In 1995, I was working at an antiquarian bookstore in Atlantic City. At one point, I happened upon a 1936 copy of Burke’s Complete Cocktail & Drinking Recipes.
I bought it, and within weeks I was scouring estate sales and thrift stores for vintage bar ware. I picked up extra shifts whenever I could at the various dreadful restaurants I was also working at, so I could both pay for college and buy records and now buy spirits and vintage jiggers. Eventually I was forced to take fewer credits as an undergraduate degree in Political Science took lesser priority than having more records and more gin.
Costing pretty much what two semesters cost me at a state college in 1995, I’m now taking the intensive BAR Course at Astor this week. I am honored to have been accepted and am excited to learn from the likes of F. Pacult, Dave Wondrich and Dale Degroff. Judging from the luminaries that have gone through this course the past two years it has been offered (Phil Ward, Audrey Saunders, Stanislav Vadrna, Julie Reiner… it goes on), I’m kinda freakin’ out.