When the Masks Come Off
It’s Halloween and we’re not at the Tasting Room this weekend, which makes this the perfect time to share a scary story (blood, guts and all) about Carpe Vino’s very first event—a couple of months before we’d officially opened our doors for business.
There’s a man I’ll call Otis who nods his head every time he passes the tasting room but never comes in. Although we’ve since made peace, we both remember that cold December day just before Covid hit when he called the cops on us for playing music so loud it bounced the speakers off their shelves, and for allowing our guests to spill onto the sidewalk in loud, smoky hordes. In his place, I would have done the same—but let me explain how we got to that point from what was supposed to be a quiet Hanukkah singles party that would end at midnight with, at most, a little drunken singing of “Oy Hanukkah, Oy Hanukkah.”
It’s a story we often tell to explain why we’re somewhat gun-shy about holding private events, and it’s one that can be told from multiple perspectives: from Otis’s—the neighbor who just wants to enjoy sitting on his stoop in peace. From the event planner’s, who believed it was her right to do whatever she wished in the mostly empty space she rented from us for four hours. From the owner’s, fearful of any damage to his landlord’s property and to his license to operate a bar in New York City. And from mine—the wife sitting at home with her child, hearing the tale unfold in furtive phone calls and texts.
First, there was the shelf of glasses that came crashing down on which Josh cut his hand badly, eliciting only the comment from the planner that she was glad she’d brought her own kosher stemware. Second, that she’d advertised the event as a hookah party, forcing Josh to move the hookah practitioners and their equipment outdoors to ensure they didn’t violate NYS smoking laws. Third, that a posse of her friends threatened him with litigation and banished him off premises for the duration of the event for daring to exert his rights as owner (and probably also for cursing her out). And last, of the increasingly stoned behavior of the guests, who refused to lower the music or to leave at the party’s contracted end until Josh showed them his dripping, bloody hand and finally impressed them with the urgency of his need to close the bar and go to the emergency room for stitches. It was almost a relief when the cops showed up.
That the hookah guys were also EMTs who helped to temporarily staunch his wound is one of those odd New York coincidences that doesn’t make up for the overall horror of the night. I doubt a more stringent contract would have saved us because it’s difficult to contractualize morals. Besides the EMTs, no one cared about good behavior or the rule of law or the welfare of other human beings—and there’s nothing scarier than that, so I’m thankful for the hundreds of exchanges we’ve had with customers since then that have restored our faith in human decency.
But the fact is that our very first event had nothing to do with celebrating the traditional festival of lights, or even with helping people to find a date. It was a crash course on how to handle everything you hope will never happen in your establishment, and a primer on identifying and avoiding deceptive clients. It’s a lesson applicable to every public business, but perhaps none more so than a bar, where people sometimes come to let go of themselves. This Halloween, a day that makes the masks we’ve been wearing for two years seem almost normal, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the moments when our other masks come off and reveal the people we really are.
