Addendum: That night out.

That night out with the glowsticks was pretty awesome...

Basically, after I taught my class, I had been barhopping downtown, and since Monday is industry night, I ended up at this dead Latin-themed bar at like 10pm...

And the bartender told me that the clubspace downstairs (from which clubby bass music was blasting) was having in industry night "March Madness"-type finals competition between bartenders where they had to sell the most drinks in a given period of time, and I should go down and check it out...

I wandered down the stairs then, turned the hallway, and walked into a black-walled small room crammed with like 70 offshift bartenders from downtown's hottest bars, all dressed up and dancing up on leather couches while 2 women (both white, one dark-haired with a kind face and the other blonde and kind of shallow) were racing around a big stainless steel table area making one cocktail after another for the huge masses of people.

I talked with someone and they said you had to get chips, and at that point I noticed a guy dressed up like a referee in the corner of the room over by the DJ, and I went and got a $12 chip from him so I could get a specialty cocktail.

I waited for the bartender with the kind face, and after she was done pouring shots and then 2 cocktails for me, she said really quick,"What'll you have?", and I was like, "Something with gin that's savory," and she was like, "Okay," and immediately set to work, making me some kind of herb-gin cocktail that was quite good, as I tossed the chip into a fishbowl full of them that was positioned on her side of the counter next to a giant bowl overflowing with fruit, mostly oranges and lemons with part of the zest already taken off on many of them.

I chit-chatted with a lot of people, and a few who were from the bar where the girl who made my drink was from said that if I ever came by on the nights that they worked there, they'd take care of me.

One of them also was like, "Isn't this a great excuse to binge drink?"

At that point, that bartender with the kind face's activity slowed, so she pulled out glowsticks and handed them around to everyone - I got a purplish-blue one, that I wore as a bracelet on my right wrist; later, I'd add on a yellow one next to it - and then she hopped up onto the leather couch near the mixing area, raising her hands in a "party on!" motion and being like "WHOOOOOOO!!!!!!" to rally everyone and get them to drink more.

Overall, people were very well-dressed in a hip downtown (but not hipster) sort of way, most notably this young goatteed hispanic guy with big ears that stick out; his glasses had frames like white clouded glass, and his sportscoat was a light- to medium-gray snakeskin.

It was so much fun and my cocktail was so good, I decided to get a 2nd cocktail, and the same bartender was like, "Savory, right?", and she did something with a ton of whiskey and bitters and some other stuff, with an orange peel squeezed around the edge of the glass, that was very tasty - a ton of whiskey, but a unique taste where it just blended with everything but was so strong and powerful that you had to drink it slow to appreciate it.

Right before I left, this security guy from the most major downtown club who I had been talking with - he said they get 3000 people a night on Thurs. - Fri. - Sat. and do $1.5 million in sales a night - said that he dropped $1000 on a bottle of whiskey for his favorite bartender.

That made me wonder if he also sold drugs at that club, on the side.