"¶" "[audience chatter, projector]" "[bar commotion]" "[man] So, thanks for everything." "Alright, that's what's left in the kitchen." "We did a pretty good job, you can see at the end of the night, the last thing we did obviously was shots." "[sniffs]" "That was Bob, because it was Rumple Minze." "That was me because it was a vodka." "Stoli Ojranj was for Phil." "Stoli O was for Paulie." "Uhm, but uh yeah, I forgot Paul was here. [laughs]" "¶" "Craft bar tending is back." "And I like that." "[ice shaking]" "The cocktail revolution has been going on for five or six years now." "But really ten or twelve years ago it really started to come together." "A lot of these bartenders are so influential now." "The New York Times writes about them." "They get flown on trips around the world." "We're right at this stepping point at this movement now, getting everyone around the world excited about cocktails." "People want to know what Dale DeGroff has to say." "They want to know what Jimmy has to say." "[man yelling] Welcome!" "You're just going, who are these people?" "They are awfully serious." "About some awfully arcane things." "People are considering ingredients and ice and spirits and details." "Great bartenders they mix a drink the way a scientist would a Bunsen burner." "We look at our craft." "Bring it back to the beginning." "It's all just the way the alchemists, that mad scientist idea that people have." "It's a show every night." "The lights go down." "The stage is set." "The bar is the biggest stage in the world and your audience changes every night." "¶" "There should be a drink column in every newspaper in America." "There should be shows on T.V." "Being a bartender." "It's all social." "I mean, that's an art." "It's nice to see it sort-of growing and getting a little bit bigger." "Because it has been sort-of a little club." "Until cocktails become a recognized culinary art it will remain a sideshow." "To be a bartender at this particular time... is extremely exciting and special." "¶" "[ice shaking together] [traffic sounds]" "My house here." "My home sweet home." "Yes, I'm officially in the house." "I've got to open." "It's a..." "long elaborate process." "Starting with me." "Ending with a guy coming in at six." "Every now we close at four, we have a..." "We have a porter who comes in, cleans up everything." "Then we have a second porter that comes in and basically re-stocks our bar." "Re-stocks everything we used." "Me, I'll be here all night." "And I probably won't be home until about" "I don't know, five thirty, six o'clock." "So it's a pretty long shift but..." "Hey, if you want to dance, you gotta pay the band, right?" "¶" "Well the things is that you are... preferably using, uhm, grunt work." "For... some quiet time." "Where you remember why you're here for." "You kind-of plan out your night." "You are not just opening doors and like, let's see what happens." "You're setting yourself up to be available." "Uh, there's a lot of psychological and emotional preparations that go into it." "You have to be in the right state of mind, essentially." "To tend bar at the highest level, is to serve people." "Once you're stuck behind the bar you have to put aside you know, the problems you're having paying your rent." "to the fight you just got in with your girlfriend that you're going to continue at two in the morning when you get done." "May favorite thing to do is come in even earlier than I need to." "Do all that stuff." "Get all that stuff out of the way." "And then take a nap." "If I can." "The first thing I like to do is..." "What I like to call the cosmetics." "It's just set the bar up like the way it looks when we're open." "When you step to your bench, to your workstations it's like a cockpit." "Where you have everything you need right there." "You have the glass freezer right behind you." "You have three grades of ice in front of you." "You have your fruit chilled." "You have everything cut." "Your mint picked." "So that when it starts, when you get into the rhythm." "It's just you and me, baby." "Let's rock n' roll." "[traffic ambiance]" "First bucket of ice goin' in." "[ice pours loudly]" "To set up the bar, this is probably one of the easiest bars in the world to set up because we do most of our work at night." "We bring up a cash drawer, and for all intended purpose if we get one bucket of ice, we're ready to put a drink." "and if a customer comes in while I'm setting up they also know where the ice machine is so it wouldn't surprise me if someone came in and grabbed a bucket and brought up the first bucket of ice for us." "We just started our twenty seventh year here." "Uhm, I've been here twenty two years, actually a little bit more now." "And, you know, sixteen, seventeen years as an owner." "[door unlatches] This Bilco door, believe it or not, almost truly signifies the opening of the day." "Because all our customers driving by on the main road right up there, as soon as they see these Bilcos open they know that there's somebody here and that the possibility of getting a drink is pretty good." "I could come here on a Sunday morning and take a look around see how many cigarette butts are down here and know if we were busy or slow." "Our core group is definitely people who grew up in the area." "And even if they don'y live in Westport and they're in the surrounding towns or whatever, they still come here." "Uhm, around the holiday, anyone who ever grew up here if they're coming home to see family and fancy stuff like that, they will stop here, there's no doubt about that." "This is our number one selling cocktail, the Amelia." "There's people who bartend to pay rent, and that's it, you know?" "Which is fine." "There's people that call themselves uh..." "What's that funny word?" "Mixologists." "The are geeks that usually use the jiggers and stuff like that." "And they take forever to make your drink when you need to get these drinks out." "Then there's the bartender, which we like to consider ourselves." "Where uhm..." "Take the elements of mixologists that know his recipes, that knows his cocktails." "You add a little bit of the sage, which is the wise man." "The one who uh..." "The one who knows... the boundaries." "The one who knows the situational." "Is aware of everything." "And then there's the rockstar." "The one who likes to have good time." "And make sure everyone else is having a good time." "[laughs, inaudible]" "¶" "Sometimes we feel we have got to help people who are trying to create this world." "They're not happy with the world we got." "They see some remanance of the past" "Seen through the prism of a cocktail glass is like" "Let's get that kind of place back." "Let's get that kind of drink back." "Let's get that kind of bartender back." "And maybe we can, you know, bring it all back to a uh... a more convivial era, that we lost somewhere along the way." "The... cocktail is..." "Sort-of of America's gift to the world of beverage alcohol, where it is our cultural tradition." "The cocktail, as we know, is a composite beverage made of parts." "We as a people, in fact are made up of people that came from all around the world." "And when they came here, they brought with them" "Whether it was grain alcohols, or liqueurs, or beer or whatever." "And those things all ended up accumulating in one glass and we called it the cocktail." "And by the eighteen eighties, we have what we call" "And it was that era, that we still look back to, at the cocktail lounges of today." "America's relation to drinking before prohibition was extensive, it, you know, it went back to the first colonial days." "It used to be that the bartender was the royalty of the working class." "You know, he was the banker and the judge, and you know whatever you needed him." "That was the bartender." "He was the personal trust." "Bartenders were pretty much the rockstars of their community." "They were the most important people in the town." "Jerry Thomas is really considered to be the father of the American bar tending profession." "Because he was the first guy in 1862, who actually wrote these recipes down." "And his book was published." "It was called "How To Mix Drinks" or" ""The Bon Vivant's Companion."" "And it became an instant classic." "It was repeated in edition, after edition, after edition." "¶" "Starting in the Eighteen Nineties, you really saw change in the cocktail." "Bartenders suddenly had a new part of their job." "Now they had to invent drinks." "When prohibition came, it shut most of the creativity down." "And pet him so much booze, if he's liable shall I down in a drunken stupor." "Higher for sire!" "¶" "I would say the story of prohibition is one of un-intended consequences." "When you look at it, it's an idea that wash't as crazy as it might seem when it started." "But everything went to hell really quickly." "When prohibition hit, basically the best bartenders in cities who wanted to continue on with their trade, they went to" "Cuba, they went to France, they went to England." "They went to Tijuana." "They basically left America." "Prohibition really put a stop, uhm, to any kind of drinking culture that was public and celebrated." "And that was when the craft of the bartender, and the cocktail culture, died." "[street traffic]" "There was a wise man who told me, uhm, when I was buying this place." "He said, you know, Steve, all rods lead to Dunville's." "You know, it's that old saying, if you park yourself, you know, in one place in Manhattan and you sit there for a certain period of time, eventually everybody in the city is going to pass you." "Uhm, that's kind-of like here." "Most of my friend are like married, they have kids..." "Families... and I'm single still." "I feel like Dunville's is... like a home away from home." "It's like family to me." "Go team." "It's the only bar that I'll come to by myself." "How about a Heineken?" "No charge." "We're out of Beck's." " Out of Beck's?" " Yeah." "Thank you guys for coming in." "I appreciate it." "A great place to meet people." "The only place to meet people." "All the other places the people are boring." "You know, the places are boring." "What goes on is boring." "It's never boring in here." "The employees and the customers all become friends." "They socialize together." "They go on vacations together." "The go skiing on weekends together." "The connections through here..." "Uhm... are amazing." "[bar patrons] Hip, hip, hooray!" "Restaurants and bars and the "joints and neighborhood places." "Aren't just places to eat and drink." "They've become cornerstones of their community." "The clock stops ticking." "You're here to have fun." "You're here to enjoy someone's conversation." "You're here to enjoy being with people." "You're here to maybe watch the bartender, have some food, or whatever it is, but relish, you know, relish in that moment." "I don't want my customers to see cars going past them and be reminded that they're in the middle of New York City." "It's rainy out there, it's hot out there, it's snowing out there." "In here it's nice." "By creating that kind-of sexy mystique that the night is young and so are we, but yet, anything can happen." "Anything is possible." "¶" "Employees Only is the greatest date bar in the world." "When I have friends or family in town" "I always take them to Employees Only." "I" " If it's like my mother, I'll take her earlier in the day." "Employees Only is on of those kind of bars where you think but you can't." "You'll end up there three or four hours later" "Yeah, you go into EO... you're not getting out, you know." "[laughs]" "With our partners we opened Employees Only in 2004." "Uhm, since then we have become the busiest cocktail bar per square foot, in the country." "This is considered to be one of the first speak-easy style bars and restaurants." "We consider our establishment to be a well class neighborhood joint." "Correct." "[ice being shook]" "I try to focus on the person that I'm making the drink for." "I try to make this cocktail be a bridge between us." "It is for me a creative process." "It's not just the measurements." "that goes into the cocktail, that makes it divine." "For me, the favorite part of the cocktail." "The whole cocktail building process, the execution, is the last drop." "That blends into the surface and creates that ripple effect in the glass." "and then the garnish comes in and it's done." "It's like the last chord of the song, you know." "The whole band just like comes to this crescendo and then the last chord finishes it off." "I'm going to change into something more comfortable." "Thank you." "And I put on a bar jacket, a uniform." "So this is our office." "Here you can see the Employees Only progression from day one to now." "This is me when I was in a rock band in the eighties." "I had never, ever imagined myself to be in anyway involved in the restaurant business." "It was" " In my case, it was just a necessity since immigrated up to the United States from Serbia, from Belgrade." "Back home at that time, you know, times were pretty tough." "Civil war was going on." "Not the preferred surroundings, you want to be." "I had a friend, uhm, offer me a job to become a car salesman." "And I sucked." "I sucked as a car salesman." "Then they fired me and that's the biggest favor anybody ever done to me professionally." "[loud bar commotion]" "Dushan, at Employees Only, was one of my first top bartenders." "Amazing success he has." "Dushan is probably one of the most sincerest, hardest workers ever in show business." "Period." "We met at Pravda in 1998." "Ad we uhm, noticed that the time was right for us to attempt to open something by ourselves." "This photo was taken by me when were mixing the cement in the basement for employees only." "And, uh this is Igor, like..." "striving." "Mixing the cement in the basement with Igor and J." "Joking with them that this is the last time that we're going to do it." "Because if we're successful, next time somebody else is going to mix the cement, I hope." "And if we're not successful, there's no reason for us to go down this road, because... obviously, life is trying to tell us something." "This bar is very sexual." "People here do get, uh..." "carried away." "The bathroom sometimes the line is long because the bathroom is too occupied for too long of a time." "Along of young bartenders look at Dushan as mentor because he's got two wildly successful bars and he did something extraordinary." "with Employees Only." "Let's make a bar for bartenders and chefs." "Let's make a bar sort-of for us." "[indistinct man on speaker]" "Before we had the vision of the physical space, we had the vision of an ethos." "Everybody sitting on any point of this bar will see where everybody else is sitting at that same bar." "Yeah." "In bars, people get laid." "At least in bars that we design." "[laughter and clapping]" "And this is my favorite, uh, Employees Only thing." "The credit card receipt, where the woman wrote" ""You guys make a girl wanna take mer shirt off." "Meow."" "And then instead of tips she said "Blowjobs"." "[laughing]" "Look at this." "This is my bar team." "They belong to a tribe." "And you create this by having mentorship programs." "By giving away your knowledge to them, you know?" "Coming down to their level in the beginning and giving what you have." "So that they can come up." "Yeah, that's what we did with them. [applause]" "Uhm, well, here's my house." "Nothing really too exciting, I don't like to collect a lot of bottles of booze or anything like that." "But uh, [laughs] I'm just kidding." "As you can see, that's my face, in red white and blue here." "[laughs]" "I'm working on some orange bitters, these are just some ideas that I write down here." "You know, this is my, couple of my EO family, you know." "These are the guys with the tattoos." "Our Employees Only tattoos." "But uhm, you know, just kind of like a yearbook." "Like a team yearbook photo here." "This is my new mallet." "It's very heavy, very obnoxious." "But hilarious." "This is my Thor hammer." "[loud pounding]" "But uh, here's some of my old Marine Corps awards." "Uhm..." "Yup, way back when, several years ago, before I started bar tending." "While I started bar tending, I was in the Marine Corp." "And uhm, it was my life." "Uhm, I loved it to death, and uh..." "Well, almost to death." "Come on, come on." "After 9/11 I decided to join the United States Marines." "I just wanted to make a man out of myself, ya know?" "I graduated number one in intelligence school." "Uh, top of my class." "I had a chance, to uh... to pick Hawaii for three years or to go to a airborne unit out of" "Okinawa, Japan, that was eventually going to go to" "Afghanistan." "And I volunteered for that unit." "I thought what kind of leader would I be if I went to Hawaii while, while my guys went out there and died." "I had everything going for me." "But one thing I didn't have was just how to stay out of trouble." "Mind your own business." "I didn't have that." "Luckily, life goes on." "Uh, I got my bar job and..." "I know this might sound, weird or nostalgic or something." "I mean this is my uniform." "This is my..." "My new platoon." "And I have a roll." "That's so cool for me." "I feel like I was" " I feel like I'm home." "Here at Employees Only, the tier system, if you will." "You start off as a stocker." "You're wearing a black t-shirt." "Essentially your'e the barback's barback." "Then, uhm, you get your apprentice jacket and..." "That's at least two years worth of service." "You're now the barback." "So this jacket means a lot to me, it says apprentice but" "I'd rather apprentice here than bartend anywhere else on the planet." "So uh, in my room, home, I have my military cammies." "This kind of reminds me of that too." "Something to look forward to." "So uhm, they're hanging on my wall and hopefully" "You know, once I'm done with this jacket, put that on my wall and then, maybe someday, when I have my own place have my personal bartender jacket along the wall." "Well, to be honest, I have one goal only and that's to become personal bartender at Employees Only." "[bar patrons shouting]" "Peter, you still want a Bud?" "Uh, why don't you do your usual?" "Absolut, club soda a little cranberry." "[bar patrons indistinct arguing]" "Reggie, he's not." "Artie, stop it." "No, he's not an asshole." "He's not an asshole." "He's not an asshole, Rob." "Rob... he's not an asshole." "[indistinct shouting]" "Artie!" "Artie" "That's it, yeah." "We'll all do shots, yeah." "He's not an asshole, Rob." "He's one of my friends." "Rob!" "I just said to you there times, he's not an asshole." "If you're gonna act like an asshole- [man shouts]" "Dude, do not fucking yell at me because we're going to have a whole different problem." "You don't want any part of that, Rob." "It's been fifteen years!" "Rob, it's been fifteen" " Rob." "It's been fifteen years since you've been in here." "And you're causing a problem." "Don't do it, okay?" "Don't do it, Rob." "Don't start!" "Do not fucking do this to me again!" "Every time you come in here!" "Get out!" "Right now!" "Put your fucking shoes on and get out!" "[bar chatter]" "The restaurant industry is funny..." "It'll give you the greatest life you ever had, but if you're not careful, it'll take more than you give it." "Bye." "I just don't know how much longer I want to of it." "You know, it might be time for me to start, you know, a real or different life." "Just got done cleaning the toilets." "Top to bottom, and that's the end of my night." "So I'm gonna go home." "I'm still gonna smell like bleach." "Even if I wear gloves, it's gonna come through it." "Uhm." "I used to be a manager of Citigroup." "Fo their commercial equipment finance." "I used to work for these great big people and everything else" "And I'm pretty sure they've been in bed for like nine hours." "[laughs] They don't have all this." "In the fifties, after the GI build, you've got Americans with college educations for the first time." "And suddenly a job that you didn't need a degree for was a dead end job." "There were career bartenders, but they forced into the career." "No one want dot stay in bar tending." "In the 1960s, there was nothing more uncool than" "Drinking a martini, that was like the antithesis of cool." "Cool was like, uh..." "A twenty two year old girl, bra-less, dropping acid." "That was hot." "You know, the other thing was just like ugh, old, old old." " Hi Mom, hi, Dad." " Hi, son." " Hi, Mr. Chapman, Mrs. Chapman." "Like a martini, son?" "Oh, no, thank you." "Not for me." "When I talk to people about the three martini lunch they all kind-of, they roll their eyes and say how did we" "What did we think we were doing?" "It killed the afternoon." "Bars in the north, in the 1970s, were music." "Were pick-up places." "It's where the singles bar had gravitated from the 1960s." "Well, I mean the early seventies was the beginning of of clubs." "Of disco." "I think it was the first time where you would leave your neighborhood to go to a bar." "From there, we sort-of move into that Haywood Gold era of bottle flippers." "and the sort-of sex on the beach." "People asking for Red-headed Sluts." "And green sour Pucker apple martinis." "Woo woo shots, Grape Crush shots, toasted almonds." "B-52s." "Kamikazes were, you know, like a big thing." "Long Island Ice Tea instead of using Triple Sec Blue Curacao." "Topped with uh, Chambord, instead of Coca-Cola." "So you can see the tie-die come down." "Someone ordered that, I wanted to punch him." "And everything has been mechanized." "You can get, you know, your soda out of a gun." "You know, you can get your sour mix in a packet." "There's no fresh ingredients available." "Downtown bars, in the nineties, were DJ based." "A good bar had a good DJ." "It was more of a party culture, more of a drug induced culture." "People would go out and just drink to get drunk." "They would just drink a lot." "We want it fast." "We want it now." "We don't want to take our time." "We're not worried about fresh squeezed juices." "It was just bad, I mean I tasted it now and then and I thought this is drinking?" "These are cocktails?" "I want nothing to do with them." "For a long time bar tending was looked down as basically a uh a lower skill, lower class job." "So nobody thought of it as a craft profession anymore." "Nobody thought that's where they'd like their son or daughter to end up." "None of us started out to be bartenders." "Not one person I know." "And also most of the people I know were desperately trying to get out of it." "As was I." "I started going to college and my idea was that I wanted to do pre-med." "I wanted to make a difference in people's lives." "I wen to architecture school." "English and religion." "Neuroscience." "I went to University of AME." "and I studied finance." "I went to the University of Wisconsin" "I have a masters of the electrical studies from Harvard Divinity Schools, so..." "Uh, I was an actor." "I want dot work twice a week and uh, you know and make my rent." "Of course going to school for theatre, being an actor you can't help but people, Oh you should get a job in the service industry, that's just what you do." "In the bar business we do get a lot of "What are you gonna do when you grow up?"" "You could be a doctor." "You could be a lawyer." "You could go to work for a big insurance company." "Or I can be a bartender." "No. [laughs]" "Yeah, it's hard, i mean how do you tell your parents that you're gonna be a bartender." "Forget about the degree that you paid for." "I'm gonna stand behind the bar and pour booze all night." "[laughs]" "One of the great sayings in the industry is" "You don't find the industry, the industry finds you"." "I've always said that bartenders are rockstars that couldn't be bothered to learn instruments." "Yes, there's a great correlation between being in show business and being in the restaurant business, which obviously, over the past thirty years has become show business." "A wonderful bartender knows what that person is coming" "They figure it out." "And you provide it for them." "Alright, this guy might be looking for a job." "This guy might be looking to get laid." "This girl's looking to meet her husband." "You know, you're putting all these needs together." "Hey, Jeremy." "Uncle Phil, may man." "You pay me later, okay?" "Depending on the night, I come in at five or six." "I come set up." "I come in with my bow tie off." "I tie it up." "I come and I shake hands with everybody in the bar." "And then the night progresses." "It turns into a war zone by about 630, 7o'clock." "¶" "You never know what's gonna happen in the service industry, ya know?" "The nights that you expect to be busy are generally not busy." "And then there's those slow nights where you might have gone out a little too much the night before." "And you're just looking to kinda get through the night and those are the nights it gets handed to you." "[bar chatter, ¶]" "¶" "a five minute time to step behind the bar with the bartender you'll know what it means." "It is so intense." "There's just a crazy adrenaline rush." "Of the dance, you know that you do behind the bar with other bartenders." "When it starts getting really, really busy and- and you get into the weeds." "I can totally understand how athletes talk about that zone." "There can be this almost, kind-of euphoria." "Where you are in that rhythm and everything is just- and you can feel your barback behind you and the other bartenders." "Their body language changes, you see them moving, dancing around each other." "Nobody's hitting anybody." "And at that point they might have been on their feet for like six hours." "Or seven hours already." "When you're working with your teammates, it's kind-of almost" "In the sense that everybody is working towards a goal" "Everything slows down and you start moving in this incredibly choreographed way." "It's multi-tasking and trying to put on a show at the same time. [laughs]" "And not look like you're having a good time, even if you're three deep and in the weeds." "¶" "[groans]" "Okay this is" " I live here." "Starting in high school, this is my best friend, Chris." "This is a little place that..." "is very significant in my life." "That's where I had my accident, my injury." "So uh, eight years ago, this is it." "This is the..." "This is the alley where it all went down, where my military career was... shortened." "And uh, I got three plates in my head." "I don't know if this place is open anymore." "Started out here." "And I ended in that alley back there." "Uhm, I still" " I still am dying to know... exactly what happened that night, uhm." "I was involved in an incident, uhm... at a bar, believe it or not." "With uh, my brother, he uh..." "He gotten into some sort of fight and I was there." "Uhm, I just been home." "I was ready to go to Okinawa." "Shortly from there, we were gonna go to Afghanistan." "I got a call from my brother one night after partying." "At a bar in our hometown." "Kind-of a shittier area." "Shitty place where terrible people hang out." "I uh, don't quite recall what happened but I know it revolves" " I remember this much." "That is revolves around..." "uh." "Somebody hitting on someone's girlfriend." "I think it was my brother hitting on someone's girlfriend." "Stupid stuff, you know?" "Childish stuff." "some other guy shoving him and me intervening." "And..." "I know I took a blow to the head, I took a fall and a blow to the head." "Several of them." "Whether it be in an alley or outside the front of the place but head on concrete." "Head on curb, just getting stomped in." "I had most of the damage done on the right side of my head here." "About the temple." "Uhm, I had a crack in my skull up top." "Basically they had to do emergency surgery on me, they told my parents that it was over." "And to, to uhm, basically..." "make plans for arrangements," "For my funeral." "I went through several years of like, brain rehab." "I had cognitive problems." "Cognitive issues." "Memory loss was..." "It's so... just knocks you right back down, like here I was..." "A hero." "Me thinking I'm a hero." "And all of a sudden to be below the bottom of the barrel." "I literally was..." "I died in a bar." "And reborn in a bar." "Dushan almost gave me tickets for tonight." "[indistinct voice]" "He was but I had to work, you know." "[bar commotion]" "We were once the "it"." "I mean Friday nights, you couldn't get into this place." "And I don't think it has anything to do with increased competition, I think it has more to do with just a changing of views, where we used to strive to be that person." "Who walked into a place and everybody knew them and... it changes on a dime." "It's almost impossible to stay in business." "About the year or so ago, a friend of mine had come in, who works for a larger importer." "And had mentioned something" "And he was kind-of concerned about my business a little bit saying he noticed that there was, you know a little fall-off in the bar business and since he travels extensively and he's" "He mentioned and he said you know, have you considered cocktails?" "And I said, you know, I haven't given it much thought." "And he made a mention, he said, you know there's this annual event that takes place in New Orleans called" ""Tales Of The Cocktail"." "He want dot know why we didn't do cocktails, why we didn't have a menu." "You know, and he figured it'd be a good idea for me to go down there and check it out." "But I just don't see myself planning a trip and going down to New Orleans to see a seminar or a conference on an industry that I think I have a pretty good handle on." "[bar commotion]" "¶" "Here at the Elms Mansion and Gardens." "A beautiful property, right on Saint Charles Avenue in downtown New Orleans." "And we're here for the Promenade Of Jubilations." "IT's the opening party for Tales Of The Cocktail." "Perhaps the biggest cocktail event in the world now, is held in New Orleans." "Tales Of The Cocktail." "Tales Of the Cocktail is a five day cocktail and culinary festival." "It's programmed for the craft of the bartender and it is a" "I love the fact that we're finally celebrating cocktails." "And Tales Of The Cocktail bring you like-minded, passionate people, to my city." "The city of the cocktail." "It's just a great thing." "Gathering of hundreds, and now thousands, of the world's top bartenders." "Brand ambassadors, spirits producers, cocktail enthusiasts." "Tales of the cocktail is, for me, certainly the biggest event of the year." "And then on a serious note, we have the Spirit Awards." "Uh, basically, the top of the field, get uh." "They get recognized." "So the best bars, the best bartenders" "Uhm, just as you hear on the Oscars and the Golden Globes." "There's no greater honor than being recognized by your peers." "As being somebody who stands out." "[ice shaken together]" "Your attitude back there, what you project to the guest is all important." "I mean people see confident movement behind the bar." "And right away they're at ease." "Who you are back there will define the space." "And it will also define whether you have any people at the bar or not." "You're in the action." "You're part of the action." "And I don't mean you should be showing off." "It's not that at all." "You a hundred different things to a hundred different people." "[ice and liquids shaking]" "You have to be a bit of an actor." "You have to be able to react to what's in front of you." "And fulfill the needs of that person." "You know, make them comfortable in this space." "That's what you do." "¶" "I came to New York City in 1969." "I worked as a dish washer at Howard Jones' in Times Square." "[laughs] No kidding." "I was luck." "I caught the end" "I say the end of an era because, for example..." "Swing Street..." "52nd Street." "This was Swing Street because" "Lined up all the way to 8th Avenue were jazz clubs." "Part of that was America was on top of the world then." "Yo came out of the war." "As the number one civil power." "In New York men had came in in the morning, went to lunch had three martinis, went back." "Slept with their secretary and caught the 504 to Westport." "And we ruled the world then." "I mean it was just... it made it all look so easy." "Well, I came to New York from the university of Rhode Island, where I was studying in the theatre department. [laughs]" "Continued pursuing acting but always working first as a dish washer then as a waiter at a really cool place called" "Charley O's, which was a Giovan restaurant." "My interest in the studying, actually history of my profession, which is bar tending." "Started with a genius named Joseph Baum." "Joseph Baum very nearly single handedly changed the way that we eat and drink in America." "He opened the first fine dining restaurant in the international airport, called The Newarker." "A New York airport where people took limousines from New York to go dine at New York airport." "People said it couldn't be done and Joe did it." "The Four Seasons is still operating." "I had lunch there yesterday." "That's the guy who made what I do important." "He's the guy who even tipped me to what could be done." "I got a waiter's job at Charley O's in the early seventies in 1974." "They were looking for a bartender" "I lied and said I was one." "Went to work at Gracie Mansion, doing parties" "One day they manager came running in and said" ""Oh, my god, we're stuck!" "We don't have a bar tender for Gracie Mansion." "And it's a big party." "It's an important party."" ""Does anybody tend bar?" And I go" "So I went up to the bar and I called Michael and I said" "I got an index card, you know." "Put down like ten really popular drinks for me." "Gin and Tonic, Whisky Sour, [indistinct]" "So that was an education." "And I started to realize" "I" " I didn't know as much as my customers did and I was really embarrassed by that." "A guy wanted a fresh margarita." "This one wanted a malt scotch." "I didn't know what they were talking about." "I was really embarrassed by that." "I went to Hollywood, still pursuing acting." "Within a week I had walked in." "One of the top ten hotels in the world." "The hotel Bel Air in Stone Canyon, Bel Air." "I walk in." "Where did you work?" "Charley O's." "He'd heard of it because it was Joe Baum." "Okay, come behind the bar." "Pour me a shot." "Okay, come back tomorrow morning, we'll give you a try for a few days." "Stayed there for six years." "After a couple of years, the piano player, Bud Herman, who, by the way had played with Benny Goodman." "which we did every night when I finally got the night shift." "And he said..." ""You know, Dale..."" "I know how important that acting thing is to you..." "But I gotta tell ya..." "You know, you're pretty good at this bar tending stuff." "[laughs] You know." "[bar chatter and ambiance]" "It's always a pleasure to work with Dushan." "He uh..." "He's the one who..." "He wrote the book." "On being the rock star." "The mixologist...and the sage." "He's got all three going." "And has been a great mentor to me." "A lot of times I have great ideas, but uh..." "I'm always missing that one ingredient." "That one..." "Dushan ingredient." "Emily, I wanted it Employees Only on cordial." "She's leaving?" "Not yet?" "I want her to be on cordial." "Absinthe.." "Uhm..." "I wan the new brown sugar syrup." " So far." " Okay." " Three ingredients." "I was thinking pineapple maybe, the brown sugar syrup with some pineapple." "Soak it in pineapples." "Is there a lot of season maybe?" "Cucumbers and stuff like that." "And strawberries." "Let's make this drink to see how it's going to taste by itself." "Okay." "And then we can expand on it." "This will not, you know, this by itself will not do." " Of course not." " This is, this is an accentuating flavor." "The brown sugar simple syrup." "The recipe's in the book, right?" "Yeah." " Dushan, thank you." " You're welcome." "You know, nothing ever works right the first try, I mean there's always trial and error." "That's the way you make cocktails, you know, you never or punches or anything, you know, you don't just stumble stumble across greatness." "You know, some stuff works, some stuff doesn't." "So I bought this in July of 2005, when I was still married." "This is where, uh, my visions of starting a family uhm, were going to be." "And then that didn't work out because Sherry lived here for about four months and then she moved out." "This is how many people have come to look at the unit." "Two." "I woke up in the morning and I was kind-of up the stairs and I just saw, they had it in that lawn area right over there." "And I was just like "God, what the fuck is that?"" "Well, I go out there and I look at it and I'm like "Holy fuck!"" "That's a big-ass sign." "I immediately fucking ripped it out of the ground." "And it's been there ever since." "And I'm just waiting for the guy to come by probably and he'll put it back up." "I'm trying to remedy the situation." "I have until" "December fifth to do it." "Otherwise, they're gonna auction it off." "How about that?" "Fuckers." "I tell all the people that work for me." "I don't care what you do." "I don't care if you're the bus boy, the waiter, the bartender, the cook." "I don't care what it is you do." "The object is to bring your job." "Whatever it is." "To the level of art." "[bar commotion]" "You're really thirsty." "You had two margaritas today, yeah?" "Very thirsty." "[indistinct chatter]" "[ice shaking]" "I know for sure, I mean not only the other personal bartenders, but Dushan, as well." "If I don't get better at being a sage, being able to put a barrier between me and the guest then uh, there's no way I'm going to be getting my jacket." "¶" "It's only mental, you know?" "I have to be able finish my shift strong." "I have to mentally be there every day no matter what." "Whether I'm having rough day outside of work, stuff like that." "I still got, maybe, I have a little bit more growing to do in that sense." "¶" "I know if I don't bring it every day, if I can't stay consistent, with my performance, both mentally, physically, inside, outside." "If I don't do it, I'm never going to get it." "¶" "[ice shaking]" "I think that if you ask anybody here what started the contemporary cocktail movement in America the answer is simple." "Two words..." "Dale DeGroff, Dale DeGroff, Dale DeGroff, Dale DeGroff, Dale DeGroff, Dale DeGroff is "King Cocktail"." "Everything you see today, in the United States of America and the world, the reemergence of the cocktail culture... is due to Dale's efforts." "When you talk about the family tree of cocktails you need to start talking about Dale DeGroff." "He was a bartender at the Rainbow Room in the eighties." "And he really was one of the first ones to introduce the idea of fresh juices..." "You know, moving away from the soda gun, moving away from the artificial ingredients." "So you have Dale DeGroff, and he's like the grandaddy of everybody." "And then Dale DeGroff begat Audrey Saunders, who opened The Pegu Club." "My relationship to the cocktail scene in New York would be den mother." "Audrey, I'll take the wrap for Audrey, because she took my class in NYU." "Four hour class in mixology." "Audrey Saunders employed all these bartenders." "And many of these bartenders who were at The Pegu Club left and opened their bars." "Meanwhile, I'm just bouncing around, looking for a cool place to drink" "Somebody says there's a bartender down at C3 lounge, in a little hotel on Washington Square Park." "So I walk in and there's Julie, behind the bar." "[ice shaking]" "When somebody orders a cocktail, you want them to feel like they're the only person in the bar." "And that their drink is the most important drink to you." "Cocktails are a journey." "You might be feeling sad one day" "And another day you're having a great day and you're drinking a silly Tiki drink." "Three Dots and a Dash and it makes you happy." "[ice shaking]" "All cocktails should take you on a journey and make you feel something." "That's usually what I'm looking for when I'm making people drinks." "In San Francisco fresh juice was the norm when I was out there." "So when I came to New York" "I started doing, you know seasonal menus and using fresh juices and infusions." "What I did was infuse was, you know, Granny Smith green apples into vodka and made this sort-of maceration and then added apple brandy cider to it." "And made something that really tasted like you were biting into an apple with a kick." "An do somebody in The Times offices had been in, tried this cocktail and the next thing I knew I like was on the front page of the food section of The New York Times." "Ands suddenly suddenly New York magazine came in and wanted to write about a drink that I was doing." "And after that it was like a few big publications that had written about and photographed some of my drinks." "Suddenly it was Julie Reiner, cocktail expert." "And I was like, "Oh shit, I'm not an expert"." "So I started reading everything I possibly could." "Then she gets fired because the chef was pissed off that she was getting more publicity than he was." "[laughs]" "She is one of the women on the vanguard of the new cocktail movement." "When you do something great in New York, it' global..." "So..." "People, you know, the bartenders here... understand that." "People move here because of that." "You know, I could of opened Flatiron in Ohio and nobody woulda cared, you know?" "But because I opened it in the Flatiron district of Manhattan... it was written about in Japan and London and... it was written about all over the world." "Did you see this?" "Sweet, I just got a message from Dushan." "Tales..." "Tales nominations, the final four are out." " Oh yeah?" " Yeah, whoa." "He said we got nominated for four, uh... four things," "Babo for two, so six overall." "Including best American bar and world's best cocktail bar." " Yeah." " Wow." "World's best cocktail bar." "Imagine that shit. [laughs]" "Yeah right. [both laugh] Like that's gonna happen... [ice shaken]" "[bar ambiance]" "Every time you make a drink, it's an opportunity not to mess it up." "[liquid pouring]" "Bar tending is not a skill that stays with you." "It's not like riding bike." "Bar tending is hosting." "You know, it happens in a pub that serves beer and wine, just as much as a cocktail bar." "To stir a drink, I doubt I could find any words that would describe stirring better than a picture of it." "[sliding rumble]" "You hear a lot of people talking about bar tending as if the bar is a stage." "And the bartender is the star of the show." "I want my bartenders to be the supporting actor in the movie and the customer's the star." "By very definition, if you can look at the side and say, oh, the biters are that deep..." "I dropped out of high school to work as a barista and I had a dream of opening my own cafe someday." "And after about ten years I had no money saved." "Nowhere near close to my goal." "And a friend of mine told me about a barback job at a bar across town, so I figured I would get a job at a bar, make money faster, save money faster, and be able to open my cafe sooner." "And throughout two years I just all my money" "I moved back with my mom for a year." "I was stuck putting my head down." "and sticking my man to my mattress." "and One day I was read the Village Voice in the real estate section, I saw commercial space for eight hundred dollars." "It's an owner occupied co-op." "I promised them that they would have no idea there was a bar there whatsoever." "An hence the hidden entrance." "I really didn't know much about classic cocktails" "I really should have failed." "On numerous occasions." "And I got stupidly lucky." "So I opened a bar with no sign in the middle of nowhere and it happens to be that the guy who lives across the street was an old college friend of Dale DeGroff's." "You know, so that's like the sheer luck of that." "I think a visit one fateful evening to Milk And Honey by Dale." "Who gave Sasha, as the story goes, a copy of Trader Vic's bartender guide from 1947 I guess it was." "It might have been a first edition copy that he just had" "I meet Sasha and he starts peppering me with questions" "He built the whole place himself and he had no idea what he was doing." "He just was clever and just did what he needed to do." "I remember ten years ago and Milk And Honey opened." "In the lower east side of Manhattan." "And you know, it was one of the- you had to know the phone number of the place." "it was really, really special." "He opened a bar that made no apologies for the emphasis on the cocktail." "It wasn't about the music necessarily." "It wasn't about people you might meet." "It wasn't about the way you were dressed, it was about the cocktail had to be as good as it possibly could." "And his stubbornness, if you will, to make that the most important thing, inspired us to re-think about how good our drinks actually should be." "No one wants to be the regular out of place if they don't get treated specially." "And it took me years to realize this." "The regulars when I was bar tending and these people" "Like they saved my life and they saved my good name." "I don't want to say that I'm defined by Dunville's..." "But I mean, people do know me as, "Hey, there's Carp." "He's the owner of Dunville's." "You know." "Of if someone who's never met me, introduce myself" "Then I'll hear like a little whisper, "Hey, he owns Dunville"." "And I mean, that's kind-of cool, you know, and I mean." "If I sold, I mean, am I going to walk into place and they'll be like "Yeah, there's Steve"." "You know, flatline, ehhh, you know." "How about that I used to own Dunville's?" "Or do I just all of a sudden lose my" "That's it, you know." "I'm just simple Steve." "[ice shaking]" "The goal with any cocktail is to wow the person who's ordered it." "[liquid pouring]" "I am a process oriented person." "When I'm bar tending, I'm thinking about everything." "It would be a luxury to just think about the daiquiri you're making." "In reality, you have so many different social interactions going on." "You're thinking about the lights, the temperature, the music." "There's always a hundred things going on at once." "When I'm in the zone behind the bar, I'm seeing all of them at the same time and I'm actively pursuing getting to them." "As a bartender, you're an entertainer and a cocktail is not only meant to stimulate your senses but meant to amuse you." "¶" "When I was 18, as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin" "Madison I started bouncing at a bar called State Street Brats, that's been there since the fifties." "Jim came to work for us, back in the day, just like a lot of college guys come in." "They're looking for just a job, just for something to do and to take them for here to there." "Get them a little beer money." "Work my way up from bouncer, to cook, to barback" "Jim was, uhm, pretty good at his job." "Uhm." "A little bit hyper." "By twenty I was managing the place and I've worked full time at a bar for the last 15 years." "I watched people have kids, I watched people have... you know, go through break-ups." "I've watched people go through deaths." "Uhm, and as a bartender there I really became part of their lives." "My mother, growing up, was a school teacher." "She was a Catholic school teacher in Chicago." "She made about 20,000 dollars a year with a masters degree." "And when I graduated from college all my parents friends asked me what I'm going to do." ""Are you going to be a teacher?" And I said no." "I'm going to be a bartender." "And they sort of looked at me like I was gonna take a career" "But when I moved to New York, a co-worker of mine told me about Gramercy Tavern." "I went from the new guy to quickly rising up." "Taking over the cocktail program." "The management team and I really did not see eye to eye." "And I was terminated." "I was also, at the time, I had started this consulting project called PDT." "When PDT opened up you had to find out a way to get inside." "To make reservations you'd walk to the phone booth." "It almost felt like it was a a secret world." "Like how do you get involved in." "And that really kind-of fed the intrigue and the mystery." "When PDT opened, we described it as a by the books hipster bar." "Which I cringe at to this day because it's so much more than that." "It just so immediately it became" "You know, the number one of everything." "Has won every award for top cocktail bar in the world at Tales In The Cocktail." "When I opened PDT my goal was to still open a bar in my neighborhood." "That I could come any night of the week." "Have a table waiting for me." "And have great cocktails." "But it's bigger than, it's bigger than any of the people who work here now." "The James Beard awards are the Oscars of the food world." "Just to be nominated really is one of the highest honors anyone working in the industry can receive." "This year we were really proud to introduce a new award for uhm, the bar program." "Uhm, Jim Meehan from PDT, was the first recipient." "It was huge for us but I hope it was huge for bartenders and bar owners, mixologists." "People who work behind the bar." "When the James Beard Foundation recognized mixologists and bar programs I think that we were legitimizing a lot of the hard work that has gone in uhm, to learning about and developing a unique approach to making cocktails." "The tome had come." "Cocktails have had a renaissance over the last few years because people are just more and more interested in what they're putting into their body." "But what's really, really important is the quality of ingredients that people are getting." "When they taste that drink, it's the vibrance, it's the quality of the ingredients." "Food-wise and flavor-wise." "When you're taking something fresh from the ground." "From that area." "It can only be better than something harvested" "You want your bar to really express how much you care about ingredients." "How much you care about flavor." "I can think of so many places in San Francisco and" "New York that do it." "But I'm seeing it all over the country." "It's a really amazing feeling... to see what the people who have come through my doors have gone on to do." "You know, you can go and taste all these different lineages." "And so you gout this kind of pyramid effect and it just spreads, spreads, spreads like moss up on the ground." "¶" "I just like really think it's the best time of the century to be behind the stick working." "So it's incredible." "America's getting it's palette back." "And there's just so much opportunity." "There's kind-of a bigger, broader industry now." "There's so much training going on." "There's competitions." "And everybody now gets the ability to go and check out what other people are doing." "What we're consciously doing in these craft cocktail lounges is serving spirits in such a way that- that it's the same sort-of flavor experience that a chef does when they're cooking in their restaurant." "I think what we're doing, uh, we're elevating the image of the professional bartender." "A mixologist is to a bartender as a chef is to a cook." "This is something different." "It deserves a different name." "It's not considered like, you know, a bartender "slash"" "something else job." "It's considered a job, job." "A couple years ago, this young man came up to me and said you know, I've got a question for you, but you know," "I'm from Boise and we've only got two cocktail bars and" "I said "Wait a minute"." "You've got two cocktail bars in Boise?" "I mean, that's insane." "[¶]" "This is or field day celebration at KA." "Our prohibition party." "And it's essentially our celebration for bartenders." "Fourth of July, you know?" "Our Independence day." "Tonight is a very special night for us." "We celebrate our anniversary." "Which coincides with our repeal of the prohibition." "Every year we throw a little thank you party for our regulars and customers." "¶" "This is more about, uhm, the second coming of drinks." "It's really, this like the industry's night." "This a bartender's night to go out and have fun." "And just enjoy being part of the community." "¶" "¶ [lady singing]" "¶" "[cheering and applause]" "[wind, chatter]" "The idea behind, uhm, doing the smoker..." "I think getting perception from people." "Driving by, we put the signs up." "We're running drink specials, everything else like that." "We're trying to promote something that we normally don't do." "It's just another effort to try and uhm... retain the business that we have." "And hopefully build, you know, additional business because it's just not coming back." "We spent about eight hours yesterday, uhm, injecting this pork butt." "We're probably gonna have over 300 pounds of meat." "So, uh, we better have a good turn out, you know, uhm..." "Otherwise it's another thing that we'll have to write off and chalk it up as a mistake, but hopefully that's not going to be the issue." "[outdoor ambiance]" "It should be on your left side." "This is how professional tie ties." "With the iPhone." "At Employees Only we have this awesome postcard of the five owners." "They're uh, like standing all serious." "I kind-of want to make it more personal, so uhm..." "I was asked to come down and help with the photo shoot." "I've always been a workaholic, kind-of sheltered, kinda guy." "But I've sort-of gotten out there." "We've got a young guy behind the bar." "And you know, girls are throwing themselves at you" "And you start to buy into this reality, that this is real situation." "Your ego just want to believe that that's true and that's the known not wise." "To follow that urge." "Although he's quite a young puppy, Steve has an extremely bright future in front of him." "The way that he works, and the passion that he has for his work, belies his past as a U.S. marine." "He said to me once, you know, "I bleed Employees Only"." "And that degree of loyalty and passion is rare." "There's nothing more dangerous than Steve Schneider very motivated." "Hello, America, greetings." "My name is Steve Schneider from employees only." "Steve is, Steve is a character you know?" "He's a rock star bartender." "¶ [cheering and applause]" "On thing about girls from Trinidad, I never had the opportunity to date one, but I've dated a Puerto Rican that I liked." "¶" "I uh, I had the world record." "For fastest throw." "[loud cheering]" "We're taking a huge group photo of some of the best bartenders in the city, uhm for Time Out New York's cocktail issue." "The first of its kind." "¶" "It's not a job anymore, it's a way of life." "It's something that we live." "You know, I stay out all night." "I sleep all day." "That's the life that..." "I've chosen to do." "This year has been a huge year for me as far as videos an interviews and stuff like that, yeah I've never done anything like that." "Mainly because I was..." "I never really got out there." "And now I'm becoming friends with more and more bartenders." "And more and more brand people." "And uh, sort-of taken me to the next level." "Some of the younger apprentices, by being written up once or twice begin to believe that they already are there." "And they already have nothing much to learn." "And I will advise strongly against that." "Whoa. [laughs]" "There he is." "You are only as good as your team." "You might have some personal qualities that make you different from the rest." "And accentuate you personally." "But it can never be on the expense of the team." "You know, it is before you are a rock star, you are a member of the band." "Being a principle bartender is something you earn." "It's not a right guaranteed to everyone." "¶" "[woman on PA] We're ready to start shaking things up." "How are you guys doing?" "[cheering]" "We will toast to the success of Tales Of The Cocktail, enjoy this wonderful week." "¶" "I think this is going to be the biggest and best year, I have to be honest." "When I went to Tales for the first few years I actually used to go the seminars." "That's supposed to be what you're there to do." "It's fun, it's crazy, it's..." "way too late." "Way too early, way too much work." "If a bomb were to go off in New Orleans, it would probably be the end of the cocktail world as we know it." "At a large scale event like this, there's multiple seminars and it's a little bit different in that it's all based around drinking." "Uhm, so you have to have a cocktail with each seminar, since most of them are about alcohol." "So... the people right here, I think they're probably, I think they're making right around five or six thousand cocktails." "Give or take a hundred here or there," "¶" "I just arrived here at New Orleans." "There's so many events going on I have no idea exactly where I'm going." "When I'm going there." "I'm just sort-of playing it by ear." "I'm going to Tales because, one, I've never been there before." "I've always wanted to go." "And I just think this year is the right year for me." "This past year has been an amazing ride for me." "We have a lot of people coming down, there's, there's Henry, Igor, Dushan, J, me, Dev, Bratso, Milosht," "Danny, Ivonne, Marko." "We have about fourteen, fifteen people coming out." "We were nominated for a lot of stuff this year." "You know, like world's greatest cocktail bar, final four." "You know, w-we're humbled, we're pretty shocked." "So we're doing that and I'm also going to competing in a speed competition called "Re-match"." "Uh, "Re-match biatch"." "It's a hundred dollars." "A hundred dollar bill." "Winner take all." "Twenty five bartenders." "Winning the award of the best cocktail bar in the world would mean... a lot." "As if..." "If we win this, I'll know that a part, a chapter of my life is finished." "Like... closed." "Done." "We have done what we said we will do." "¶" "This Thursday I'll be in New Orleans attending an industry function called Tales Of The Cocktail." "And I hope down there I'll get some words of encouragement." "I mean, I don't know, maybe something's gonna change my life down there, you know." "Who knows?" "And unless you try, you're not gonna know." "Just flew in from New York City and we are in New Orleans." "And I'm trying to get together my schedule." "So uh, hopefully over the next three days we're gonna get some insight as to what we've done wrong and what we can do right." "I understand this is your first Tales Of The Cocktail." "Well, we're gonna make a really big deal out of this, we have a great ticketing package for you." " Okay." " Now, you have to wear the Tales virgin pin." "And you're gonna love The Carousel Bar, so we're gonna go ahead and give you that too." " I should put these on now?" "So everyone knows?" "Yes, it's the best way to do it." " It's best way to do it." " Alright." " Alright?" " Terrific." " Thank you so much and enjoy." " Thank you vey much." "I want to hear a full report on how everything goes." " I will see you every day, thanks. - [laughs] Alright, thank you." "Do you know the auto-correct on the Blackberry for Danville's is "downfalls"?" "Last week I sent someone a text that said "Come meet me at Dunville's"." "And I didn't realize that it was that and someone said "Where is downfalls?"" "¶" "Waking it up." "Making it smile." "Making people smile." "Give it smoke." "[ice shaking] is possibly the biggest shit show that we have had yet." "Uh, it's a cocktail competition called" ""Re-match biatch"." "This is like the anti-bartending competition, competition." "sort-of like a law-less, wild west competition." "I will be competing." "And I will be dropping the hammer on people." "One hundred dollar bill is right over here." "Winner take all." "¶ [cheering]" "New York fuckin' City!" "[loud cheer]" "Employees Only, show how we do it!" "Three, two, one..." "Go!" "¶ [loud applause, cheering]" "[applause]" "Like I... the banana chip." "That's for garnish, right?" "This is probably the first thing that I've tasted here that I think I can sell to my customers." "This is my new purchase here in New Orleans." "I think this hat is going to help me think more clearly." "I figure that uh, a lot of the bartenders here have been wearing these." "They act like bartenders, they look like bartenders and they feel like bartenders, so while I'm here, I might as well see if this changes me around a little bit." "Hopefully this will give me the clarity that I need." "Maybe it's psychosomatic and stuff like that, but I feel much different wearing this, so..." "We'll see how it goes." "In your G and T, your tonic is only good as your gin." "In often times I've worked at a lot of bars where the bar is the last thing that anyone thinks about but it's your biggest revenue maker." " It's the heartbeat." " Yeah exactly, but often times, you know, they'll spend a lot of time putting the best kitchen in the back room, making sure all stainless steel" "But this is an opportunity that you have to make a lot more money and make a big impact." "As somebody who's been through that," " Yeah." " Like, don't lose the hospitality." " Don't lose the hospitality." " That's the only thing that matters." "[ballroom ambiance]" "Hey, Dushan." "Hi, I'm Steve Carpenteri, how are you?" "I really enjoyed the seminar, uhm, thanks very much." "I'm down here, I own a bar restaurant in Connecticut." "I'm down here trying to get some ideas." "Pick some brains." "Experiment on variety of different things." "You know, I think I need to deconstruct and reconstruct." "I actually own a restaurant in Connecticut." "And uh, I'm trying to get the clientele to order a little bit better." "Prepare cocktails on a better level." "Well you need to get a guy behind the bar who's passionate and can sell it for you." "So it's contagious?" "It was at my bar." "Thank you very much." "Pleasure to meet you." "Alright, Steve." "Now, you're in Bridgeport, right?" " I'm actually in Westport." " Westport, nice town." "It's a nice area." " Let me give you my card." " I'm sorry, I wish I had one with me." "That's my museum card but it's got my information on it." "Okay, thank you for your time." "Pleasure to meet you." "[chattering of people]" "We're up for winning the final four of uh, several different categories this year, uh our mentor, you know, Dushan and J, they got nominated for their book," ""Speak Easy"." "We're up for world's best cocktail bar." "Yep, tonight is the culmination of uh, just the past year of hard work." "We hope uh..." "We hope we can represent our city, our craft and our bar." "So, we'll do our best." "[indistinct chatter]" "¶" "Welcome to the 5th annual spirt awards." "How's everybody doing out there?" "[cheering]" "Tonight we're giving away twenty two awards." "And we're just going to have a fabulous night." "And the winner of best American brand ambassador is..." "The international bartender of the year..." "For guiding the future of our craft..." "The nominees are..." "Audrey Saunders." "Steve Olsen." "[cheering]" "Dushan Zaric." "[cheering]" "And we have a winner." "[laughs]" "Come on up, Audrey." "Audrey Saunders." "[applause and cheer]" "I'd like to announce the nominees for world's best drink selection." "Best bartenders in America." "The winner is Punch, by David." "[applause]" "I'm honored to present the final award of the evening for world's best cocktail bar." "The finalists represent the epitome of what our industry has to offer." "They are... 69 Colebrooke Row, in London." "Dry Martini, in Barcelona." "Employees Only, in New York." "And Bar High Five, in Tokyo." "And the winner is..." "Employees Only." "[loud cheering and applause]" "[laughter]" "Congratulations." "[cheering]" "¶ [whistling]" "Whoa!" "It's a team effort." "It starts with ownership." "And it uh, ends with uh... someone like me, who's just a piece of the puzzle and just uh, a member of the team." "Listen, we just won best cocktail bar in the world." "Buy everyone in the bar a drink." "Okay, Chico, I love you, baby..." "I had to tell you, Mom..." "Mom, I had to tell you." "They don't force a great team." "They hand-picked their people." "And to be on stage here." "With, what I consider the best bartenders in the world..." "Man." "This is what I do it for." "This is my life." "This is my crew." "Almost brings me to tears." "This closing of The Tales Of The Cocktail here with the Spirited Awards, was beyond my wildest dreams." "It was like being in Hollywood." "and the fact that there's an awards ceremony," "I had no idea whatsoever." "My eyes should have been opened a long, long time ago." "Had I known that this kind of stuff had existed." "I think I might have taken things a little more seriously, and not that our little place would ever be considered uhm, you know, the best cocktail bar in the world or anything." "I mean, we gotta start with baby steps." "As The Tales Of The Cocktails nears... to an end or whatever." "The gears are grinding'." "Uhm, I have lots of notes." "It's gonna take me a week or two to process all this stuff but I definitely feel rejuvenated." "And the one thing I did find about myself, while I was down here" "Was that I uh, you know," "I-I think I have the talent and capability to-n to be like them." "This is uhm, a new culture." "And I'd like to be on board." "[street ambiance]" "¶" "Ladies and gentlemen, here we are." "It's that time of the night again." "[a slow piano plays] [indistinct chanting]" "[piano continues to play]" "It's just you." "The bartender." "And you're sharing one last cocktail." "[bar chatter]" "Closing down the bar..." "one more time." "Guys, big fan." "Big fan of all y'alls." "Cheers." "Employees Only, we give people chicken soup." "AT 3:30, whoever survived, they get a complimentary cup of chicken soup." "Which hopefully it should be a sign of thank you and have a good night." "¶" "Got it." "There's great feeling when you finish a shift." "I love when I get out of work because I've been just working all night and it's hot." "And you've been sweaty." "And you had, maybe a stressful night." "And you just, you take, you finish your shift, you have a cold beer, maybe a little rum or a little whiskey with it." "And you step outside and you get this brisk breeze that hits you." "It brings you back down." "But that feeling when you walk out of the bar... at 5am, in January, when it's freezing outside is one of my favorite feelings." "Because I know that part of my night is done and I have this like release." "You're tired but usually also" "You still got the remnants of the adrenaline coursing through your system." "It's completely quiet." "It's like being the only person on Earth." "Hasn't everybody had their own version of the bartenders breakfast?" "When you go out for this huge meal after a long night." "Bartenders are some of the only people who get to experience... 5am." "I always like to walk home." "Because it was like having the city to yourself." "There is a certain... peace uh, to walking out at that hour, and you just kind-of felt like... this is my city." "¶" "Alright, everybody, whoever is here is here." "Lock the door." "Let's get going." "Thanks for coming." "Bar meeting." "Uh, we have lots of things to cover." "First of all, excellent job on the new year's eve." "Whoever worked that night, excellent job." "Excellent job in general in the last few months." "Steve Schneider, it has come, the time uh, for you to uhm, face the music, my brother." "You've been with us for a while now, and you uh, have" "successfully applied your knowledge and your dedication here for the last few years, and for this we salute you." "You have been really, really great." "Uhm..." "You have learned all there is to do." "So uhm, you still have to learn what not to do." "And uhm, this is a process that will take time." "Uhm, you know..." "You will be in charge of people who are coming underneath you." "Always keep in mind that you are leading by example." "Always keep in mind what the situation is calling for." "Always ask yourself what does this person have or need to hear right now." "Uhm..." "I spoke to Igor and both of us agree that the time is right of you to uh, finally make the step." "Thank you for so much you have done here and please come behind the bar, I have... the pleasure to hand you your principle bartender jacket." "[clapping]" "Congratulations, man." "All the best." "Oh, my god." "I wasn't expecting..." "Oh, my god." "This is great." "[laughing]" "Yeah. [laughing]" "I'm feeling a lot of things right now, I mean I just..." "I just got promoted, this is..." "This is a pretty fancy new jacket." "This is everything i've worked so hard for in the past two years." "If you walk in as a patron, this is just a title." "But to us this means a hell of a lot more." "This means generations of lineage, others, people who have learned from this person and that person and to be able to pass on what has happened, uhm" "It's why we do this." "It's why I do this." "This, this jacket is, you know, universally known, uhm and to have one of my own... uhm..." "I mean I'm..." "I don't really know what's next now but I..." "I assume I'm probably gonna call..." "I'm probably gonna call my parents." "¶" "I talked to Audrey Saunders the other day and she was talking to Dale DeGroff, her mentor" "I'm now a grandmother and you're a great grandfather because now there's a fourth generation of bars"." "So somebody's going and it's sustained." "I'm going to bars that I love and loving it so much that" "I wanted to know the names of the people that made this experience ." "It's just being a part of something, I guess." "A bar is a place where people brewed." "Where they dreamed." "Where they... fantasized." "And they do it either in a group or they do it by themselves." "These are people who looked at cubicle work and said this is not satisfying." "I don't want to do this." "I want to do something that makes a difference." "Something with my hands, something with a craft." "Something where I feel human at the end of the day." "¶" "I've sent my return from Tales." "I did realize that." "I have created something special here." "All my time and efforts was worth while." "Uhm, there's a couple ingredients in there." "It's all fresh." " Oh, I like it." " You like it?" "I totally do." "Sometimes you choose your life and sometimes your life chooses you." "And I find myself in a place where..." "I saw an opportunity to make a difference in the world, as a bartender." "Whether you're in a cocktail bar, or you're just in the corner pub, it's the same interaction, you know?" "It's the bartender to the customer trying to just make their day better." "People go out for this special feeling they get when they walk into an establishment where the light is right, the music is right totally aligns with their expectations." "This is exciting, because we feel at that moment a little bit more alive." "When we feel alive..." "We're happy." "¶" "¶"