Advice at the student bar from a (black) guy...

Last night I was at the student bar with a Swiss friend of a friend who came internationally to study, and after he was getting tired and headed off, I went to the back room of the bar to say hi to a friend.

While there, I said hi to an older (black) gentleman who was sitting near me - you meet eyes and nod heads and smile or say hello, is a (black) cultural thing in general that a lot of (white) people don't pick up on - and then his friend came to join him, this older (black) gentleman who comes in the student bar a lot and always orders martinis, and who I know from around, so I started talking with them.

As it turns out, the older (black) gentleman who I just met had gotten into this spat at the white neighborhood bar early that week, because the (white) bartender told a younger (black) customer to order something else, since he didn't know how to mix a martini, and when the older (black) gentleman told him he'd walk him through it, the (white) bartender told him to kiss off or something, and things just blew up from there...

"I have been going in there for thirty years, and I spend forty dollars there a month, and though I have a ph.d., I did grow up in the projects, so I told him he could kiss my black ass, and my black-ass ph.d. almost went around the bar to go beat him down," he was like.

Then, he added, "And I never get racial, but I always knew he was some white motherfuckin' trailer trash from the country, and now he just proved it to me."

After that, he was starting to say how the customer is always right, and I respectfully disagreed, and said that it sounded like he was in the right, but sometimes, managers got to close ranks around staff if a customer is really an asshole, and he agreed, and said that when he tended bar, he used to tell someone he'd buy them their last drink, but they'd have to leave after.

"Kill them with kindness," he was like.

Then, he said that no neighborhood bar should have a shot counter on their liquor bottles, but it should all be free-pours.

(He expounded on that for like 5 minutes.)

Then, he gave me some lessons on life, including:

- The most important thing in life is respect, and when you wake up in the morning, you got to look in to that mirror and want to make love to yourself.

- Everyone wants a little ass, but the important thing is that when you're out looking for it, not to stick your head up on it.

He also told me about how when he was in social work class a (black) guy came to him and said he was going to commit suicide, and he told him, "Well, go and do it, and be sure to send me a letter from up in heaven, because I'm sure you'll be able to."

"My professor called me out on that," he was like, "But there's no formulas for that shit, and I was trying to save his black ass."

Then, he added that the prof removed him from the case, but the client asked for him back.