FLAIR BARTENDER CLASSES NYC HOW TO
Think of parents who teach their kids how to drive on a manual, knowing that an automatic will be a breeze if they can master stick shift first. Starting off doing things the “hard” way, Heugel says-giving a bottle a cheeky aerial twist before pouring or whipping out shakers like one of those crazy cup-stacking children, for example-gave him the confidence to become a better, faster bartender overall. “You had to learn how to do these things if you wanted to be a bartender.” “If you’ve been bartending anywhere from 12 years on, I’d say you touched an era of bartending that was very flair-centric,” says Heugel. But, perhaps more importantly, flair has subtly influenced craft cocktail bartenders of a certain generation, who have extracted elements of the discipline’s polish, precision and showmanship and applied them to their own methods.īobby Heugel, owner of Houston’s Anvil and Nightingale Room, cut his teeth under the tutelage of a flair bartender, who herself came up in the heyday Bandy helped kick off. And it’s recognized as a competitive platform, with organizations like the Flair Bartenders’ Association overseeing elaborate international contests. It has evolved into a blustery performance art all its own, in heavy rotation throughout Europe and in serious party towns like Las Vegas. “Tricks are for kids,” he jokes.Īnd yet, flair lives on despite wholesale changes to the business. (Funny, since the lauded “Professor” Jerry Thomas was as well-known as a showman as he was a bartender.) Now in his late 50s, Bandy retired from drink-making a decade ago and currently works as a Hollywood set builder and prop maker. But this would systemically fade to make way for the eventual classic cocktail revival. In flair’s mainstream heyday, from the late ‘80s to mid-’90s, every relevant bartender had the moves to impress their crowds. But, “like a dance craze,” Bandy says, “it had to end somewhere.” Just as tastes in liquor shift over time, tastes in nightlife change, too. The film helped spread flair across the country and, eventually, the world, which Bandy would see much of over eight years, hosting training seminars in 30 different countries. That gloriously over-the-top Long Island Iced Tea routine set to “Hippy Hippy Shake”? “That was my groove!” he says fondly. Before long, we’d start referring to these flourishes as “flair.”īandy is perhaps best-known for teaching Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown everything they knew for 1988’s Cocktail, still one of the best-known movies about bartending, for better or worse. Bandy wasn’t the only bartender doing this stuff at the time, but he was certainly one of the first. Catching a flying shaker tin behind his head like it was a Magic Johnson no-look pass? “That was all mine,” he recalls. He’d wow smokers by shuffleboard-sliding a matchbook, with a single match already burning, across the bar top for them to light up. Dampening his fingertips with condensation from the side of a stainless steel ice machine, he taught himself how to Frisbee-toss beverage napkins in front of guests with ninja-like precision. Customers ate it up, so he started practicing at home, chucking metal and glass up toward the ceiling while standing on his couch cushions for safety. So he began messing around, tossing around bottles, tins and other tools in a flashy manner. “I got tired of saying, ‘Hello, how are you, what would you like?’” Bandy recalls. His more-tenured coworkers, mostly aspiring actors who viewed their day jobs with disdain, had eaten up all the good shifts, leaving Bandy with scraps. It was the early ‘80s, and he was the low barman on the totem pole at a TGI Fridays in Los Angeles. As seen on television, graduates take home these valuable materials: An illustrated copy of Flair Bartending Made Easy, and America’s #1 Shot- Master Drink Index, complete with over 100 of the most popular Shooters, Tooters, Poppers, and Mindstoppers selected from Nightclub Hot Spots around the nation.John Bandy was bored. Upbeat & lively, Flair-Master Bartenders bring “Big City Bartending” to the home-town arena.
You’ll learn entirely hands-on: Impressive pouring, glassstacking, and bottle-maneuvering magic that is guaranteed to astound your friends, dazzle your customers, and fill your tip jar.
The “Flash that brings in the Cash.” Become a Flair-Master Bartender and double or even triple your tip-making potential!.
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