Do I Hear a Challenge? It’s a Café 6.

“Yo, Bartender! Let’s see you do that with 2 bottles, 2 glasses on the bar and doing the twirly thing.”

When the Café is packed to capacity, like it is for this afternoon’s impromptu post happy hour, thirsty patrons lining the bar like high rollers at a bookmaker’s shop, I slide into the zone, tossing liquor bottles in the air, catching them behind my back, doin’ 360 spins, pouring dead center – all, without spilling a drop on the smooth mahogany surface. Like a Vegas lounge act, the degree of difficulty was not the thing, the real challenge was connecting with the “audience”, that they were dazzled by technique was the one thing they could hold on to and take home in tales of the exotic. I love being the Bartender of the Six Sentence Café and Bistro and just as they say a resume is a passport through early adulthood, this gig was the purple and blue stamped one. 

The voice had come from the entrance of the SSC&B except glare from sun streaming through the transom window over the door, reflected by the mirrors behind the bar, was so perfect as to blind me to the identity of my heckler. While the voice throwing the challenge sounded young, it held the confidence of someone older…