I received this email from a reader in San Diego. It’s in response to a column I had written about losing my bartending job:

“Dear Ed, [I read] about this job in Norway or Iceland… where people hire drinking buddies for the night. Man, if you couldn’t swing this, no one could.”—William H.

The company to which William refers is called the Kind Fairy Agency out of the Ukraine. For about $18, they will hook you up with a drinking pal for the evening.

I do love this concept, but judging from the tone of the company’s press release, I’m not sure Kind Fairy is right for the job: “We are not trying to get people drunk deliberately,” says director Yulia Peeva. “Our main mission is [to provide] good, fruitful conversation.”

“… [W]hen I see that a client is relaxed,” says professional drinking buddy Gennady Maksimov, “I urge him to talk rather than drink more.”

Well, what the hell kind of drinking buddy company is this?! A true drinking partner doesn’t “urge” his buddy to drink less—unless, of course, he’s on the verge of talking shit to a table-full of soldiers of The Mongols motorcycle and murderers club.

And the “main mission” of any true drinking excursion isn’t “conversation.” The main mission is drinking. All that other stuff—talking about problems, exploring philosophical concepts, arm wrestling, picking up hotties, telling jokes, starting bar fights, closing business deals—whatever it is any two drinking buddies decide to do while they drink together—will vary from buddy to buddy. However, the one constant—the raison d’etre—of a having and being a drinking companion is drinking. (more…)

It was 11 p.m., and I was jonesing for some buffalo wings. So I strolled over to my favorite neighborhood bar, The Tilted Stick. Once there, I ran into an old bartender friend, Teddy Ballgame. I hadn’t seen Teddy in a long time, so I delayed ordering the wings, bought a round and started chatting. At one point in the conversation, I joked about a poster that hangs on the wall titled “Tilted Stick Rules,” which I began reading out loud to Teddy and doing a little comedy shtick on the rules I thought were silly. That’s when a stranger interrupted and said, “If you don’t like the rules, you can get out.”

Naturally, this took me by surprise. I was just joking around with Teddy and hadn’t intended to offend anyone, so I pondered his statement, then informed the guy—whose name (I later learned) rhymes with “snotty”—that we were having a private conversation, but “thanks for the advice anyway.”

“This is a locals bar,” Snotty insisted. “You need to leave,” at which point I thought I was at the Improv because this guy—this apparent victim of fetal-alcohol syndrome—was delivering what I considered to be pure comedy gold. (more…)

Dear Mr. Decker, as a working bartender, I feel you are the perfect person to ask this question. I really like this girl but she’s sort of standoffish to me. Except when she gets drunk. Then she’s all over me. I’m really tempted to get her drunk so we can get wild. Is this wrong? Does it make me a creep?

—Dave M., North Park

Dear Dave, So, you want to know if getting a girl drunk so that she might have sex with you makes you a creep? The fact that you have to ask that question tells me that you’ve got a lot to learn about women and booze.

Getting girls drunk to loosen them up for a little jungle sex is one of the reasons Jesus invented alcohol and to not use it in such a manner would be disrespectful to The Lord, so my advice is to start ordering those shots. (more…)

My head hurts. It really really hurts. My turnip is throbbing so badly I had to beg my editor for an extension on this deadline cuz I can’t hardly write no good like this. And the reason I hurt so badly is because I just returned from Las Vegas – Land of the Bloody Liver Infections. Not that I’m a Las Vegas rookie or anything. It’s just that, this particular trip to Las Vegas was different than the others. This time it was for a convention. And not just any convention. This was a convention to top all conventions: a convention for a magazine called Modern Drunkard Magazine and one can only imagine, with sphincter-clenching terror, what a Modern Drunkard Magazine convention held in the Land of the Bloodshot Moon might be like.

Modern Drunkard Magazine (MDM) is pretty much what you think it is: a 50 page glossy monthly with neo-pulp artwork (think rat pack meets Church of the SubGenius) and heroically written tales about, for and by drunkards. It’s got articles like, “Booze is My Copilot – How heavy drinking cured my fear of flying and made me a better person,” and “40 Things Every Drunk Should Do before He Dies.” It’s got columns, like “Wino Wisdom,” a poetry section called, “Postcards from Skid Row,” and cartoons called “Comics for Alcoholics.” MDM also features my old column from the SLAMM days, “Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat,” which explains my affiliation with them.

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It was 1:50 a.m. — closing time after a busy Saturday night at the bar. I had already made the final announcement to the happy peppy party people: “We’re closed, please finish your drinks.” I had even made the final, final announcement: “Time to go. Drink ‘em or lose ‘em.” And now it was time to make the final, final, final absolutely last final announcement:

“Get out now you bastards– out out out — Jesus holy Christ, don’t you people have lives!”

Most everyone had left, except for this little rude drunk prick fuck jerkwad ass blower who was holding a pitcher as though it were and oversized mug and nursing it alone. I put my hand on the lip of the pitcher, and said, “I have to take this now.”

“Slow down dude – what’s your hurry?” he snorted.

“What’s my hurry?? Do I really have to explain this to you — dude?” I asked.

“Look, I paid for the pitcher and I’m going to finish it,” he said, refusing to release his grip on the handle.

So there we were, the two of us, tug-of-warring over a half-full pitcher of blonde beer, the clock clicking dangerously close to the 2 o’clock mark, my patience completely and utterly drained, and him glaring at me – red-eyed and glassy, like a demon emerging from an overly chlorinated swimming pool.

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Well, it just keeps getting harder and harder to rock out in this town. It breaks my heart. As you know, Rob Hagey and his people over at San Diego Street Scene made some drastic changes to their event this year: 1) They changed location. 2) They went from three days down to two. 3) And most notably, Street Scene became an all ages event.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the phrase, “All ages event,” I develop a rash on my eyeballs. Because it means those of us who are old enough to enjoy a little beer with our rock ‘n’ roll will have to watch the concert from the beer garden. And beer gardens blow big time.

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