With so much excitement surrounding Boston’s burgeoning craft cocktail movement, sometimes it’s easy to forget that the people pouring our carefully concocted beverages also serve folks who just want to get hammered. Fast. Which is why we took pleasure in the Improper’s interview with several top bartenders, who shared tawdry tales of strange tippers, horny academics, and more. Our favorite dispatches from the barroom’s seamy underbelly, straight ahead.
Sloshed Science: Nolan Martin of Dillon’s recalls that “one time this guy came in and started drinking Booker’s on the rocks, which is over 120-proof. He then explained evolutionary biology on a bar napkin.” Which, we suppose, is better than trying to practice evolutionary biology on the woman sitting at the next table over …
Hostile Tipping: Noche’s Andrew Korney remembers one surly individual who “came in and ordered some kind of Manhattan. He was nasty, rude and very short with me. He pounded the drink, looked me in the eye and said it was the best Manhattan he’d had in a while. Then he dropped $500.” Perhaps he’s a friend of the poor drunkard at Strega who demanded a White Russian, received a chocolate milk, and declared it the “best White Russian he’d ever had” and tipped $100.
Professor Porn: Temple Bar’s Jessica Hart Burday once received a “porn novel” from an “older, highly respected academic from a nearby university.” (Our minds wander to dark, scary, geriatric places with that one.)
Yes, it seems Temple’s really the place for debauched drunkenness. Burday also spent one evening contending with a “drunk couple in the woman’s bathroom, a drunk ex-con and an unattended baby, at 1 a.m.” On a Monday night, no less. And to think, Mayor Menino thinks sugary drinks are the enemy!
Glass Acts [Improper]
