Bartending stuff

[xiphias]

Last night, I, and perhaps forty or fifty other people, worked an event at the home of Robert Kraft (the owner of the New England Patriots). When you have events that large, you have a primary caterer/event planner who uses all their people, and then they subcontract out to other agencies for the rest of it. So there were people there from The Catered Affair (the main caterer), and Caterstaff, for whom I work, and a bunch of other agencies. So I saw some folks I only see occasionally.

It was the main yearly fundraising dinner for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, which was nice, I guess, but, on the whole, events that large aren't the most fun to work. I mean, unless you are a high finance/political influence groupie, you're not going to be able to celebrity-gawk (how many investment bankers can YOU recognize by sight? For me, I think the number is around zero). And there are only two types of events that large: "regimented enough that there is NO chance for creativity or using any of the skills that made you want to be a bartender in the first place," and "absolute godforsaken ohmygodgetmethefuckoutofhere clusterfuck."

Look, if the people running the event haven't worked out a timetable telling you, and every other person working there, where to be and what to do at every instant of the evening, it's going to be a disaster of epic proportions. And I mean that more-or-less literally -- it will be an event of which stories will be told in the oral tradition, waitstaff to waitstaff, for generations.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. Heroic efforts on the part of waitstaff can prevent problems caused by poor planning, or, more commonly, poor communication of the plan, from becoming disasters. Apparently, one of the bars in the dining room wasn't even set up when the bartender went to start working there -- that bartender managed to set it up from essentially scratch in ten minutes, just barely before the guests came in.

So you get those situations, too -- where some people manage to stave off disaster well enough that nobody, especially the guests, but including most of the staff, knows that there ever was a problem.

I'm sure that all of you who have been on the back-end of cons will understand more-or-less what I mean.

So, the Kraft event was, thankfully, mostly in the "boring" category. I did get to see people I don't usually see, and make up a drink for a lady who wanted something that we didn't have -- she wanted a Cosmopolitan, which we didn't have the ingredients for, so I squeezed a lemon wedge and two lime wedges into my shaker with a short shot of vodka (she wanted something "not too strong"), added a splash of orange juice and a bit more than a splash of cranberry juice, shook, and strained into a martini glass. She liked it and asked what it was. I asked her what her name was, she said, "Cory", and I explained that it was a "Cory."

She ordered five more over the course of the evening.

Also, one of the reasons I do flair bartending, even though I'm not that good at it -- I'm basically as successful when I fail as when I succeed. I was making up one of these things, flipping the shaker in the air, hitting my stride and being totally in the groove, and I caught the shaker perfectly, grabbed the martini glass in my free hand, and it went shooting out in front of me, under the bar, where the glass smashed with a distinctive-and-impossible-to-disguise "glass smashing" sound. One of the people in front of the bar totally lost it laughing. (And, for the record and due to no merit on my part other than dumb luck, the PLACE where the glass landed and shattered was my trash bucket.)

Because we finished up after midnight, it was clear that public transportation was going to be a rather iffy proposition. (In Boston, the trains stop running before 1 AM. I don't know why -- the bars don't close until 2, and lots of people work night shift.) Fortunately, one of the other people working there was giving rides to folks -- he lives in Methuen, which is in the northern part of Massachusetts, right near New Hampshire. I also live north of the city, although nowhere near that far. And I, and three other people, caught rides with him.

First, he dropped those three people off at various points near BU, which all three of them attend. Then we got on Rte 93 and headed north. Methuen is off of 93 North, but much farther than Melrose. So, I phoned Lis, borrowing his cell phone, and we decided that he'd drop me off at the 24 hour McDonald's right off of 93 in Woburn, which is pretty near Melrose.

When we came up with this idea, he was very excited, because he could stop for a McDonald's sundae. (You'll notice that they don't actually call them "ice cream sundaes", by the way. Nowhere on the menu does McDonald's claim that their sundaes and cones have ice cream in them. I don't know what the stuff actually is, but I like it.) I warned him that I couldn't remember if it was a genuine 24 hour McDonald's, or if it just had a 24-hour drive through with a limited menu.

It turned out that it was a limited menu, and he couldn't get ice cream, but we'd planned for that, and Lis had brought the rest of the cinnamon ice cream that we'd made in our ice cream machine. So that he'd still be able to get SOME ice cream in order for driving me.

Tonight, I worked at a bar mitzvah. I think I mentioned a while back that I'd worked at another bar mitzvah, where it was actually the caterer's family, so he was very nervous about making sure that everything was just right, because, well, it was his family -- if anything went wrong, sure, they'd forgive him, but he'd hear about it every single birthday and holiday for the rest of his life. And everything DID go perfectly, and Ruth and I helped with that, and he was really happy with us, and he asked for us specifically by name, for THIS event.

Because this event was ANOTHER of his nephews. And, again, it was still just as important to make everything go perfectly.

I was joking to Ruth, as we were setting up, that this was a lot more pressure than last night. I mean, what is Bob Kraft to me? What do I care if I spill a bottle of wine on some rich financier? But THIS guy had asked for us. Personally. And this was for his family.

See, THAT'S a lot more important. If I screwed up Bob Kraft's event, well, I'd just be "a bartender" who screwed up. If I screwed up tonight, I'd be "Ian Osmond" who screwed up.

Oh, just to make sure that nobody's worried, I didn't screw up. This bar mitzvah, like the last bar mitzvah, went perfectly.

But there were a number of things that were blog-worthy, I thought. First, Cocktail Umbrellas.

We had a bunch. And the caterer instructed us not to be stingy with them -- we had two boxes, and kids love cocktail umbrellas.

One kid, maybe nine or ten, kept asking us for extras. After he'd asked us for a spare cork.

He'd started by sticking a cocktail umbrella into the end of a cork. Then he'd stuck two more in the end of the cork, at angles, so there were three umbrellas sticking out.

He started sticking more in, carefully, at regular intervals and angles, and, by the time the event was over, he had an approximate geodesic dome out of cocktail umbrellas, stuck into a cork. He then asked for an empty wine bottle, but the sizing didn't work, so he ended up with an empty 20-ounce soda bottle, into which the cork fit, giving him a geodesic dome popping out of a soda bottle.

It REALLY looked cool. Okay, if I had a digital camera, I definitely would have a couple shots of it here for you-all to see; as it is, you'll just have to imagine it. And maybe pester a bartender for a cork and a few dozen cocktail umbrellas.

Toward the end of the evening, I heard something which made my eyes nearly tear up with the goodness of humanity. The DJ/MC who was running the kids' party said, "Okay! We're coming to the end of the evening, so this is the last contest! Over here, we have trash bags -- I want to you form into your teams, and whoever collects the most trash into your bags gets this prize!"

I have no idea what the prize was -- I could hear him but not see him. But I felt a lump in my throat, and deep love for that DJ.

And, to tell the truth, our breakdown and cleanup was pretty damned fast with so little random trash to have to clean up.

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I think your DJ/MC must be related to Mr. Franklin at my son's school who once promised a busload of second-graders that he'd give a nickel to any kid who fell asleep on the way back from a field trip. He was out, oh, $2.00, and I've never been on a quieter bus. Wouldn't work with older kids, but in second grade, a nickel still counted as money.

[redbird]

The next time I want a cocktail (which might be a couple of Thursdays from now, or it might be 2009), I think I want a Cory.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Man, you got me thinking about vodka drinks now. May have to make a run to the fruit stand this afternoon. Is 10 AM already 69° F out. Wouldn't be bad but there's no wind and our old adobe house only has heat; no cooling.