Door Guy Chronicles - 5/17/2013

Over the past few years I’ve definitely sensed the feeling of community in this city slip away ever so slightly from various aspects of life.  From the Googlers who slip up and down the peninsula in their fancy bus, treating this city and its residents like a company-paid hotel on a business trip, to the dudes at the Fillmore who don’t share joints - despite clearing my throat at LEAST three or four times (guh!); San Francisco’s once, “we’re all in this together” hand-holding circle, feels more like a thing of the past.  How hippies talk about free love and smoking weed with the mayor or whatever.  Yet the size of our community and undeniable coexistence is always shoved right in my face every time a handful of people I know catch a cold or the flu bug.  I think of every Muni ride, public restroom and handrail not as just a petri dish of zombie disease, but a common thread that brings us all together.  I mention this because as I started my shift on Friday I casually asked one of our bartenders how she was doing and she replied, without a moment of hesitation or an ounce of shame, “ugggghhh, so sick.”  I guess I had never given it a moment of thought, but bartenders can be like those Muni handrails or ATM machines in the TL, potential petri dishes that remind us we really do belong to a community.

That being said, the number of people a bartender could be responsible for infecting in a community like San Francisco is astonishing.  I can’t blame ‘em, because it’s a profession that does not ever guarantee money, and you gotta get that paper; it’s just a helpless inevitability - because, you know, it’s not like we’re going to stop drinking in bars.  But it is terrible that so many dollars and man-hours will be lost because you had your fancy cocktail garnished by the wrong bartender.  Wouldn’t it be great to somehow solve this problem?  I’m more of an idea guy, so I’ll leave the logistics to the stars and the tides, but how about setting up a Kickstarter to send sick bartenders home?  Perhaps every bar has an account that patrons can contribute to, when a bartender comes in sick, something will happen (logistics) and the SICKstarter money will become available to reasonably compensate that bartender and send him or her home.

While I’m counting my millions, here’s what went down at the bar last weekend:

• A very attractive lady dressed like she had swankier plans than to be at my bar, walked out of the bar, looked around, caught eyes with me and gave me the come-hither’iest look I've ever received.  She then proceeded to say, “can I ask you a question?”  Excited where this might be going, I responded with a nervous, “umm sure.”  Only to have her put her arm around me and ask, “does the corner market sell blunt wraps?”  This girl is trouble.
• Some dog-walker dude passed outside the front of the bar with two dogs whose hair was shaved and colored; one to look like a lion and the other to look like a parrot.  I’m not very good with dog genres, but the lion-looking dog was totally badass, and he knew it.
• A bachelorette party was going on inside and I overheard the bride-to-be tell one of the girls, “…and you’ll get wristbands for an open bar at the El Dorado (in Reno).”  Thus establishing the setting for either the best/worst wedding ever OR The Hangover 4.
• A girl walked up to the bar, showed me her ID in her wallet and then asked, “do I have to take it out?”  Which I then responded with the obligatory, “that’s what SHE said” in the schmucky terrible joke that just has to be made voice.  Either I didn’t sell it well enough, it was just that bad of a joke or she had no sense of humor, but she didn’t crack a smile or even acknowledge that something had been said.  Whatever, obvious “that’s what she said”-s need to be acknowledged.
• Someone left a pint of puke perfectly filled to the top on one of the tables.  This should have bothered me a ton, but for some reason it was kind of adorable and reasonably considerate.  The only move here is to pretend like everything is cool, throw the entire thing away and reflect upon it fondly.

Door Guy Chronicles - 4/19/2013

Here’s something that’s impossible to do, try living in San Francisco and not drinking on a Saturday when the sun is out.  Even when you’ve fully committed to some sort of booze-less activity, all it takes is the slightest, most half-assed suggestion of maybe, possibly thinking about perhaps getting a beer at some point - and I can’t drop my bullshit plans to go hiking quick enough.

This is a problem when you have to work Saturday nights at 8pm.

This Saturday was particularly terrible and I was doing a pretty terrible job.  By 11pm I was visibly wilting like a drunk flower and was really kind of in trouble.  The kind of trouble where nausea and exhaustion, are just the tip of your hangover setting in, and you still have a couple hours in survival mode before having to do all the gross stuff that’s part of closing a bar.  Then my boss, the owner, handed me a Redbull – and I was almost immediately brought back from the dead.  Not unlike a scumbag Jesus.  Or just a dude named Jesús.

Redbull; other than gamers and people who don’t drink or do drugs and weirdly overcompensate with energy drinks, who woulda thought?

On to the good stuff from the weekend:

• Someone made a Boston Marathon joke.  Very niche audience for that type of “way too soon for a joke” comedy.  I have a feeling the chick he was talking to still banged him though.
• Two couples who had been doing coupley things with one another: happy hour, dinner, hand-holding, etc. – as they walked in, the two dudes hung back and asked if I could hook up peyote.  Seriously, in how many cities does that question casually get thrown around?  Arizona seems pretty weird, so perhaps some terrible city there, but who knows.
• Rule: If you have a San Francisco address on your driver’s license, you do not get to complain about a 1:30AM last call.  You live here, you should know that’s the deal; and so help me god, if you don’t go straight to the bar when I give you this information and fucking dilly-dally instead – get an STD*, please.
• Some dude exited the bar extremely angry as I casually chatted with the owner.  We asked what was wrong, in an attempt to remedy whatever issue this guy was having, and he yelled out, “two girls have been in the bathroom doing coke forever.”  Not really much we could do or say, so we apologized.  I’ve been suspecting that sort of activity on the rise at our bar, but I didn’t want to seem complicit so I acted all aloof in front of the owner, that’s when he told me to check out the top of the aluminum paper towel dispenser in the bathroom at the end of the night.  Sure enough, the most disgusting dried powdery snot glue – you people.

*not one of the terrible ones though, I’m not an animal