Vegas Day Drinkers - Episode 38 - Origins: Two Bartenders, Three Decades, One Vegas Story

Send us Fan MailEvery bartender has an origin story. This week, Chris and Darren finally tell theirs.Before the turnstiles. Before the 40 million travelers a year. Before the shift, meals at McMullan's. Two guys took two very different roads to end up on the same side of the same bar.Darren started in Seattle — cutting his teeth in a city that takes its drinks as seriously as its coffee — before heading south to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, where he found his home pouring Romulan Ales and Warp Cores at Quark's Bar inside the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. If you were there, you remember. If you weren't, Darren would take you back.Chris picked up the trade living in Europe, came to Vegas with a head full of continental bar culture and a year of hard knocks waiting for him. That year, the bartender who'd go on to help open the Hofbräuhaus, then cross the Strip to open Steiner's on South Las Vegas Boulevard — back when the Arts District was still a rumor, and South Vegas was where locals actually drank.Both paths led through McMullan's. Both paths led to Harry Reid International Airport, where they now work the busiest stretch of tile in the state — pouring for more than 40 million people a year who pass through on their way to somewhere else.This one's for the career bartenders, the Trekkies, the expats, the industry lifers, and anybody who's ever wondered how someone ends up doing this for twenty-plus years and still loves the work.Sip. Socialize. Shine.Our Motto: Sip Socialize Shine!