The 200 block of Central Ave. in St. Pete has evolved a lot over the last decade. When it was my stomping grounds for the five years I worked downtown, during the early-to-mid aughts, there were a handful of unassuming bars and restaurants that many of us who worked hospitality in the area pinballed around to, bouncing from one to the next most nights after a shift.
Now the block is brimming with trendy bars and restaurants. The Garden is now a Caddy’s; it’s weird. One beacon of the past never changed, though — other than to ban indoor smoking — and that beacon is Mastry’s Bar.
But it wasn’t just the long-earned dive atmosphere and unpretentious drink prices that always lured me in if I happened to be walking by. It was also seeing the familiar faces of the barkeeps.
That all changed this summer, when two of Mastry’s longtime drink slingers died, both tragically if in completely different ways and two months apart. Both were only into their early 40s, both had worked at that bar for more than two decades, and both were integral to what makes Mastry’s Mastry’s. And if you have to ask, you must not be from around here.
These untimely deaths are a devastating blow to the families and close friends of Justin Mastry and B.J. Young, but also to our community. Their passing sheds light on the importance of our longtime bartenders, because so many of us who mostly just knew them from years of hours-long stretches spent at their bar are united in grief.
Career bar workers are known by patrons young and old, rich and poor, male and female. They are a connection between all of us (who frequent bars). They matter to us, but we take them for granted. They’ll be there when we show up, we assume. Maybe we don’t really even realize how much we care about them until they’re gone.
It’s easy to love our bartenders because of the nature of our relationship. Us, out to relax and have a little fun; them, libating us while regaling us with witty banter, or sharing stories from their lives like friends do. Maybe the booze makes us a little more open, or a little more bold to ask them personal questions and share our own personal details, and we get to know them, and them us, over soggy coasters and wooden planks with infinite indentions.
I read somewhere once that anyone is twice as sexy when on stage or behind a bar. There is some kind of exultation that happens when someone’s working a bar. We vie for their attention. We want our bartenders to like us. They’re the popular cool kid.
Our longtime bartenders give us so much more than cold beers and cocktails. They keep us company when we’re lonely; they dish the dirt about local gossip; they make us laugh; some flirt, some are bold and brassy and entertaining as hell.
The best ones, though, give us what so many of us are looking for when we go out: simple human connection. Which is why it hurts that last call came so early for two of St. Pete’s iconic bartenders.
This time more than ever, closing time came way too soon.
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.