By 3:00 p.m., five days a week, I’m walking through “Sunshine Alley” between 11th and 12th and in the back door of Rustic Canyon. Upon entrance, I see the prep guys, three, sometimes four of them squeezed into the narrow back part of the kitchen where they work on one long stainless steel table. I have names for each of them. Francisco is Miel, Froy is Baby, Stephen is Grueso, and Alberto is the Squirtmaster. I’m greeted by them with smiles and sometimes a hearty slap on the ass if I’m lucky.

Chef is down there. Most times I say hi and give him a fist bump, unless he’s super focused on a project–something or someone–then continue through the kitchen saying hi to the cooks, always amazed at how many of them are crammed into the small space.

Then I’m through the swinging door and turning right into the bar. Again, amazed by how small it is but even more perplexed by how insane it all looks. There’s an occupant in every conceivable place to put something and even then it often spills out into the dining room areas to places like above the server station and on a shelf in the lounge that was never intended to hold much weight. Over there are bitters experimentations, a few cookbooks, the remnants of one of my old plants.

The first thing I do is adjust the floor mats. The area is triangular so there’s no perfect configuration, there’s bald spots on the tile where a foot can slip or a bottle can shatter. Once finished, I wash my hands and put together the various clean pieces of the puzzle, the shabby plastic holders for juices inside the well, then I attach the stainless steel front well, and the additional side well which is held in place by two “S” hooks. I slide the stainless steel pieces into place for the rail and feel some sort of pleasurable lessoning of anxiety at this small task. The pass mat goes down on a spot where drinks are picked up, it’s getting a little rough around the edges and we’ll need a replacement soon, this one was stolen from another restaurant. There’s two more much older mats where we dry off items washed during service. I slide down the stainless steel pieces for the rail and feel some sort of pleasurable lessoning of anxiety at this small task. Next I unlock the booze closet and pull out the big silver bucket for icing down bottles during service mostly syrups and vermouth but also the occasional white wine. A screen in the sink for catching ice completes it all.

At this point a server arrives late and begins to perform the meager sidework for their particular trade. They always seem somewhat disgruntled at all of it, as if they’d rather do nothing at all. If I’m lucky, there’s no host. If I’m not, they’re already playing music intended for teenage girls. My first choice would always be jazz. It seems apropos for prep work.

There’s always a moment, however fleeting, that I look at all of this and think first about how long I’ve been doing it. It’s the longest I’ve ever held a job and it’s still weird to me how pleasantly and horribly repetitive it is. How many servers, hosts, cooks, and even managers have I seen come and go over this span of time while I’ve been here through my own strange journey at Rustic? Dozens? Hundreds?

During the slower days of the week we have been doing something called “solo bar” meaning one bartender instead of two in order to cut down on labor as well as keeping the tip pool healthy. It’s grueling, but two bartenders is often not required. It’s more to do with the ups and downs of working in a restaurant than anything else. The bar has and always will be at the whim of walk in business. Some nights there’s no one and other nights it’s packed. It’s a firm chaos theory happenstance with no rhyme or reason.

Next up is the juice order. I turn on the light in the wine fridge, look at our current fresh juice line ups, and make a mental check list of what I’ll need. It’s always fresh lime, even if we have some from the night previous, I still juice new. The old lime will go toward something else, a punch, a sherbet, maybe even some staff drink of some sort.

The old warhorse, the Sunkist juicer lurks in the closet like an old, tired droid. I lift it out and place it on the back prep area, a war torn piece of wood over the top of the wine fridge. Layers of the fibers stripped away over the course of over a decade of wear and tear, like me, except where one part is worn, another grows and sometimes flourishes.

When I arrive on my first shift of the week, I’m attempting to rewrap my brain around being at work, at spending a large portion of my time expending my life energy working for others. I’ve been doing the same thing for many years, yes, but it’s still a shock to my nervous system in a way partially because I’m now a father and I direct my mornings and early afternoons to my three year old son who deserves massive attention. There’s not much left in the tank for old Rustic but luckily I have a job where I’m respected and no one tells me what to do. It goes both ways. I’m trusted to show up and perform my duties without interaction because I’ve been consistent and in turn I’m for the most part left alone. Not many people can say this about their jobs.

My greatest weakness is my constant irritation toward the waitstaff who are now younger than ever before and spend their down time chatting at the host stand or just doing nothing at all instead of doing their side work. I tell myself the same things I’ll tell my son when he gets a little older: “Don’t worry about others, worry about yourself.” Easier said than done. I still contain a major disdain for servers left over from my time in kitchens. It is what it is. They’re a necessary evil, like politicians. Bad example. Shit, I was a server once, I must remind myself. There’s a possibility that seeing them reminds me of this fact and I then project my own regrets on them…Or they’re just lazy and suck.

To be continued…

P.S. I wrote this post in the morning then went to the kid’s park and thought about that last line. I was going to come home and just erase it, but thought better of it, not because I agree with the statement but because I felt that way at the time and wrote it…So it stays. I don’t think all anything of anyone. I’ve worked with all sorts of people and they’re all different. We all have a choice in what we do and if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have to work so hard on making new cocktails quite so often, etc. I too could go and hang out at the host stand and chat it up and then scatter when guests came to the door. I jest, I jest…I guess I can’t help myself…