I work at a little bistro, we print our menu daily, the old menus get cut up into coasters, they are not absorbent, tend to fly away in the wind and are all but worthless after about half a cocktail, but they maintain the vision of trying to produce less waste. How many trees do we need for the perfect cocktail experience?

Trees, make the bar top out of them, age my cognac in them, but I don’t need them as a plinth for a twenty minute indulgence.

On the other hand I am a big fan of drinking and being totally convinced of one’s ability to change the world, some good ideas may come of it, and inevitably one of my friends will act on one of those ideas while sober. So let the war rage on.

heed wisdom of guest blogger scotthowe

bevnaps don’t cut it

Call me crazy but I advocate nothing- i.e., no ‘bev naps’ scattered about; just the lovely wooden (zinc, marble, etc.) birthday suit the bar came in. And nearby, a stack of decent naps, so if i need one i can take one. Maybe a stack of non-swaggy coasters, too. Allow me to rant/share:

I was once forced to use a napkin (could have been coaster, who cares) at Bukowski’s in Cambridge several yrs ago, a bar which annoyed me anyway because it was so loud. The bartender came over twice and put my drink back on one, saying something snotty about how it was their policy! (In fairness, a recent return there proved just the opposite.) Another bar once implied it was impolite of me not to use one, for they would then have to clean up after messy old me and it would furthermore leave ‘marks’ on the bar. Hmn.

I wonder when it became taboo to set your damn drink on the damn wooden bar? I know I’m not the only one who likes the feel of setting a mug of beer or cocktail on the handsome natural surface I sit before. They usually go together like peanut butter & jelly. Maybe I watched too much “Deadwood”, but I think the sound of an empty shot glass on raw wood sounds pretty nice - who agrees? Bar towels hung underneath the bar on the patrons’ side was pretty novel, too. What’s so wrong with letting your bar get a bit well-loved and weathered-looking anyway? Have some soul? I might inadvertently damage my liver, but I’m certainly not interested in ruining anyone’s bar top, especially my friends’! But for now I’ll continue to take the bev nap and shush. I’ll keep it nearby though, just in case.

Also, sometimes, the napkins aren’t to blame; it is the glass. Glasses with smooth bases stick to glasses, while those with bumpy bases will not stick to the napkins. So, choosing a better glass for the bar initially can be helpful as well. That’s just a couple of issues I thought were relevant. Great post and topic by the way.