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Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
The Chicago Pour...
I learned to tend bar at a family restaurant in Michigan. You had to be 21 to drink, but only 18 to tend bar in those days... 16 if you were related to the owner!
But I earned my stripes tending bar in the Gold Coast area of North Chicago, the busy nightclub district. At the restaurant in Michigan we used standard sized stainless steel shots to measure out the booze, but in Chicago that was considered too slow for the fast paced action in the clubs, so I had to learn to free pour. That meant learning to accurately pour the right amount of liquor into a glass simply by sensory input, and that took practice. A lot of practice. But once I got it, I was good, and years later I'm still good. I can pour a standard 1.5 oz shot quite reliably to this day. Or a 1.25 oz shot, whatever. Keep that in mind...
Since I was new in Chicago, and young... I had just turned 21... I didn't get the top gigs. Mostly I worked as a relief bartender in smaller, second tier bars, which would fill up with conventioneers and office workers looking for a reasonably priced buzz... the slightly sleazy kind of bar you stepped down to from the sidewalk, rather than up to, if you know what I mean. And the owners of these bars would watch you like a hawk to try to catch you stealing, and to make sure you weren't "giving the house away" by overpouring the drinks. And they'd check your sales totals at the end of the shift to make sure you were working hard enough. So in order to get booked into these relief slots you had to keep the owners happy. And that included using the Chicago Pour as much as possible.
What this involved was checking a new customer out and assessing how much you could get away with. If they were with some buddies and were out whooping it up, you knew you could get away with a lot over time. And if they already had a bit of a buzz on, you could get away with more, sooner. Then if you had good "pigeons" you'd pour a full strength first round, then gradually, with each successive round, pour less and less liquor for each drink. If a group was really whooping it up, I could get them down to half strength drinks in 3 or 4 rounds. And since the drinks are weaker as the night goes on, there's a tendancy for them to order more rounds in order to maintain their buzz. Once people have a drink or two in them, they can't really gauge how strong a drink is, so reducing the pour size carries very little risk, but it dramatically increases the profit margin for the owner, who then rewards you with more hours and better schedules. See how that works?
The Chicago Pour. Better living through chicanery!
b
I once called a bartender out for that. He short shotted my whisky sour. I know what a whisky sour tastes like with a shot in it. I know how much it burns. I've drank... a lot of them. And then he said he didn't short hot me. I went to that same bar a different time and was short shotted by a different bartender. I never went there again. They had a tendency to do it right for the first two drinks, then, they'd try and trick you.
They also tended to short shot people towards closing time. Good plan, actually. Less drunk people on the roads. I'd watch the pour and I could tell. Kind of like the way some restaurants add seltzer water to pitchers of "cheap" beer, as the night goes on and the tables gets sloshed.
I spent a couple of years tending bar in a local tavern with a mixed bag crowd that ranged from business people to bikers. We had everything from 18 year olds who would come in to play Space Invaders and drink quarter drafts (this is going back to when 18 was the legal drinking age) to a couple of gin & tonic drinking 80-somethings who lived a few doors down and were no longer allowed to drive so would use their walkers to get to our establishment for a "night on the town" every week or two.
One snowy Friday evening it was the usual crowd, and one of our bikers--I'll use his initials (yes, I still remember this guys name 30 years later--what does that tell you? ) JG was in a particularly interesting mood. He wasn't driving, his wife had already confiscated the keys and he was one of those people who had no argument about someone else driving at the end of the night. As a result, I had no problem serving JG whatever he wanted. After a few hours someone dropped a quarter in the jukebox and pushed the buttons for AC/DC's "Back In Black."
I was making a drink and noticed a pair of size 12's on the bar in front of me. I looked up and there was JG slowly stripping to the music. I think the only thing that kept his pants on was that he was too drunk to get his boots off first.
That wasn't the funny part.
The funny part was while a few other patrons helped him down and made sure he got redressed, the woman from our octogenarian couple had made her way over to JG and handed him $5, telling him it was a "tip" for the most excitement she had in 20 years. I laughed until my sides hurt. Every time he saw her after that he gave her a peck on the cheek, and I swear she cooed. I'm not sure what her husband thought of it, but he never seemed to mind.
Anyhow, I've got a lot of stories, but that one is probably my favorite.
I once called a bartender out for that. He short shotted my whisky sour. I know what a whisky sour tastes like with a shot in it. I know how much it burns. I've drank... a lot of them. And then he said he didn't short hot me. I went to that same bar a different time and was short shotted by a different bartender. I never went there again. They had a tendency to do it right for the first two drinks, then, they'd try and trick you.
They also tended to short shot people towards closing time. Good plan, actually. Less drunk people on the roads. I'd watch the pour and I could tell. Kind of like the way some restaurants add seltzer water to pitchers of "cheap" beer, as the night goes on and the tables gets sloshed.
There's a variation on this common bar scam which involves different sizes of shot glasses, usually kept under the counter where the customers can't see them. They look identical but one is 1 1/2 oz to the white line, one is 1 3/8, one is 1 1/4, etc. By pouring the liquor to the mark in plain sight, the customer is supposedly getting an honest pour, but by using progressively smaller measures the bartender can steadily increase the profitability of the drinks a customer is buying as the night wears on.
In the UK the legal penalties for short pours are fairly severe, so bars there often use liquor dispensers that pour a precise amount. Or they use a fixed size measure, typically a stainless steel cup with the measure capacity stamped into it, like "25 ml." These are held over the glass, and liquor is poured in until it reaches the top, then the shot is dumped into the glass. This is designed to ensure the customer never gets a short measure. Likewise pint glasses are filled to the top, with no head... or... the glass is oversized, with a pint mark on the side that allows for a head above the fluid fill line. The American style of filling a straight pint glass so that there is a big head on the beer, and it doesn't reach the top of the glass would earn a stiff fine in the UK, because it only contains about 14 oz of beer, rather than 16.
Liquor shot sizes differ between the US and the UK. Most bars in the US use a 1.25 oz or 1.5 oz shot size. A double shot, therefore, is typically 2.5 to 3 oz. In the UK, the most common shot size is the "thimble," of 25 ml = .85 oz. and a double would be 50 ml = 1.69 oz... which is why Americans often feel like a British drink is a bit "light." Places that deal with more international business trade sometimes use a .35 ml measure instead, to boost the drink size a little. .35 ml = 1.18 oz and a double is 2.36 oz. The biggest difference though, is that in the UK bars have a sign posted that tells the size of their liquor measure, while you rarely see such a notice in the US.
I spent a couple of years tending bar in a local tavern with a mixed bag crowd that ranged from business people to bikers. We had everything from 18 year olds who would come in to play Space Invaders and drink quarter drafts (this is going back to when 18 was the legal drinking age) to a couple of gin & tonic drinking 80-somethings who lived a few doors down and were no longer allowed to drive so would use their walkers to get to our establishment for a "night on the town" every week or two.
One snowy Friday evening it was the usual crowd, and one of our bikers--I'll use his initials (yes, I still remember this guys name 30 years later--what does that tell you? ) JG was in a particularly interesting mood. He wasn't driving, his wife had already confiscated the keys and he was one of those people who had no argument about someone else driving at the end of the night. As a result, I had no problem serving JG whatever he wanted. After a few hours someone dropped a quarter in the jukebox and pushed the buttons for AC/DC's "Back In Black."
I was making a drink and noticed a pair of size 12's on the bar in front of me. I looked up and there was JG slowly stripping to the music. I think the only thing that kept his pants on was that he was too drunk to get his boots off first.
That wasn't the funny part.
The funny part was while a few other patrons helped him down and made sure he got redressed, the woman from our octogenarian couple had made her way over to JG and handed him $5, telling him it was a "tip" for the most excitement she had in 20 years. I laughed until my sides hurt. Every time he saw her after that he gave her a peck on the cheek, and I swear she cooed. I'm not sure what her husband thought of it, but he never seemed to mind.
Anyhow, I've got a lot of stories, but that one is probably my favorite.
Here's another from the same place. As I mentioned, we had a really mixed customer base.
We had two customers that would meet for about two hours every night and get sloshed together. I don't think they were a couple, just great drinking partners.
She worked in a data processing center processing banking transactions on an overnight shift that began at midnight. He was the executive chef in a four star restaurant. Both of them were functioning alcoholics and chain smokers.
She would show up around 9:00 pm ready for work and start drinking. He'd join her around 10:00 usually still in his chef's clothing minus the hat and drink until we closed which could be anytime between midnight and 4:00 am depending on business.
As I had mentioned, he was an executive chef in a high end restaurant, and we were a tavern with a bar menu that included things like burgers and sandwiches. Now and then he'd wander back into our kitchen and create something delicious for the staff.
One night, the chef decided we should offer Manhattan clam chowder on the menu. A few other patrons said it sounded good. Our cook (who wasn't much of a cook--he also doubled as dishwasher, barback, and cleaning guy) didn't know how to make it. The chef made a list of ingredients and said he'd teach him in a few days.
Fast forward and the ingredients are in place. The chef went into the kitchen and they did all the slicing and dicing, and after an hour or so, you could smell clam chowder simmering on the stove.
The cook was ordered to stir it every five minutes and the chef came out and sat at the bar for a bit having a few drinks and a few cigarettes with his drinking partner. He then went back into the kitchen, only to come out a minute later, looking for his cigarette. It was no where to be found.
About 15 minutes later we started handing out bowls of chowder to see how the customers liked it. Positive feedback all around. Until his drinking parntner dipped into her bowl and spooned up--a cigarette butt.
Yup, somehow the chef had managed to drop his smoke into the pot and stir it into the mix.
I had wanted to eat at the restaurant he worked at for a long time. That changed my mind. Clam chowder never made it onto our menu.
I spent a couple of years tending bar in a local tavern with a mixed bag crowd that ranged from business people to bikers. We had everything from 18 year olds who would come in to play Space Invaders and drink quarter drafts (this is going back to when 18 was the legal drinking age) to a couple of gin & tonic drinking 80-somethings who lived a few doors down and were no longer allowed to drive so would use their walkers to get to our establishment for a "night on the town" every week or two.
One snowy Friday evening it was the usual crowd, and one of our bikers--I'll use his initials (yes, I still remember this guys name 30 years later--what does that tell you? ) JG was in a particularly interesting mood. He wasn't driving, his wife had already confiscated the keys and he was one of those people who had no argument about someone else driving at the end of the night. As a result, I had no problem serving JG whatever he wanted. After a few hours someone dropped a quarter in the jukebox and pushed the buttons for AC/DC's "Back In Black."
I was making a drink and noticed a pair of size 12's on the bar in front of me. I looked up and there was JG slowly stripping to the music. I think the only thing that kept his pants on was that he was too drunk to get his boots off first.
That wasn't the funny part.
The funny part was while a few other patrons helped him down and made sure he got redressed, the woman from our octogenarian couple had made her way over to JG and handed him $5, telling him it was a "tip" for the most excitement she had in 20 years. I laughed until my sides hurt. Every time he saw her after that he gave her a peck on the cheek, and I swear she cooed. I'm not sure what her husband thought of it, but he never seemed to mind.
Anyhow, I've got a lot of stories, but that one is probably my favorite.
Hilarious!
Man, there were a lot of things that were worse in the old days, but hanging out in bars (and drinking in general) is not one of them.
I don't recall any funny stories at the moment, but there was one guy who would come in and order a Corona, slam it down, then immediately order another. He would go through 4 or 5 Coronas in a matter of 3 minutes tops, leave, and then come back about an hour or so later and drink "normally". I never served the guy myself, but it was always amazing to watch.
____________________
There was a regular who would come in once a week. She wasn't bad looking, in her early 20s, wore nice perfume, yet, was overweight. She wasn't exactly upscale, but she either came from money or had a well paying job. Anyways, when she was sober or a little tipsy, she was a decent and nice person. However, her drink of choice was a beer that had an alcohol content of 9%, and she would drink 8 or 9 of them be the evenings end. She was known to be easy and would leave with, or attempt to leave with, most guys who gave her the time of day. But usually she would strike out and sit at the bar drinking. At some point, usually well before closing, she would begin to nod off at the bar, then, fully pass out while sitting up (I never witnessed her resting her head on the bar). She would just sit there, her mouth slightly open, sometimes snoring, and out like a light.
No one ever tried to wake her until it was time to close. It was so normal that even the customers didn't think twice about it.
Here's another story from Near North Chicago in the late sixties.
As the relief man for a couple of bars I worked a rotating schedule of days and nights between the two places. One place was a hangout for jazz musicians during the day, and it was dark and smoky and had an incredible jukebox. Working there was primarily a matter of keeping the regulars supplied with shots and beers. The other served food, and it got a good business for lunch that kept me busy until about 2, then there would be a lull until 4 or so when the after-work crowd started trickling in. That's when I would always be busy washing glasses and restocking the bar for the evening rush, with only an occasional customer to serve.
Although I usually only worked one or two day shifts a week at that bar, it didn't take me long to learn to expect a steady customer most days about 3. She'd walk in without making eye contact, and sit on a stool at the far end of the bar toward the back, light up a thin brown Nat Sherman cigarette, and order a martini, straight up. She'd slowly sip her martini, stretching it to last about an hour, maybe have another cigarette, pay for the drink with a nice tip, then leisurely walk back out onto the busy street.
She was, in a word, gorgeous and elegant looking. Always impeccably groomed, with long Veronica Lake blonde hair, big blue eyes, wearing high heels and a cocktail dress, she always seemed like she was on her way to some smart party with some ad agency guy from Michigan Avenue. Every once in a while somebody in the bar would walk up to her and they would have a brief conversation , which always ended with her shaking her head no, and him walking away alone.
She seemed shy and wasn't very talkative at first, and I was busy with my chores, so I didn't really chat with her much, and what little was said between us was all very superficial... "Nice weather," "Think it's gonna rain?", that sort of stuff. Then one day she ordered a second martini, and seemed a little sad, and she began to talk... and we began to talk... a little at first, and then more as the weeks went by. I didn't pry, but over time she opened up enough to tell me that she was a $200 per hour call girl, and that she stopped in for a cocktail as a break between her lunch date and her afternoon date. To give this some perspective, with inflation today that would be equivalent to about $1400 per hour. Very high end! No wonder she was always expensively dressed and very well groomed.
Then one day she surprised me by inviting me to a Sunday afternoon birthday party at her apartment, overlooking Lincoln Park. She said she was inviting the "real people" in her life, and since I was always so nice to her she'd like me to be there. So I went. Nice place! Expensive building! But not much furniture, and no decor. The other folks there were a motley collection of waitresses and hair dressers and delivery truck drivers and musicians, but the strangest of the strange was her "boyfriend." He was the epitome of cliche pimps, with flashy clothes and winklepicker boots and a broadbrimmed hat... and a switchblade stilletto in his vest pocket that he used to pick his teeth and nails with!
I stayed a while, had some champagne and birthday cake, shared some laughs, then had to leave to go to work.
Not too long after that I moved to another neighborhood, changed jobs, and I lost track of her. But I'll never forget her. She was shy and had a sweet personality, and movie starlet good looks, and if you saw her on the street you'd never guess what she did for a living. She was one of a kind.
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