Emerson Dameron

Steve Walker traveled from Manassas, Virginia to pour mixers at T.G.I. Friday's on Erie. His brain booked solid with drink orders, our dark-haired, heavyset hero juggles liquor bottles behind his back. For his patrons' amusement, he blindfolds himself with a wet bar towel. Firewater spills on the floor and on Steve's red shirt.

It's a mild Tuesday evening, and Friday's has assembled fourteen ace barkeeps from nine states. Tonight's winner will represent the Midwest Division at the World Bartending Championships, held next March in Las Vegas, which will ordain the chain's top tender. Although this is a competition, the matching uniforms and pleasant 'tude prevent any of the World Wrestling Federation's Shakespearean antics. Rather, we see fourteen laborers aspiring to one ideal, as most bartenders do during a rush. To wit, they're trying to have fun on a maddeningly hectic job, or at least to convince the customers that they are.

Contestants are judged in two categories, "compulsory" and "freestyle" flair. (The 1999 cult comedy "Office Space" mocked this mysterious "flair" as an element of TGIF's corporate culture.) The compulsory contest tests knowledge of the job's nuts and bolts: recipes, accuracy of pour, cleanliness and the like. Right now, Steve is taking on the freestyle portion, a flashy "bar-obic" routine, and he's starting to lose it. As stadium rock pumps through the PA, he drops bottles right and left, but the crowd cheers him on. Everyone wants a bartender to succeed.

(2005-11-15)

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