So, your intrepid reporter was sent to be a judge at the first annual (sure to be second, if not more) Sonoma Battle of the Bartenders, conducted at the Veterans Memorial Building last night. Though I was on duty in the fourth and penultimate “heat” (as founder Brian Scanlan was fond of calling the rounds preceding the fifth and final showdown between Sonoma’s finest mixologists), I’m at a loss to tell you who the winner was other than the charities who directly benefited from the occasion. It should be noted that the packed house of several hundred cocktail aficionados contributed directly to the scholarship fund of the Native Sons and the cemetery fund of the American Legion, somewhere in the vicinity of $14,000. This, surely, should be applauded as it far and away exceeded the expectations of the organizers.
Other than that, this is what I recall: Sonoma’s own multiple-personality artiste George Webber emceed the competition with his usual aplomb (and top hat). When he asked, while onstage, how I “was feeling” I answered “drunk,” which garnered the cheap round of laughter I had expected, though it was a half truth. I actually hoped I would be drunk, but alas, a vestigial sense of professionalism forbade me until I had performed my public function, over which I fretted for much of the preceding afternoon. My chief question was “Do I wear a tie?” Our photo editor Ryan Lely answered in the affirmative whilst stepping in for food and wine editor Kathleen Hill, who had forgotten a speaking engagement in Marin and had to forfeit her judgment for another day. Lely wore a tie hewn from leather and I went with a blue and white collegiate number. Other than bartender and electric bicycle impresario Hunt Bailie, we were the only chaps so appareled.
Later, Webber asked which of the improvised concoctions in my heat I admired most and, after surveying the plaintive faces of personnel representing Mary’s Pizza Shack, Murphy’s Irish Pub, Saffron and the Swiss Hotel, I demurred and answered that I was indeed “a member of the communist party,” seeing as Webber’s tone sounded rather like McCarthyism in that moment. Less cheers followed that gag, but I thought the answer politic nonetheless. Somehow, by night’s end, I was wearing a commemorative champion’s medal as I noshed on a brie and salami sandwich courtesy of the girl and the fig where Lely nearly came to blows over his Tolkien-themed tattoos with a former local radio personality. A hasty escape led him, station manger Bob Taylor, Diva Donna and myself to my Springs dig where the Contessa fed us wine and spun vintage vinyl renditions of the Clash. As the chorus rang out “Should I stay or should I go,” I realized, finally, that I no longer had to answer the question – I was home and the only place I should go was bed. To that end, goodnight and good luck.
