Professor of Cocktail Studies

  Yesterday I had my first event as a bartender. The event was a party celebrating the life of a woman who died some months ago. Before her death she expressed impatience with a traditional, somber memorial service and said that instead she wanted friends and family to hold a "big ass" party. She got her wish. The big ass party sprawled across an expansive lawn and had about 200 people in attendance, some of whom had come long distances to be there. Beyond that, I don't think I can describe the specifics of the big ass party without the permission of its organizer. There were three other bartenders involved in the event, as well as our boss Vanessa, who supervised getting things set up and remained until about 2:30 pm, when she left to go attend to a second large event. Our principal station was a square of tables, two sides of which were for serving the guests, the third as a cache for wine and soft drinks, and the fourth open so that we could retrieve cans of beer ...

 When I decided to pursue bartending, the first thing I did was to buy a couple of books on the subject.  The second was to enroll in a bartending school, specifically Columbus Bartending School .  I don't think I considered doing anything else.  Partly this decision was a function of my being a professor and having a bias in favor of formal education.  But although I didn't think about this aspect of the question, partly it was the fact that I could readily afford the roughly $800 cost. Most bartenders, it turns out, got into the business just by jumping in.  They trained on-the-job.  I asked several bartenders I know whether they attended a school.  None of them had.  I didn't ask them the reason, but I suspect they landed the job just by walking into a bar and filling out an application.  They probably didn't start tending bar right away.  It's common for bartenders to start off as "bar backs."  Bar backs have the essential ...

Yes, I am indeed a professor of cocktail studies.  I do not say that glibly.  I am by trade a professional historian, and because human beings live out their lives in order of time, literally every human activity has a past, which means that everything has a history, which gives me the freedom to study practically anything.  When laypeople think of "history" they generally think of political, diplomatic, and military history.  But historians examine a plethora of other subjects:  science, religion, migration, movies, murder, disability, climate change, childhood, even sex.  (For my own part, I'm currently at work on the modern study of suicide and suicidal behavior in the United States.)  Logically, then, there should be a history of cocktails. And indeed there already is, although at present nearly all of it is written by professional bartenders--"mixologists" is the fancy term--who have a passion for their profession that often leads them to explore ...