Ty Watches "Bar Rescue": St8 Pub Edition

"Bar Rescue" is back. I know that I'm a little late on my review of the mid season premiere, but other stuff has come up. Do not worry, I will be here every Monday from here until this season ends to update you on all the new episodes of the fifth season of "Bar Rescue". I have to say, with what is going on in the world right now, a show like "Bar Rescue" lets me escape the nightmare for at least an hour, and I am very grateful to Spike TV for this. So, lets get to it. 

On Sunday, Taffer and crew were back to rescue a bar that was in disarray in a small suburb of Denver, Colorado. The bar was called St8 Pub. I do not like this name. I'm not a fan of using numbers in place of letters. If this makes me a curmudgeon, so be it. I don't use emoji's, any abbreviations or numbers when texting, writing, or talking. I use full words and something like this seems lazy to me.

Anyway, this bar was small. It was only about 1500 square feet and only had one of each, a speed well, bar top and POS system. That is incredibly tiny. Anyone that has worked in the food industry knows how small that is. To make matters worse, the owner of St8 Pub was given the bar as a gift. He had to pay nothing for it. It was handed to him with the caveat that he would furnish it and pay the bank monthly rent. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, this guy decided that he would rather forgo paying any rent and just get absolutely sloshed every night. When Taffer and crew arrive at the bar in their car and watch from outside, as they always do, all they see is the owner pounding drink after drink and shot after shot. To make matters worse, he would berate customers and kick them out if he didn't personally like them, and he let his friends drink for free, as long as he could get wasted with them. He also only had one other employee. It was him and a lady named Caitlyn working there. Caitlyn, to her credit, worked her tail off. She would tend bar and do anything that she could do to keep this bar afloat. She was the one who called the people at "Bar Rescue" to come and save the bar. The owners mom was there all the time too, but she was more so there to help out and continue to feed into her sons ego and alcohol problem. She was an enabler. I'm sorry to say that, but it was clearly evident that she saw nothing wrong with what her son was doing.

When Taffer sent in his spies, he first had them order a beer. The beer was served in a mason jar, and the bar expert blew his stack at this. This was an act of terrorism in his eyes. Then, Taffer had the spies order food, and what they saw next made them, and me for that matter, sick to their stomachs. The owner doubled as the chef, and prior to making the food, he smoked a cigarette and took out the trash, never washing his hands before touching the food. That is disgusting. He did put on gloves when making the food, but he kept touching the cutting board and kitchen top and wiping sweat off his face and forehead, rendering the gloves useless. The food he made, a sloppy joe, looked disgusting and looked like mystery meat, which he microwaved. It was gross.

This was when Taffer and crew blasted into the bar and proceeded to destroy this owner with words. They called him every name that every episode of "Bar Rescue" uses. He was a failure, a loser, a drunk, a low life, all bad things, this guy was called. It was brutal and I could not look away. Taffer even went as far as to mock the guy by taking his hat off his head, put it on his head, do an "impersonation" of the owner, and it was one of the most glorious moments ever on any episode of "Bar Rescue".

During this magnificent attack, we come to find out that the owner has not paid rent in 13 months, the exact amount of time he has owned the bar, that he was in debt 35,000 dollars with the bank, and had he not paid them in full by the first of the month they were going to shut down the bar, and that his mom was paying his rent for his apartment. This dude was a real piece of work. He tried to fight back when Taffer was crushing him, but he was too drunk and I genuinely feel like this talk opened his eyes. This was a berating that actually held some weight.

After Taffer closed the bar down, he had everyone come in when they sobered up so they could have a talk. This was when the owner owed up to everything he had done, and was doing, was wrong. He laid it all out on the table. Taffer and crew also proved that he and his one employee knew nothing about craft beer, which they claimed to be experts in. They immediately began training, and also had the owner hire some help. Of course they got up to speed and they got some fresh faces the day before stress test.

Needless to say, stress test was a nightmare. Nothing went right. Drinks were poured wrong. Beer was poured improperly. Food died in the pass. Tables never got drinks or food. It was your typical stress test. They shut it down, got to the root of the problem, and Taffer brought in his people to fix the place up. There was the heart to heart with mother and son. Son owned up, once again, to his mistakes and Taffer had that creepy smile on his face when they resolved their conflict.

When they came back for the re open, things seemed to be much better. Taffer renamed the bar Downstairs Pub and Grill. I very much dislike this name. He wanted a whole "man cave"(I despise this pairing of words), vibe, and he figured downstairs was where these man caves exist. He also put up fake pornography magazine cover photos on the wall. It was so god damn stupid. Other than those two dumb things, the inside of the bar looked much better. They had a new bar top, new stools and chairs, more POS systems, a better draught system and easier, better cocktails and food. The kitchen also looked much better. Smaller pots and pans, most everything used a pressure cooker and a fryer, so it was much less clutter. The kitchen was cleaner too. During the re open, everything ran much more smoothly. Food and drink was getting to the tables in correct timing, and everything, according to the customers, tasted very good. It was a great turnaround, as it usually is with most bars on "Bar Rescue".

When they did the 3 month check up, the bar was running smooth, the owner did not drink on the job, was paying his own rent and had a plan in place with the bank to pay them back in smaller increments over a certain period of time. It was your typical "Bar Rescue" ending.

We all need our heroes in dark time, and the crew of "Bar Rescue" are my bright knights. I'm very happy this show is back for me to review for everyone, and I cannot wait until next week to watch the new episode and write about it next Monday. "Bar Rescue" is back. Woo hoo!

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. When the world gets crazy, all Ty can do is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

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