Behind Bars: The Straight-Up Tales of a Big-City Bartender
After reading Behind Bars, a no-holds-barred tell-all in the spirit of Kitchen Confidential, you'll never look at your favorite bartender the same way again.\ Ty Wenzel offers a raw and clever account of slinging drinks in New York City on the Bowery before and during its renaissance. Wenzel, now thirty-six, has just thrown in the towel after a decade at the swank Marion's Continental Restaurant and Lounge—a gig that was supposed to be a temporary escape after corporate burnout, but instead,...
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"There are eight million stories in the naked city and bartender Ty Wenzel has heard every one of them. She shares some of the best here in a wild, funny and sometimes horrifying account of life behind the bar. This a wicked shot of truth-served straight up."- Debra Ginsberg, author of Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress"Having been employed at Marion's during Ty's reign, I can only say I wish I would have paid more attention during my tenure, so I could publish a snappy tell-all. All I'm left with after years of waiting on tables are corns on my feet and a tin full of change."- Amy Sedaris, actress and former Marion's waitress "In Behind Bars Ty Wenzel tells her story with humor, honesty, and courage, exposing details about her life that many of us would shudder to expose to the cold light of the printed page. Bravo!"- Dale DeGroff, "King Cocktail," former Rainbow Room bartender, and author of The Craft of the Cocktail"Ty pours out some great tips for bar patrons and great stories about them. I recommend this book to anyone who's ever sat on either side of the bar."- Ray Foley, publisher of Bartender magazine "New York is changing. I know that's old man to say, but it is. Ty's stories capture a time that will be completely gone soon! Capture it beautifully and honestly. Enjoy them . . . cherish them."- Dito Montiel, author of A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints Publishers Weekly In this self-absorbed, mildly amusing, but ultimately uninspired memoir, Wenzel offers her bona fides-a Muslim born in Turkey who moves to New York, attends fashion school, rejects the "shallow and harsh world" of working at Cosmopolitan magazine and spends a decade tending bar in a fashionable Lower East Side club. She then spends the next 250 pages recounting what she learned there, which isn't much: bartenders use sex and flirting to get more tips; a good sexy bartender in New York City can make a lot of money from tips; many movie stars and rock stars (she lists about 30 by name) are good tippers; bartenders are usually pursuing "creative endeavors"; people who drink a lot often throw up. When she isn't recounting details of her nightlife, she often mentions her novelist husband, Kurt Wenzel, but she never really says what her own creative endeavor is outside of making "enough money to stop agonizing about bills every month." And her occasional attempts at sociological insight-"The age of Starbucks has given birth to a generation of people who can't see past their own, self-magnified needs"-are inevitably and hilariously undercut by the author's staggering self-centeredness and blissfully unaware cliches ("Alcohol is a great way to soften the blows of life") deployed throughout the book. (Aug.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Shaken but Not Stirred1Sex with a Twist17The Rules: How to Date the Bartender61To Tip or Die in Manhattan73Pink Drinks and the Downfall of Culture99The Orphans119At the Kahiki Lounge151There's a Fly in My Martini175Still Want to Mix?223Last Call257
\ Elle"Wenzel's pulp-fiction prose can hold its own against Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. . . . Compulsively readable.\ \ \ \ \ Minneapolis Star Tribune"A superb memoir of urban life . . . sharp-witted and complex. . . . Behind Bars delivers a subtle and mature personal narrative.\ \ \ From the Publisher"Wenzel's pulp-fiction prose can hold its own against Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential....Compulsively readable."- Elle\ "A superb memoir of urban life...sharp-witted and complex....Behind Bars delivers a subtle and mature personal narrative." - Minneapolis Star Tribune\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIn this self-absorbed, mildly amusing, but ultimately uninspired memoir, Wenzel offers her bona fides-a Muslim born in Turkey who moves to New York, attends fashion school, rejects the "shallow and harsh world" of working at Cosmopolitan magazine and spends a decade tending bar in a fashionable Lower East Side club. She then spends the next 250 pages recounting what she learned there, which isn't much: bartenders use sex and flirting to get more tips; a good sexy bartender in New York City can make a lot of money from tips; many movie stars and rock stars (she lists about 30 by name) are good tippers; bartenders are usually pursuing "creative endeavors"; people who drink a lot often throw up. When she isn't recounting details of her nightlife, she often mentions her novelist husband, Kurt Wenzel, but she never really says what her own creative endeavor is outside of making "enough money to stop agonizing about bills every month." And her occasional attempts at sociological insight-"The age of Starbucks has given birth to a generation of people who can't see past their own, self-magnified needs"-are inevitably and hilariously undercut by the author's staggering self-centeredness and blissfully unaware cliches ("Alcohol is a great way to soften the blows of life") deployed throughout the book. (Aug.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsA former "spineless, frustrated Islamic New Jersey girl" chronicles her decade-long bartending stint at Marion’s, a "kitschy fifties knockoff" in Manhattan. Wenzel was in it for the money, like most bartenders. That woman behind the counter batting her eyelashes isn’t in love with you, the author explains; she’s in love with your tip, and it better be decent or your night is going to be a thirsty one. Bars are the stomping ground of outrageous behavior, and Wenzel has plenty of stories about mean and stupid drunks, about men who simply urinate where they stand or sit ("You ever hear of Depends diapers?" she asks), about sex ("Dry humping and heavy necking are de rigueur at the bar, but outright fornication does transpire on occasion. . . . Ah, if restaurant bathrooms could talk!"), about squirting Visine into drinks of the truly loathed, about managers stealing bartenders’ tips. "Girly drinks" are undermining the nation’s foundations, she tells us, and "taking tobacco out of the environs of a bar is like taking the bubbles out of champagne." Now and again as she lays out the dos and don’ts of bar behavior, Wenzel's vibe gets a little thick: "My wet dream is serving other bartenders. . . . I know they are going to take care of me and I am certainly going to do anything they want short of bending over." But the vibe in most bars is also thick, she reminds us: "Let's face it, God invented bars so people could get laid." For those with a serious bar fixation, here’s a look into the barkeep’s not-always-enviable world. For those who never seem to be able to get the mixer’s attention at a packed bar, here’s a helpful hint: you pay for it. Enough jaundice to turn the paper yellow, but alsoenough pep and advice on bar etiquette to get you on the barstool for a test drive. Agent: Douglas Stewart/Curtis Brown\ \
