” Delany , former bartender, former car salesman and former speech writer was never actually involved in the book per say, but he did give me possibly the best 20 minute phone call and coaching spray a young man could ever have. He was the one who told me to pull my head out of my arse and deliver a book much better than what was originally conceived and planned. Plus, his old school approach to bartending was a constant source of inspiration and entertainment. Thanks John.
Rafal Bartlet . The artist formally known as Raf, has worked with every illustration we have in the book. Dealing with me, not so easy, but making his pen dance on the page seems to be an almost e ff ortless task for this guy and his artistic work in this book speaks for itself.
Vassil Lakov , thank you so much for bringing this project over the line. For bringing the collection of digital scraps together. Helping me designing the layout, fl ow and printability of the end book. You were wonderful to work with.
* see Robert Bernard’s Death in a Cold Climate

312 The Long Pour
Jay Tucker , a huge thanks for being a great contributor to the book, and also for being one of the early proof readers.
Mark Reardon , also an early reader of the book and I especially loved how he ignored my instructions and just read the stories from the
English bartenders fi rst. Cheers mate!
Tug van den Bergh , was the fi rst guy I met in London and has been a great friend ever since that fi rst encounter. He was not only a huge contributor to the book but one of the early readers and his honesty about where some of the stories were headed was much appreciated.
Vidman , the loveable Norwegian bartending legend who listened to me ramble on about how I wanted to put this book together until the wee hours of the morning in 2008. He has continued to support me and the project ever since.
James Gleeson , was the man responsible for making the
International Bartender of Mystery ® logo look exactly like Paul Flair.
He is a remarkable and talented young designer and luckily for everyone, his voice has fi nally dropped.
Natalie Mitchell , for being practically forced to read an early version of the book. Thanks for reminding me of a wider audience.
Karen and Neil MacDonald . My parents. Thank you so much.
Both of them together have poured hours upon hours of reading and proo fi ng into this book, but not only that, their checking of my work dates back to Primary school. I would never have said it as a teenager, but now, I can. Thank you for highlighting all the errors; thank you for being amazing as you have read these tales and thank you so incredibly much for giving me the opportunity to travel and live this lifestyle.
Dad , thanks for the pep talk at the age of 19. ‘Son, would you bartend even if they didn’t pay you?’ Yes. ‘Then do it, but just be the best bloody bartender you can be!’
Mum , there is no doubt, that even with an eyebrow raised as you read many of these stories, you were still able to spot the errors and mistakes in amongst the clutter. Thank you for a huge e ff ort and for giving me the con fi dence to go to print.

D
F
OOK IS
NOT
THIS B
FOR YOU
R PARE
NTS
‘Dripping in sarcasm, smothered with metaphors, and splashed with bone-dry wit, The Long Pour is the one book bartenders actually want to read.’
Alan Kavanagh
Founder of the Irish Cocktail Club
‘Super funny stories, but should you pursue a career in bartending, don't let your mother read this!’
Alex Kratena
2012 International Bartender of the Year
pulled a pint, stirred a drink, tapped a keg, picked mint, flipped a bottle, chilled a glass, shaken a daiquiri, squeezed a lemon, owned a bar or shouted ‘last call for alcohol’
Published and Distributed for
TheBartenderBook.com