I crack my knuckles, try to remember the feel of a cocktail shaker, the heft of a tray. Brooklyn is still dusky rather than dark, but I can see the flicker of candles inside, a dim warm glow.
Bartending black book trial#
Pretending I’m not flat broke and sleeping on my best friend’s couch and painfully single and so far jobless, although this last is about to change, I’m hoping, standing outside this lovely bar, ten minutes early for a trial shift, peering in through those front windows with a wine key in my pocket and my hair tied back in a ponytail and my stomach tied up in knots. The world my oyster, waiting to be plucked and shucked and swallowed. It’s June in New York and the city is awash with kids in robes, blue and black and purple, the class of 2018 on the streets and the subways, double-parked in front of dorms and apartment buildings, and if I close my eyes I can pretend to be one of them, pretend the last two years never happened and I’m twenty-two again, fresh out of Columbia, a Bachelor of the Art of English literature, cum laude, thankyouverymuch. It’s a true neighborhood bar, the kind of place that is harder to find by the year in this city, the kind of place that could only possibly exist on this block, in this neighborhood, in this borough, under these exact unlikely circumstances. A cocktail bar, at its core, though not pushy about it, though there are regulars who come in for top-shelf Scotch and Narragansett alike. The bar itself a golden gleam in a dim room, a ten-seater “L” built out of wood and brass, lit by Edison bulbs and candlelight. It’s small, with white walls and exposed brick, big windows looking out onto the street, a scattering of high-tops in the front, a handful of tables in the back. Joe’s Apothecary is one of many, and yet, there is nowhere else like Joe’s.
Bartending black book license#
Bars that serve nothing but cocktails, bars with no liquor license at all. Speakeasies, dives, pubs, wine bars, beer bars, tiki bars, bars in restaurants and hotels, in breweries and distilleries, in cafés, in grocery stores, in basements, on rooftops, on boats. It’s New York City, the center of the universe, and you’ve seen everything.
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