In the bartending spirit Northwestern students who gave mixology a shot. WRITTEN BY SAM STEVENS // DESIGNED BY S. KELSIE YU
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einberg third-year Stuart Sumner received career advice from a visiting professor at the same place he watched a man puke all over the bartop on a gameday weekend: the bar at the Farmhouse restaurant in Evanston, where Sumner has worked since last summer. After a year of online learning, Sumner was looking for a restaurant gig to get him off his laptop and onto his feet. He had worked as a busboy and bartending assistant in high school but had no formal experience as a bartender. Because Farmhouse was short-staffed, the restaurant’s management agreed to let him try out bartending — on graduation weekend. Farmhouse’s location on the first floor of the Hilton Orrington hotel made Sumner’s first weekend on the job hectic, with parents and soon-to-be college graduates flooding in. “It was stressful,” Sumner says. “But there were zero expectations. I had never done it before, so they were kind of like, ‘It’s fine if you’re not doing perfectly.’” Other Northwestern students have worked as bartenders, picking up unexpected stories and skills along the way. McCormick and Communication fourth-year Parker Ryan craved a job that was more active than his previous one at a software company, which he quit in the spring of 2021. After securing a summer research grant, he chose to apply for a second position to help pay for school. Although Ryan had never bartended before, he walked into Taco Diablo, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Evanston, and asked if they needed an extra hand at the bar. “I needed to do something so different from programming and just sitting behind a desk all day,” Ryan says. “It is cerebral to an extent. You’re having to think on your toes, and it’s not any very deep problems you’re solving, but there’s a lot of problems at once.” Although his two summer positions totaled nearly 60 hours a week, Ryan still managed to have some fun bartending. One night, after he and four coworkers had worked double shifts until around 11 p.m., they decided to take the train to downtown Chicago. “It was this awesome match of personalities,” Ryan says. “It was just really fun to see these people that I had worked with
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WINTER 2022