March 5 is the 10th anniversary of Sordid Tales. I really can’t believe it’s been ten years. In that time I have written over 300 columns. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “How’d I do that?”

When I started this thing I had no idea what I was doing. It was your classic fake-it-till-you-make-it scenario. The only thing I knew about writing columns was that you had to string words together to make phrases that led to some sort of point or something. I never imagined it would last ten months, let alone ten years. So I hope you’ll excuse me while I take this moment to lean back in my work chair, fold my arms, take a long, deep breath and say out loud, “Holy crap! How did I do that?”
Fuck if I know.

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The column below was my first ever for San Diego CityBEAT. Before this, it was called Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat and ran in SLAMM, a biweekly music magazine. In August 2002, SLAMM was bought out by a small company called Southland Publishing and it became what is known as an alternative weekly magazine. Whereas SLAMM was a smaller, less frequent music and entertainment rag, CityBEAT was more of a city paper, covering not only music and entertainment, but politics and culture and news in general.

When the buyout was complete, the decision was made by the publishers and editors to keep the column, however the scope of it needed to shift a bit. They needed something that would appeal to a wider audience than bar goers. So I shortened the title to Sordid Tales and altered the scope.

Sordid Tales of a Bartender in Heat was a column about the comedy and tragedy of the bar scene complete with anecdotes of drunks and brawlers and loners and miscreants from a bartender who’s seen it all, while Sordid Tales was more about the tragedy and the comedy of our culture as a whole — as seen through the bartender’s eyes. Some people preferred the original, others the latter. As for me, I love them both for different reasons. Enjoy. (more…)