How to get served quickly in a crowded beer bar

     Are you headed to Cigar City or Redlight Redlight for the big Founders Florida arrival parties this week?  With both of these events likely to draw large crowds we wanted to share an excerpt from an epic piece our friend Teege wrote a few months back providing some useful tips on how to get served quickly in a crowded beer bar.  If you like it, you can also check out the entire story "Hunahpu's Day Goes Gonzo" by Teege Braune.

    Dave and I made our way into Cigar City’s tasting room. The controlled chaos of the parking lot was nothing compared to the bedlam of the narrow pub. The bartenders scrambled left and right to serve anxious and thirsty patrons. Dave and I, who had  handled crowds equally as daunting, felt sympathy for the efficient but overworked staff, but we also knew a thing or two about getting
served when everyone around us was clamoring for a drink.

      “Don’t talk to me,” I told Dave. “I need extreme concentration if I’m going to get our beers before the rest of these people.”

      I stood poised at the edge of the bar, my money out. I presented myself as someone who wanted to engage in the quickest and easiest transaction possible. I wasn’t going to ask the poor, young bartender questions about everything they had on draft. I didn’t plan on ordering five different beers at once and had no intention of asking to exchange my beer for something different if, for some reason, it wasn’t to my liking. I wanted to ask for my drink in a clear and assertive, but polite manner and get the hell out of her way. She could tell all this, intuitively if not consciously, simply by looking at me, and ignoring those around me who had been waiting much longer than myself, she walked right up to me and asked me what I wanted.

    “Two glasses of the vanilla-aged Irish red on nitro,” I said, slapping my tokens and tip money on the bar.

     “Coming right up.”

    What the hell, man?!” the guy beside me shouted. “I’ve been waiting here
for twenty minutes. How did you do that?”


Excerpt from "Hunahpu's Day Goes Gonzo" by Teege Braune