Bartender of the Week

Folks, meet Matt. Matt works at a joint I like to hang out in in New West. He’s a quick and entertaining bartender and he laughs at my jokes. Some of you may recognize him from slangin’ drinks around the LM, but The Drink Urban Lounge is fortunate enough to have him now. You are thinking there are no decent joints in New West anymore and you’d be wrong. The Drink is located on Columbia, 609, between the cop shop and, umm, the skytrain. Great place to bring a date and chill out. Real lounge style atmosphere with good music, cool servers and a stellar bartender, the aforementioned Matt. I met him there a few months ago, and the practiced hand with which he crafted a Whiskey Sour spoke volumes about his experience behind the Wood. I would highly recommend The Drink any night of the week, including the weekend. New Westminster looks like its shaping up in the past few years, and I for one am happy that a place like The Drink has staked its claim as a place to be for stylish, happening types like myself. Be stylish and happening. Dress cool, no hoodies or booty shorts. Its a casual atmosphere with nice low lighting where you can hang out with folks who like a nice mixed crowd, nice mixed beverages and a nice mixture of lovely females. Check The Drink Urban Lounge out at www.tagpubs.com. In closing, I’ve just GOT to ask, who’s stylish and happening bar do I have to sit at to gedda drink around here?

Complicated Handshake Drink

I gotta tell ya,  I am concerned about the state of human relations in this day and age. How we meet and greet each other says a lot about our relationships. Some of us have known each other since elementary school, high school or since we started working together. Some of us have only just met. Some of you know that I have worked in various nightclubs and bars around the lower mainland for several years now. In addition to being the types of places where people meet, greet, fight and frolic, they are also a microcosm of COMPLICATED HANDSHAKES.

    I don’t pretend to know where this whole thing started. Where or when we decided that we wanted an unwritten code between us that demonstrates and solidifies our union, at whatever level, when we meet. A complicated handshake to me means that you are a part of a special group or team and denotes a brotherhood, sisterhood or a bond. Its like a nickname. It means you belong. You have been in the trenches with each other and you value your fellow man’s presence in that brotherhood. While I have never served in the armed forces myself, I find it difficult to believe that there is a more applicable time for brotherhood and belonging, and the need for it, than war. (There are conflicting reports, but I can’t envision a WW2 complicated handshake. I just don’t believe it existed then.) Sure, Freemasons and Skull and Bones and all that stuff. They had their thing but I believe that was more sleight of hand than anything else. I also believe that Complicated Handshake was the product of two or more Bloods during the Vietnam War to solidify their fraternity within a fraternity, in the face of a society that would ask them to fight for a country that still denied  them certain human rights at home and abroad.

    Sports teams as well can be credited for many interpretations of the Complicated Handshake. Players on teams of fast paced sports like soccer or basketball employ a quick high five or hand slap. Football too. Baseball has its own thing. Baseballers have such elaborate hand rituals that they are sometimes hard to follow. In baseball players defense, however, they have little else to do during a game, nay a season. These styles and customs then trickle down to the fans, the public, for the same reason their appeal first came about. Brotherhood and belonging. Team.

   Let me meander around to the point. Whenever I meet someone new, as happens a lot with my employment, I am forced to guess which Complicated Handshake the person I am meeting would like to employ. The handshake my father taught me was the Classic. Wedge the thumbs. Fingers around the bottom of the other person’s hand. Grip firmly. Shake vertically. Repeat as needed. It is my experience that even when employing this handshake you will, say 75% of the time, receive a hand goose from the other guy trying to do the four-finger lock with the double shake. Escape or succumb to this, you will likely be met with a fist, held horizontally or vertically, bobbing in space. By the time you feel sorry for this dude for holding his mitt up and you decide to give him a “pound”, he has dropped his fist in anticipation of being “left hanging”. You then pound the empty air and he brings his up and you drop yours and you both smile and chuckle because you both look like idiots. How many times have you seen the ladies at the bar or in the office yelp “High-Five! High-Five!” while one of them holds their hand up waiting for the other. No REAL high five needs an announcement. It should be unspoken. The next sporting event you view on TV, watch what happens when your team scores. You will see, down on the ice, the field, the gridiron, and unspoken bond between players as they enact a ritual that goes unspoken, but speaks volumes. Then watch as the camera pans up to the big box seats to two septuagenarian team owners sharing 3-5 attempts at a mottled, age spotted High Five. Fingers akimbo. Faces hangdog. Colostomy bags on hips (yay for us! another million), as the High Five God shudders on his throne somewhere in a back room of the Sports Hall of Fame, or perhaps behind that long black wall in Washington, D.C.

The Throne


It is getting really hard to guess what the other person is up to when you greet them. I prefer to come over the top and shake regular, but again, others may employ a different strategy. I guess my point is, until we establish a bond that may warrant a secret, Complicated Handshake, when you and I meet next, lets do it the regular way.
  As I write this, I sit in the Happy Landing Lounge at YVR waiting for my younger brother to touch down on the 7:12 from Fort St. John.  You will see few complicated handshakes here in the airport. You will see those who have been apart for some time. You will see them smiling with their eyes and faces, arms open. Women hug, men shake hand, and maybe a loose arm around the shoulder.  For some folks its been too long. Others, maybe mother-in-law types, not long enough. If you were here right now, you would see two brothers meet each other in just a few minutes.  We’ll shake each others hands. Like our father taught us. Wedge the thumbs. Fingers around the bottom of the other person’s hand. Grip firmly. Shake vertically. Repeat as needed.

Oh! Here comes Shithead! In closing, I guess I should ask you, who’s hand do I have to shake to gedda drink around here?

Guilty Pleasure Drink

"Well we all have a face 
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone..."
Billy Joel - The Stranger




You ever get into someones car and they JAM the CD player off, or switch the song really quick when it starts playing? They were listening to it at high volume as they pulled in and were probably singing but now there is someone else around and they are sure the song is not fit for public consumption. At least, they don't want you to KNOW they listen to it. It could be a genre or it could be just one song. Could be from the seventies or from a movie soundtrack. Its definitely CHEESY. Could be Lionel Richie. Could be Backstreet, we don't know. At home, you shake it in your bathroom with that song blaring, singing into your hairbrush. You stop.You look at yourself. You wonder what the fuck you are doing, because you realize you have a $125 Karaoke machine downstairs WITH AN ACTUAL REAL MICROPHONE ON IT. You tell your reflection you'll be right back. Okay, here goes. Restart song. You imagine singing this song in front of a crowd of millions, and you hope they are either punching the air with their fists or quietly shedding a tear in silent admiration, holding their lighters aloft. Does anyone out there have a guilty pleasure song that nobody knows they like, but when you hear it, you wanna sing? You know the one I'm talking about, you cheeseball. Feel free to post anonymously... Let er rip. Failing that, who's head do I have to duct tape my headphones to and blast Kenny Loggins' "Meet Me Halfway" at vol. 11 to gedda drink around here?

Robot Cashier Drink

Everyone can rejoice now when visiting their local supermarket. Instead of waiting for inept teenagers to ring your items in, now you can wait for inept customers to do it! While I'm less likely to get owly with a biker ham-handedly jamming his club card number in than the pimply 18 year old who used to run the till, I still believe that the level of frustration can be the same, if not greater. With the till we were corralled down these corridors between US magazine and a wall of  candy bars and that twilight zone between the impulse gum and the horoscope scrolls is the point of no return. These self-checkouts are set up, usually in groups of four, two facing two, often with little or NO SUPERVISION! Can we be trusted? No, for one cashier hovers around on standby waiting for frustration levels to rise enough that she comes to help us, but for that, we're on our own out here. There is a soothing female voice that lets you and everyone else know that you have an UNIDENTIFIED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA and to PLEASE REMOVE it, as well as offering you the obligatory pleasantries such as "please" and "thank you". (They grasp the concept of gratitude?) I guess my main problem with these tills is actually that jobs have been replaced by machines, save for the mother hen standby cashier, who was obviously the one cashier with the most seniority of the 4 who got canned in order to make way for the rise of the machines. She says hello and has a smile on, but as she probably prepared for these tills to arrive on the scene, perhaps I should ignore her completely in preparation for her inevitable departure. It would be incredibly rude however, and may result in an UNIDENTIFIED ITEM IN MY BAGGING AREA. This whole situation begs the question, who's head do I have to beat my 7-digit club card number into after buying the ingredients to Ol' Tone's Po' Boy Goulash to gedda drink around here?

Bartender of the Week drink

Steve "Young Man" McLeod - Shark Club Langley - Sept. 26th


For the first bartender of the week, I gotta go with my own home bar and a mate that knows how to slang a drink. This cool as a cucumber bottle jockey is quick with a joke, or a light of your smoke and gets me my drinks for free. He's got deft hand for the mixed drinks and a seventh sense about when your brew is low. A sly wit, an eye for the ladies, (especially his  own) and a disdain for middle management puts Young Man in first place. Show up, test his mettle and his almost encyclopedic knowledge of movie lines... www.sharkclubs.com

Eugene Mow at Central City Brew Pub in Surrey - Runner Up.

Stop by an wish old Euge congratulations on his recent marriage to local beauty/celebrity Tash Busch. Whatta team these two make. Eugene runs the bar here at Central with a certain panache not found in your run of the mill local pub. Quick with a kind word and a devillish grin, its always a pleasure being served at Mow's Tavern...

www.centralcitybrewing.com

Some of us DID have to work this weekend... Here are a few pics of the friends and festivities...

Dustin Cross Drink

I met Dustin Cross down at the Sheraton Wall Center for drinks with the rest of his real estate team. Its funny how much you forget. I haven't seen Dustin in 19 years, but we picked up right where we left off. Telling stupid jokes and making each other piss ourselves laughing... Dusty and I used to chill in his room reading Mad Magazines for hours on end, howling with laughter. We hadda few brews at the hotel lounge, then fucked off to this little Irish pub down Burrard a few blocks. He gave me a lowdown on what had been goin on in Regina since I'd left, and I told him the shit that I've been up to. All in all it was a fucking fantastic night with an old buddy that I didn't realize how much I'd missed. There was a time in my youth that Ol' Dusty D and I were rarely apart. I considered him one of my solid friends back then, when solid friends were tough to come by, and I feel the same now. The only bummer of the evening was that my camera died, so all I had was my shitty cell phone camera. I got one pic anyway. If there is any one reason to head back to Regina for my 20 year reunion, Its to see Dustin... Thanks for the memories man! NO DICE! So my question is this... What old buddy do I have to sit around, get drunk and have non-stop laughs with to gedda drink around here?

Shut Your Fucking Mouth Drink

I cannot stand it when I am being introduced to the staff of a new job and the boss/manager/acting assistant to the traveling secretary says, "We work hard. We play hard." Really. Oh, this sounds like a place I wanna work. That doesn't mean anything. Work hard? I don't have a colege education! I'll make do! Its not a fucking salt mine for god's sake. And play hard. You wanna play hard, come out with me and the Miserable Bastards on a Wednesday night! For openers, pal, your staff doesn't even like you. Sure they get together, but you aren't invited. You are stuck in that manager/buddy delusional twilight zone. If one or more of your employees has a bang on impression of you, you are not well liked...  Work hard/play hard my ass. I must have heard it about 20 times. 'Course, I've had a lot of jobs. None of them were going anywhere though. So I ask you, what middle management do I have to be the thorn in the side of to gedda drink around here?