From the Bar | The Norm's Spot - Norm van Maastricht

From The Bar ~ “Comin’ Through!”… The Waitress

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

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There is almost a ballet, a juggling act, to watching a good bartender work.
The good ones work best under a little pressure, or so it seemed… hundreds of memorized recipes and no time to write down the requests shouted over the din of a deliriously loud band.
Their hands a blur lining up the proper glasses, add the ice, mix, pouring the alcohol, sometimes holding multiple bottles in each hand. The blender screams like a chainsaw that lost a link and magically, the drinks come out right.

If a waitress was on duty she would be helping by adding the final touches, the olive, the onion, the fruit wedge, stir sticks and straws. Four hands instead of two in a flurry of alchemy, making the drink what it needed to be. Seldom are two alike and each must have the exact finishing garnish to be correct.

Periodically, a waitress on a busy night will come up with a tray of dirty glasses and empty beer bottles to offload even as she shouts her next order. Then off she goes with a delivery of what can be to ten items, more if they carried a couple of long necked bottles of beer in the hand not holding the tray.

“Comin’ Through…!”

From its opening until it finally shut down The Bar had the best looking cocktail crew in the area for an easy fifty miles. The faces and forms would come and go because cocktailing is a draining occupation and there was quite a turnover. The Bar had basic requirements and the scheduling followed a formula. During lunchtime and “Happy Hour” one waitress usually sufficed. Two, sometimes three, very pretty girls working on band nights.

But day or night, “Very Pretty” was the standard…
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She was a piece of work.
The pretty legs, the nice figure, the sensuous walk and the paint… she had really lovely, soft, hands (Vargas hands) and knew how to wear rings… small and simple rather than garish and showy, to show her perfect manicure. She moved with a practiced sexuality when she wanted to, stirring lustful thoughts…knowing this but not really caring because she wasn’t looking for a man. However having the ability to raise lustful thoughts usually meant larger tips.

It’s a balancing act. Make the men like her but at the same time she manages to let the women know that she’s not out to Steal The Boyfriend.

She did it very well when she was feeling good…all with a trayload of drinks balanced and high…
Dolly Parton would have understood her completely but Dolly’s presentation was an act that she turned it into a multi million dollar business.

The cocktail waitress’s presentation was an act, too, I guess… not quite as lucrative as Dolly’s… not by a long shot…

But when she put her mind to it she was a Helluva waitress…
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Were all of the cocktail waitresses like the one described above?
Hail, No!
But all of them had some of those qualities, some more than others but the only quality they all had was the “when she put her mind to it she was a Helluva waitress”.
You hoped.

They were a kaleidoscope of beauty… tall, short, girl next door types, striking model types, some were gamine and cute, others were heartstoppingly beautiful, beautiful enough to be actresses. Some were slender, some were not, some were tall, some were not, but all had their admirers. Few were older than twenty five. Most had problems, in that respect it was just a matter of degree… seemed that way sometimes…

Some of them were going to school…working their way through college. Some were just ‘going’ stopping at The Bar to see if it was any different than the last one they worked at. and usually finding that the set may change but the script does not.

Some, the new girls saw it as a way to make money for doing almost nothing…

“Comin’ Through…!”

Consider the left arm of a waitress…

What does a trayload of drinks weigh? Ten pounds? Twelve…?
Held at an Egyptian Dancers angle or at a frightening, arm straight overhead height as they glide miraculously through a crowded room …never spilling a drop.

We won’t try to describe how precarious it is to tote a tray full of empty long-necked beer bottles through the same crowd on the return trip. A crowd steadily getting more inebriated, a crowd mostly concerned with its own pleasure. Empties are less stable than full bottles. What keeps them from falling off the tray? What keeps the drinks from spilling?

It’s a secret that ancient slaves figured out thousands of years ago and passed on to all servants bound or free and the secret is…

“They won’t spill if you don’t look at them”
…and they don’t!
A miracle of physics, of balance, based on blind faith that not looking at something keeps it steady.

Ah, yes… for a large part of the run of The Bar I hired the waitresses…

Stay tuned… I have stories and fables…

“Comin’ Through…!”

From The Bar ~ Make ‘Em Dance!

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

A saloon is a man’s domain by virtue of attendance. Men go to a saloon for the ‘good ol’ boy’ camaraderie…the sport talk… the loud dice play
There are always more men than women in a saloon but the men that are there keep hoping it will change. Although they seldom admit it, the men like the idea of having women around.

If you cannot find a way to attract women, a lot of women, to your saloon what you end up with is a neighborhood bar. Neighborhood bars are fine, don’t get me wrong but the difference between a neighborhood bar and a saloon that is a nightclub is the difference between a mom and pop grocery and a Supermarket.

Most women who go to saloons go there because they want to be entertained. They want to go out with their friends, male or female to see and be seen, to laugh and have a good time. Maybe even go home with someone for some joyful carnality. But, first and foremost, women go to a saloon for one thing…
Most go because they want to dance!

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Yonder comes the invading hordes…
‘Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud, Loud Music…’___ old country song

The customer comes into the parking lot, parks the car, gets out and goes to the line that has already formed. Inside the foyer they see a picture on the wall near the doorman. It is James Butler Hickok, “Wild Bill” himself, in a small 4X8 frame in the famous photo posed in his buckskins. Ivory handled Colt pistols thrust, butts forward, one on each side as was his habit and a long, unsheathed, butcher knife carelessly stuck under his belt.
His hair had been oiled and hung in ringlets his mustache trimmed… he looked Elegant.

“No Sidearms Permitted Within”

…was the admonition scripted beneath the picture…
Wild Bill in his finest hour reduced to a Xeroxed clipping in a dime store frame…posted at the front door of the kind of business he knew and loved…

The doorman is collecting a cover charge tonight and some patrons groan and challenge the need for this. They claim they feel insulted that they should have to pay. They have no real reason to put forth why they should be exempted.

There is not a mortal living who does not think they deserve special treatment, particularly in places like this. Special treatment is, after all, status! Getting special treatment, like getting past the doorman without paying cover or having the bartenders call you by name, gave some people a sense of importance.

The truth is “They learn you by what you drink before they learn you by your name.”

There are some very creative lines used to try to get past the doorman without paying but none of them work because he’s heard them all. Besides, it’s a good band tonight. If they’re not on the Guest List they’re out of luck.
They pay their money and go in. By eight o’clock the band has started and if the patron is lucky they get a seat.

The waitresses are busy tonight so it might take a while for the drink to arrive at the table but they know it will eventually get served up.
Or the customer might try their luck at the bar. One way or another they find their spot and take it all in…

Much as the men may like music that’s really not why they’re there. They’re either on a date or they’re looking to meet someone.
Oh, some may say they are there ‘just to have fun’ but it is largely to see and be seen.

But deep down we all know why they’re there… they wanna get laid!
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Entering a saloon is almost like being thrust back into your high school years in that you want to be accepted and be deemed popular by joining a group of insecure, self centered creatures that are largely strangers.

It’s worse, actually.

In a Saloon the insecure, self centered creatures that are largely strangers have been Drinking…
____The Write Down Book

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It is always interesting to see how individuals scan a room.

Guys look around to see if they’re noticed. They ‘check out the stock’ as one guy put it. ‘Check out the babes.’

The boys do the Turkey Strut and try to catch a Hen…
Bird Dogging is rampant…
It is The Mating Dance in full force.

Women check out the competition. Then, if they’re On The Hunt, they will do their own version of ‘checking out the stock.’
Girls don’t worry about being noticed.
They are women.
Everyone notices them.

They watch the men doing the Turkey Strut with some amusement because the women know that no matter what a guy does or says it is ultimately a ladies choice. (Please refer to the Mighty Hunter Speech elsewhere in this series).

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The difference between a neighborhood bar and a night club is that at a live music Saloon will be having said live music.
Bands, if they’re hot, a DeeJay if they cannot afford bands or Karaoke if there are severe space limitations.
And if you do it right, women will flock to your saloon, all pretty and bright eyed and the men will follow in at LEAST a three to one ratio if not more.
Get that right and your saloon will make money!
Get it wrong and you just have a neighborhood bar.

The best band years for The Bar were when it first opened up. One of the bartenders, a lovely lass, tall, with waist length hair, was the Music Director and she did the whole thing, audition the bands live, book them, handle the publicity including print media.
She even ran the sound board but most of all, she would drive to the different clubs in the area and see who was playing where and what kind of draw they pulled in. Her “era”, if it could be called that was roughly two and a half to three years.

The Bar was brand new then, lean and sassy and, outside of a few bars that featured hardcore country, they were the only club for a twenty mile radius.

Those days had some really great bands. Most are gone now. Some are considered absolute legends. The musical lineup in the first days, actually the first couple of years, was varied indeed…

There were excellent rock and roll groups… Uncle Rainbow…Stu Blank and his Nasty Habits…50’s retro groups like Daddy-O… marvelous country western flavors like Back In The Saddle…Chuck Wagon and The Wheels… There was Flip Nunez, among others, for Jazz which was on Tuesdays…Country flavors on Wednesday, new bands on Thursday and full on rock and roll on Friday and Saturday featuring variations of covers of the music of the day…

All of those bands made people get out on the dance floor. Made ’em Dance!

Those bands are, for the most part, gone, now, of course. Saloon bands seldom got out of the ‘club circuit’ in those days and either burned out or graduated to a better paying circiut in their never ending quest for “The Big Time” of Fabulous Fame and Fortune.
Consequently, most of those bands are just names written in the dust. If you had never seen and heard them (and most of you have not) they are just that…names.

Over time The Bar had to cut Wednesday and Thursday night music. There was no money in it after you staffed the crew, waitresses, bartenders and doorman. There was also the problem of attendance. The Bar was, after all, located in a small town. Not many local folks were in a position to ‘party hearty’ and go to work the next day and there was no reason for tourists to look The Bar up. The local people preferred to let it all out on the weekends. So the live music eventually got reduced to Friday and Saturday nights plus Jazz on Tuesday night.

The lovely who did the booking during those heady days eventually left (some say ‘escaped’) the bar business and went on to other things. Her position was taken by yet another young woman. It became clear that an era of sorts had passed. The new bartender/booker was not as successful in her bookings so she too packed up her tent and left.

Was her lack of success simply bad taste in music? Probably not.

The Bar had one built in flaw. It had a posted capacity of 180 people. Of course, on a good night this might get exceeded but not by a whole lot. Some people love crowds, some do not. It is hard to enjoy yourself in a saloon if you cannot sit and be comfortable at least part of the time. When you limit how many people can get into your place of business you limit your potential income. But still, it could be a struggle to keep your 180 patrons coming in steadily.

Some of the better bands knew they could get more money if they played a larger venue for obvious reasons. A larger venue meant more money at the door and in most places this money had a direct effect on what the band got paid. Some bands that played The Bar demanded and got a higher cover charge and just worked for the gate and did very well indeed but these bands were rare and you could count them on one hand.

In any case, T.O. had a budget, a limit to what he would pay bands and that often hinged on a cash plus part of the gate. Or nothing from the bar and the band takes the gate.
Some bands…and it eventually became most of the really heavy drawing bands…would no longer play there. It just didn’t pay them what they thought they were worth.

The bands The Bar could get still had some good music and excellent musicians but between the expense of the bands and especially the increasing local competition, the crowds could no longer be taken for granted.
Eventually the band booking duty fell to me.
I’ll start right off and admit to a weak spot when it came to booking bands. Looking back on it all it may have been something of a liability.
Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
I did not drive at the time. The problem this caused was that I could not go to other clubs and see bands in action. Audition them live. And more importantly, check out the crowd draw. See what they brought in.
I’m a musician. For a few years I played with the great and the near great as they say, along with a goodly portion of talented amateurs and local saloon bands. A few years of working in a music store gave me some diversity of exposure and I knew hundreds of musicians on a first name basis but that’s not good enough.

We will come back to my band booking chores in another chapter…

In the meantime, rememeber this…
The paying public wants one of three things from any live music they’re faced with.
They want it unobtrusive if it’s background music. Maybe that’s’ why they call it background music.
They want it perfectly played if in symphony.

In a live concert it must be spontaneous and exciting.

But in a saloon…
It must be entertaining at all times.
….but more importantly… if you want ladies in your saloon…
You must make ‘em DANCE.

From The Bar ~ Saloon Economics ~ Pricing

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

There are four pricings on liquor in most full service bars depending on the cost of the product used. “Well” is the lowest price. These liquors are usually found in the “speed rack”, the array of bottles kept in wire racks at bartender thigh level for easy access.
After that come your “Call” which may or may not be included in the speed rack depending on the saloon. Usually, though, “Call” brands were displayed so the customer could see and recognize the brand. “Call” is followed by “Premium” in pricing and sometimes “Super Premium.” which are progressively more expensive. These last two categories are sometimes kept in a visually exclusive area so the customer can feel his order has Extra Special Status.

Pour Cost

There is a thing called “Pour Cost” that is critically important to a saloon’s fiscal health. This is the calculative guide saloonkeepers use to figure out approximately how much it costs to pour each drink.

From the web we have this definition:

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“…Pour Cost – jargon for cost percentage – is a reliable indicator of profit/loss performance.
Pour cost is obtained by dividing the cost of depleted inventory by the gross sales generated over a given period of time. Because liquor, beer and wine sell at radically different cost percentages, each must be calculated separately for the process to have true significance…”

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To allow The Bar to apply this formula part of the closing bartender’s duty was to line up every bottle of alcohol emptied that day on the end of the bar. This is called the “Breakage.”

Here we have a little historical interlude…

The history of the word ‘breakage’ allegedly came about after Prohibition. It was a common practice in the early alcohol industry to re-use bottles or worse, refill an empty bottle having an expensive brand’s label with an inferior product. Laws were passed that required saloons to at least break the necks or shatter the empties at end of their service to make them unusable. Hence the term “Breakage.”

The empties are itemized on a clipboarded chart, brand by brand according to its rank in the call order. Beer tallies are by cases sold or kegs emptied as are the mixing liquids such as Coke and Tonic etc. These numbers are totaled up by the resident number cruncher, The Formula is applied and the end result is the Pour Cost.
Ideally, in an efficiently run saloon the pour cost would be around .22 or less meaning out of every dollar taken in, twenty two cents is spent on the actual amount of liquor used in pouring a drink.
Some saloons, like The Other Place opted for dispensing guns, a buttoned control that precisely measures the alcohol dispensed.
T.O. did not like dispensing guns. He liked the idea of his customers actually seeing the label on the bottle as the drink is poured.

T.O.’s pour cost was never anywhere near the ideal.

Pay attention, kiddies… Pour Cost and Profit… is the true Bottom Line. That which actually determines the Rise and Fall of a Saloon.

There are three ways to dispense liquor using a Bartender.
      You have your metered guns. The most precise and controllable. Also the most impersonal.
      You can have a bartender use a measuring cup called a “jigger”.  The ‘jigger’ is a double sided metal measure. One cuplet measures one ounce and the other side measures and ounce and a half. A shot glass is a more attractive way of measuring the amount poured. Some shot glasses used for this had a white line that the bartender would of course pour past that line for effect.
      Or you could have your bartender pour the drink without any measuring devices at all.
    This is called “Free Pour”.

All pouring was assisted using special spouts “pour spouts”, inserted into the neck of the bottles that are designed to keep the flow of liquid steady and controlled no matter at what angle the bottle is held. It uses the simple physics of routing the liquid through a tube narrower than the open neck of the bottle. This allowed a truly skilled bartender to vertically up-end the bottle and vary the distance the liquid actually flowed in impressive flourishes to delight the eye. The spouts were designed to make a little cheerful sounding, bubbly noise, as they dispensed liquor. In reality they were still dispensing the same amount of liquid that would be dispensed if poured in a more staid, measured, method.

Free Pour, to the viewer’s eye, looks to be more generous than a measured amount, carefully poured, using the jigger/shotglass method and certainly more interesting than that generated by a dispensing gun.

Even so, a skilled Free Pour actually dispenses the same amount if the gun is calibrated to the industry standard.. Notice the word “skilled”. I’ve used the word ‘skill’ a few times already because skill and being skilled is extremely important. People tend to ignore that word but in this case, skill affects the money line.

The Bar and The Other Place and most of the local saloons were expected to pour an ounce and a half of liquor when a drink recipe called for a “jigger” or “a shot” of alcohol. Free Pour was the ability, nay, the skill, to pour that ounce and a half without using a ‘jigger’, shot glass or other measuring device and come up with exactly an ounce and a half of booze in the drink.

At The Bar Free Pour amount was measured by cadence, usually by counting to four in one second increments.
Bartenders in training were given an empty liquor bottle and a pour spout and sent home to practice until they got Free Pour down correctly.

A visually clever way to test this was to pour into a brandy balloon glass and, having done so, tip the glass gently so it lies on its side.
A perfect ounce and a half Free Pour will go to, but not run over, the edge of the glass. This is a clever technique visually but a better test is more realistic. That is to Free Pour into different sized containers, with and without ice, then measuring the results in a measuring device of known value… a shot glass or jigger… to see just how accurate the bartender’s pouring wrist is.

There were problems with a Free Pour. Some people never got the hang of it and either wasted booze or shorted the customer. Neither was good for business and it didn’t help the bottom line.
It’s amazing how complicated some people can make counting to four. Equally amazing how some cannot achieve this simple act at all. If a bartender didn’t work well under pressure of a crowded, loud, night the Free Pour (and the Pour Cost) could be affected adversely.

The bartenders hated to be denied, however, and regarded having to use a shot glass to pour a drink to be like using training wheels on a bike. They also felt they could do better with tips using Free Pour because it looked more generous than scrupulously measuring using a gadget. This is particularly true if the bartender has sparkle and knows how to flourish and exploit the time it takes the pour to finish.

A well executed Free Pour was an asset but a bad one was its own trap because seasoned observers knew how to count to four too and no one likes to be short poured…

If your bar indulged in Free Pour you had a very real danger of over-pouring by a bartender looking to increase the tip factor by appearing to favor a customer.

“Have a Drink On The House!”

Pour Cost is affected by pouring ‘free’ drinks because, of course the product is not free.

It is paid for by the owner.

Some comping is necessary for good public relations. In fact T.O. had a “P/R key” (for ‘Public Relations’) on his register to try to keep track of the “on the house” drinks. Most bars make a provision for this. This could be abused by a less scrupled bartender looking to increase their tips by pouring a drink “on the house” for a customer who tips well. Some would do this without even bothering to ring it on the P/R key.

Then there are your surveys:

“…according to a survey done by the California Restaurant Association, the average bar or restaurant loses–simply loses–25 percent of its beverage alcohol. One-quarter of the wine, beer and spirits in the average restaurant or bar simply disappears, due to spillage, over pouring, mistakes and outright theft…”
Ah, yes…theft! Sometimes…sometimes a bartender at The Bar goes a little farther to have more than a small effect on Pour Cost. And that was due to the fact that the bartenders had their hands on company cash. They handled T.O.’s actual money. Money is always a temptive thing…

Bartenders, being as they are, in a trade that is somewhat nomadic at times, occasionally produced someone who “skimmed a little,” using whatever rationale they conjured up to ease it in their mind.

And there were those who flat out stole from The House. If the pour cost was calculated weekly, thievery would eventually be spotted because it caused strange fluxuations in the Pour Cost. Even so, a skilled thief could cause a lot of damage in the long run before they were found out and terminated.

The losses incurred came, of course, out of the owner’s pocket.

After your Pour Cost is determined then comes The Open Palms.

Your city license, your state liquor license, cabaret license, BMI/ASCAP licensing, state and local taxes, ‘contributions’ to Social Security and Workman’s Comp, liability insurance, lease/rental of the actual premises, such money spent on necessities as utilities, gas, garbage disposal, ice machine servicing, refrigeration costs. Quite a list of hands wanting to get paid First.

Then comes your inventory. In California, if you ran out of a certain brand of booze you couldn’t shop the local stores for the best price. No. You had to buy from a state licensed supplier.

Inventory could be even more costly if your saloon, like The Bar, included food service.

You must also add extraneous repairs as might be needed which include the obligatory visit from your local Roto-Rooter four times a year to snake out the toilets.

Lest we forget there must be salaries paid to the crew. And with that comes all the fun and taxes that come with payroll.

After all that is paid and/or accounted for the amount left over, if any, is profit.

From The Bar ~ What Kinda Beer Ya Got?

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

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Beer is a very popular beverage. Sometimes, particularly during the football season, one would think from looking at television that beer is a major part of the national GNP.
There are all kinds of beer. “Boutique” beers made in mini-breweries, imported beer, domestic beer. There are light beers, dark beers, stouts, ales and pilsners. There is canned beer, bottled beer and beer on tap. Some of the brands have “Lite” versions. The list can be endless.
There are some saloons that specialize in beer. They can have beer menus that look like small novels and an array of tap handles that look like a mini forest of ceramic and tin.
The Bar had a smaller roster of beer. After all, they were a “full bar” dispensing a variety of alcoholic choices and could not dedicate themselves exclusively to those who think fun starts and ends with beer.
Still, they had a respectable list of choices that changed from time to time as T.O. (who was one of those who really Did believe fun started and ended with beer) liked to keep things interesting.

I wasn’t a beer drinker. I favored bourbon, particularly Jim Beam or, for variety, brandy. I wasn’t one to experiment with brands because I was one of those who tended to be brand loyal. Being of this persuasion I was endlessly amused to see an oft repeated movie we call…

What Kinda Beer Ya Got?
It goes like this:

The customer comes in, full of good humor, pulling out his wallet and approaches the bar.

The bartender opens with…
“What can I getcha?”
“What kinda beer ya got?”
“What kind do you want?”
“What kind ya got?”
So the bartender recites the litany of beers in stock, sometimes twice, since the list entailed almost twenty brands.
The customer thinks for a minute, and asks for a brand not on the list.
“You got ______?”
“No, we don’t have ______ “and runs through the list again.
“You don’t have _______?”
“No.”
“Gimmie a Bud.” (pronounced: “Buuudd..”)
Now, of course, instead of ‘Bud’ it may have been Coors or some such but it was almost always something very common, a brand usually one seen on TV and seldom was one of the more discerning of the listed beers.
I watched this and saw how an indecisive seeker of suds could hold up production on a busy day or night so I had a brainstorm.

I had a local carpenter cut some slats of thin plywood about two inches wide and a foot long. I painted these black and using white stick-on letters I could put the names of the different beer brands on them. I rigged a way to hang these slats ladder-like from the center archway, clearly visible from anywhere in the room.
This made things ever so much easier for the busy bartender or waitress but it wasn’t a total cure.

There was always the customer…

“What kinda beer ya got?”
The bartender points at the list. “Everything on that list.”
The customer squints at the list.
“You don’t got ___?”
“No.”
“Gimmie a Bud!”

T.O. eventually put in keg beer. He had a cooler built outside of the building that held six kegs and fed the beer in through lines. He did not sell beer by the pitcher because that kind of sale could attract a certain crowd he wanted to avoid. Rowdy biker types seemed to prefer pitchers and he thought pitchers encouraged excessive drinking. Finally, the pitchers took up far too much room in storage.

With kegs the question got modified:

“What kinda beer ya got?”
The bartender points at the list. “Everything on that list.”
The customer squints at the list.
“You don’t got ___?”
“No.”
“Whatcha got on tap?”
Same response, shorter list.
“You don’t got ___?”
“No.”
“Gimmie a Bud!”

Some customers, manly men they, preferred to drink their beer straight out of the bottle. With keg beer this was impossible of course. Some preferred drinking their beer out of a glass, pouring the bottled goods into said glass.

Now there is a bit of an art to pouring beer….

Drawing a “perfect” beer from a tap, while not requiring genius, does take a little bit of skill or at least some attention must be paid, to do it right..

Broadly, the regimen is:

You must first start with a glass clean of any residue, including soap film.
Place the glass at a 45 degree angle, one inch below the faucet. Do not let the glass touch the faucet. Open the tap spigot all the way in one swift motion.
After the glass has reached ½ full, gradually bring the glass to an upright position.
Let the remaining beer fill straight down the middle of the glass. This insures proper release of CO2 by producing a ¾” to 1″ foam head.
Close the spigot completely in one quick motion. A clever bartender will work on their finesse at the tap to give a bit of a show for the customer.

Being a good bartender is a bit of Show Biz, after all….

Sometimes a beer will come out of the tap foamy, particularly if the keg has recently been wheeled into position and hooked up. Some beers start out of the tap foamy even after the kegs have settled which requires the technique to be modified to some degree. In those cases, the tap had to be opened and run until the beer cleared then the glass put under the column of beer at a 45 degree angle as explained above. This wasted product but couldn’t be helped. This was costly. Expensive.

If the glass was not clean, particularly if it was not rinsed of soap residue the head would not stay on the beer but this was seldom a problem at The Bar. After they had been open for eight years or so T.O. put in a back bar dishwasher which helped move things along swimmingly but in the interim both stations had three sinks, one for soapy water, one for first rinse and one for second rinse, that sink having a tablet of bleach added as a disinfectant.

Bottled beer has it’s own technique to be poured ‘perfectly”. It’s not too different from the method of drawing beer in some ways. Basically it goes like this…
You still need to start with a clean glass. Some say the glass should be moistened. The Bar chilled their glasses as a rule and when the glasses hit the open air moisture would condense and apparently fulfilled that requirement. Pour the beer slowly down the side of a tilted glass, resulting in a smaller head which allows more carbon dioxide to remain in the beer. If you hold the glass upright and pour straight into the glass, more gas is released, and a larger head will form.

Some people never ‘got it’ and the novice bartenders of course were the worse and if they wannabe’s didn’t get the hang of it quickly they were discouraged from a career in “mixology”. Most soon got the hang of it and even I, not being a beer drinker, could draw a perfect beer every time in the rare times I was called upon to do so.

But even with the finessed technique and the care and attention paid to making the proper pour the original conundrum still applied…

“What kinda beer ya got…?”

From The Bar~ The Great Bengal Pack-In

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

The Great Bengal Pack-In

When The Bar first opened the surface of the bar didn’t have any special construct at the waitress stations beyond the polished brass stanchions designating each of the two stations or “stalls” as they were sometimes called. Even those were not original, but “after market” add-ons.

As on all well designed bars there was a solid strip of molding about an inch and a half high running along the edge of the bar on the customer side. This was a ‘spill rail’ intended to keep accidental spills from drenching the customer. This same rail required the waitress lift their trays up over the obstacle as they took out their orders because when Brunswick originally designed those bars waitresses were a rare thing. No provision was made for someone sliding a trayload of drinks around and off the bar.
This problem was relieved somewhat by two rectangular trays inverted and laid side by side but neither the bartenders nor the waitresses liked this arrangement. The trays slid around and the girls still had to lift their trays over an inch of rail to get into the fray. But that’s what they had and that’s what they had to work with.

When The Bar first opened T.O. only had your basic television hookup. Nothing fancy. A 21 inch television at each end of the bar and a basic cable hookup. The relatively small satellite dish of today did not exist in an affordable form in the latter part of the twentieth century.

To generate more business T.O. decided to invest in a big screen and a projector. He knew very well that most of his male patrons were sport junkies and there was money to be made catering to the NFL broadcasts. The San Francisco 49ers were just starting their Golden Era under Coach Bill Walsh and T.O. was one of the first to locally put in a projector to capitalize on this.
His first projector was a heavy, cumbersome, mobile floor model which proved to be difficult to set up for each use but at the time it was ‘state of the art’ and was an impressive hookup indeed, particularly in a small town bar of the day. Later on he wisely installed a ceiling mounted version. This was much easier to operate since it did not need delicate positioning and focusing each time it was turned on and eliminated the shadow block made when someone walked in front of the floor model. But for this part of the tale, he still had the floor projector.

It is 1981 and after years of mediocracy, the Forty Niner’s are on a roll. Bill Walsh has the magic chalk when it comes to diagramming plays on the board and in the field and he has a team made of men that were the stuff of legends.

I was personally ambivalent about football…I was ambivalent about any major sport actually, having grown up in a home where other things were more important than athletic prowess. I wasn’t very vocal about it. Because, in a saloon, sports means an opportunity to make money. Even a sports know-nothing like me knew that, particularly when it came to football, a certain type of madness descended on the nation and held it firmly in its grip.

Sunday football games made good money for the bar on a day when not much money normally came in. Sunday, after all, was for most, a time to rest and quit what Satchel Paige called “the social ramble.” The football madness would not be denied, however and T.O. was determined to encourage it and profit from it. His big screen was one of the few in the area. The Bar was ready for Game.

It paid off well. They came, they drank, they ate, the went home. And the next Sunday they would repeat the cycle. T.O. had chosen an auspicious year to focus on the football season.

As the Forty-Niners chances for the Super Bowl improved the crowds got bigger A taste of victory was in the air.

There was a crucial Must Win game coming up for the 49ers that no one would be able to see it on local TV. It was against the Cincinnati Bengals and, being a local game, it was blacked out on local area cable television feeds in keeping with The Rules of the day.
What to do?

Now, as I have said, satellite dishes in those days were not these compact little bowls of today that you can fit on the roof of anything stronger than a cardboard box. No, they were great, clumsy things that looked like old fashioned WWII radar screens seen in History Channel or the radio telescopes used in astronomy.
But T.O. had an idea…a brilliant idea…

T.O. lined up a Muscle Crew…an unprecedented four bartenders… plus a bar back and bade me to put four waitresses in the lineup. Most of the creew, including myself, thought he was going a bit over the top in this but…he was the boss…
Quick fix foods were made ready in the kitchen… nothing more complicated than a hamburger would be offfered and nacho chips were laid in.

T.O. rented a couple of long folding tables and put them on the dance floor taking care not to block the cone of light needed by the floor projector. He rented some folding chairs ‘just in case.’

T.O. then put the word out that the Niner’s vs. Bengal’s game would be shown on The Bar’s big screen. He couldn’t legally advertise it in the papers since it was blacked out but he did a big time verbal campaign. He was hoping to get in under the radar and gambled that word of mouth would do the trick for him. His competitors (particularly The Other Place), had they known about it would have been amazed at the chutzpa!

They must have known about it since we shared some customers. But The Other Place did nothing. They didn’t have a big screen yet and besides, how could T.O. promise such a thing being that he didn’t have a satellite and the game was blacked out?

They did not know that T.O. had contacted a satellite company and rented a satellite truck with plans to set up in the parking lot on Game Day.

By law The Bar had to post a sign of how many patrons were allowed in the place according to the local Fire Marshall. The Bar was deemed to have a legal posted capacity of 180 patrons. T.O. figured he might get 200 crammed into the place, maybe a few more…

On Game Day a light rain was falling. There was a heart-stopping moment when the satellite vendor was late. T.O. had some anxious moments. But the driver had taken a wrong exit on the freeway and arrived in plenty of time to set up.

The customers were coming in early. They started coming into the parking lot even as the satellite dish was being configured. But before long the tables closest to the screen were filled, the waitresses hauling trays of drinks, the register ringing merrily. The kitchen was selling burgers and nachos and eveyone was enjoying the pre-game festivities.

And still they came…

Now the bar was full, too. As were all the round tables and smaller cocktail tables. The Bar Back and I were setting out folding chairs so we could double and triple the patrons at the tables.

And still they came…

Someone had the novel idea to actually sit on the bar itself.
Next thing you know there were tiered seats.
A row of people sitting on the bar.
A row of people sitting on barstools
A row of people sitting on chairs in front of the bar stools.
People were sitting on top of the electronic games.
People were clinging to the room dividers.

They were everywhere…

And somehow, through it all, this mass of sports starved humanity minded their manners and thoroughly enjoyed what they knew to be a very special game and at the same time a risky situation that everyone knew could go any number of ways. No one wanted to mess it up.

This was, after all a room full of mostly guys drinking mostly beer and steadily getting more inebriated as time went on.
But there were no fights. No arguments. No macho posturing. Nothing but people enjoying the moment. I think they all understood that, to enjoy the game, all must cooperate and mind their manners.
The kitchen dishwasher was going full tilt all day washing glasses because there was no way the bartender could handle washing glasses and make drinks too. The Bar Back and myself took turns running racks of glasses to the kitchen and back.
The Bar Back was kept busy hauling ice, cutting fruit, stocking booze, emptying the trash cans. The beer was consumed in truly awesome quantities. I was mother-henning my saucer eyed flock of waitresses, emptying their wastebaskets, giving encouraging words… At times I wondered, as they pulled away with overloaded trays, if they would make it back to the bar as the disappeared into the happily cheering sea of humanity.
There was always a line to the restrooms and I had to restock the toilet paper in both restrooms twice before the day was out. This in a place where each bathroom stall held four rolls.

Someone did a head count at half time. It was truly incredible.
The crowd numbered just over three hundred people!
No one could quite believe it.
When halftime finally arrived some of us stepped outside for a little relief. There was a light rain but light enough that it was almost a mist and quite refreshing to tell the truth.
Thar I wuz, taking a break when I was approached by a newspaper reporter, a woman, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“You have too many people in there.” she said.
“Yes ma’am.” said I.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do? Why, I ain’t gonna do anything ‘about it’ I’m just going to try to get through the day without having my crew collapse on me.”
“Well, it’s illegal to have that many people in there.”
“Missy, since we’ve been out here in the parking lot I’ve seen three cop cars and a fire truck drive by apparently disinterested in the proceedings here. I think they know better than to try to disrupt what you see before you.” “Now it may be true that we’re in violation here” I continued, “but you’ve seen for yourself that the crowd is well behaved. This is a happy crowd. This is a crowd that knows that it must be ‘ruly’ to take in the viewing of the game today. Ergo: ‘ruly’ is required. UNruly is out and Not To Be Tolerated”.
“Lemme tell you something. This country was founded on people fed up with governmental rules and regulations. But I’ll tell you what you, as a staunch, law abiding citizen can do.”
“What?” she asked.

“When the game starts again,” I said, “You can go pull the plug on the TV. I’ll even show you were it is. ”

“Yep. You go ahead and Do that. Make your speech about how wrong it is how illegal and immoral it is and pull the plug on that game for god and country. Of course you realize something don’t you?”
“No, what?” she asked.
“You’ll never make it out of there alive. They’ll git you before you make three steps to the door and tear you to pieces. You’re better off waiting around and seeing if this turns into a disaster. Then you’ll have your real scoop.”

And so the game resumed and to everyone’s great joy, it was the best kind of football….exciting and with no clear winner until the last minutes of the fourth quarter. It was a Niner’s victory, chiching their shot to what eventually became their first Super Bowl win and the start of the team’s Golden Era of Walsh and Montana. There were celebratory rounds bought and consumed and the crowd filed out without incident, joyfully exhausted and ready for a nap. The crew was burnt and battered but happy because the tips spiked in celebration.

All of my flock survived little the worse for wear if you didn’t mind the thousand yard stare.
No injuries, no disasters, and a rarity…a positive article in the local papers about a saloon, our saloon and the resourcefulness, nay, the vindication, of T.O.’s well thought out success.. It was a glorious day in the history of The Bar.
Ten days later two faux marble slabs were delivered and installed at the waitress stations, paid for out of the profits of the Great Bengal Pack-In. Roomy, smooth surfaces replaced the uneven, upside down trays and made solid, non-shifting take-off ramps level with the top of the spill rail molding on the bar. They were the final touch in making the bar labor friendly for bartenders and waitresses alike.
After the slabs had been there for two weeks no one could remember what it was like when they were not there.
But those who had attended the Great Bengal Pack-In never forgot it.

It was a memorable day…
…everyone was glad when it was over…
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Paper Dolls by Vann

This one was an early effort. The airbrush was off in the future and I was working largely with ink and watercolor pens on card stock. I had a fascination with yellow eyes. I had seen eyes so light brown they were golden on one of my guitar students and I never forgot them. Every once in a while would make some in a painting with yellow eyes. Very distinctive. The special ink for lips had been discovered and put to use…

This is an unsigned work since Paper Dolls by Vann had not yet come into being.
But it would…