(applause)

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Hi, thank you so much for having me.

So I came from a furniture background.

I got my degree

at the California College of the Arts and Crafts.

I tended bar to put myself through school.

I worked for The Slanted Door Group for eight years.

And I started making some syrups.

I started making this old French syrup called orgeat.

Now, it dates back to the Middle Ages.

There's countless versions from across many, many countries.

And it is one of the ingredients in the original Mai Tai.

I grew up in Oakland.

The original Mai Tai was created

at the first Trader Vic's in Oakland in 1944.

At the time, we're talking 2007,

the only orgeat that you could buy

on the market was typically a mixture

of high fructose corn syrup, citric acid,

and almond flavoring, not made from actual almonds at all.

So I started making this syrup,

and we started serving traditional Mai Tais

to other bartenders who came into the bar.

And soon enough, people wanted to buy it

for their own bars.

So I started making a couple other products

including a pineapple gum syrup.

It's a very popular product of mine because,

as far as I can tell,

I'm the only person who makes pineapple syrup

from actual pineapples.

So we come to The Long Now, a non-profit organization

dedicated to long term thinking.

They approached me about opening a bar.

The way that they termed it,

I unextinct cocktails, so for an organization

concerned with time, it seemed really appropriate.

Why would they want to open up a bar?

Well, they had this beautiful space in Fort Mason.

They have a number of very fascinating projects

that people weren't really exposed to.

So here's this face.

On the left you can see this is a prototype

for a chime generator.

It's part of a clock that's being built

into a mountain in Texas,

where the mechanics are built to last for 10,000 years.

Brian Eno was one of our founders.

He created this chime generator

so that every day for 10,000 years

a unique series of chimes sounds.

So you could come and see this project.

They work on a bunch of other stuff:

unextincting animals, archiving languages,

all that kind of stuff.

So you could come into the space

and kind of see artifacts of these projects.

But you weren't really engaged in it,

and they wanted to create a space

where people were actually engaged in it.

So they started looking at the idea of the third space,

so this is the space outside of your home

and your work, where you spend the most time.

And historically, these were places like

coffee houses and salons.

So at this point, I'm really intrigued

and I accepted the job.

And so I learn about this space.

Now, where this is located, itself,

was the original blacksmith shop and forge

for Fort Mason when Fort Mason was military.

Concrete floors, you can actually still see the imprint

of where the forge was, including the vent in the ceiling.

And to me, that's just so much conceptual fodder, right?

That's what you're selling.

The product is booze, but the experience

is the concept, right?

So I decided on the concept of time for this bar.

I found it really appropriate

for The Long Now Foundation.

So these are just some samples and some things

we knew were gonna be in this space.

And this is what it looks like now.

So we've been open since June.

We have this concept of time, right?

But then our subtext was a place for conversation.

Now, that isn't anything

that you'll see printed anywhere,

but we really wanted to create

this place for conversation, for people

to come in and talk with each other

and to engage with The Long Now.

So you can see we have a number

of different seating configurations.

That chime generator, we put glass on top

and turned it into a communal table.

We've got a couple of little intimate booths,

and then a little private room in the back

whose door can be shut.

So the idea is you can interact with the space

and with other people on various different levels.

The project was built via what we called

a brick starter method,

so for a $1500 dollar donation,

you got a liter of either gin or one of two whiskeys

that Lance Winters from Saint George Spirits

made for us exclusively.

We keep these up in the ceiling

like a traditional Japanese bottle keep.

We've got locker tags.

We've got everyone's name on file,

and when you come in,

we'll take it down and you can drink it neat,

or we'll make you a cocktail with it.

Now I was explaining to you this chime generator

is going into this mountain in Texas.

Now the first step to building this clock

was to drill an enormous hole

down into this mountain.

Then they cut away slabs on the side

to make a staircase.

We took six of those slabs

and embedded them down for our bar talk.

Ah yes, this is Josh.

He's my head barista.

He's awesome.

What this is is three shots of the same place.

So we have another Brian Eno piece

that's a digital painting he made.

It's a series of images run with an algorithm.

It's constantly kind of layering onto each other

and fading into each other,

so you will never see the same thing twice.

Every time you look at it, it's different.

So again it's keeping with that thought, time theme.

We have The Manual for Civilization,

which is our collection of books,

which you can totally come in and read when you're in town.

I really wanted to keep that machine shop aesthetic going.

I think there's an elegance to kind of humble things.

So I worked with Taylor Stitch in San Francisco

to make these short-sleeve,

blue chambray button-up shirts,

and aprons made from mattress ticking

that was hand-dyed with walnut hulls. (laughs)

I love my industry so very much,

I don't know why everyone's cocktail menu looks the same.

And I really just felt we could have more than that.

A cocktail menu could be so much more comprehensive.

So instead of one list, I actually have a series of menus.

Each one is a family of drinks.

When keeping with this time theme,

this meant that I could have a daiquiri menu,

which is, my daiquiri menu is a moment in time.

This is the five original daiquiris

from Bar La Florida in Havana, Cuba,

when Hemingway was hanging out there

during American Prohibition.

This is a moment in time,

and it's where the daiquiri comes from.

I love that.

I love that, and just the opportunity

to be able to kind of share that experience,

share that story.

I also have a martini menu,

which is all actual martinis dating from the first martini

250 years ago up to through to a modern approach

to a dirty martini.

But being able to kind of root each one

in time or space or history.

This is a welcome menu.

We printed it on ledger paper.

The layout of the menu is such that the story

about each drink is on the left.

I mean, I fell in love with cocktails

because of the lore and the legacy

and the provenance of these drinks

and kind of how they evolved over time.

So I wanted to be able to provide them.

So this is the mother-in-law.

This is a traditional New Orleans hospitality drink.

And still to this day,

you will find people in New Orleans

who will make this drink in the morning,

and just have it there in case anyone drops by.

They will have a cocktail immediately ready.

And I love that idea.

And I found these really sweet

apothecary bottles on eBay.

Glassware to me was very important.

Again that machine shop aesthetic.

Most of our glassware, the bottoms are the same thickness

as the sides.

They're simple, but I really find elegance

in that kind of stuff.

This is a gimlet.

This is probably what makes me a good bartender

more than any drink.

The gimlet is three ingredients.

So simple, gin, lime, and sugar.

But it's the way I manipulate it.

I separate the lime into zest and juice

and steep it for an hour.

And then it takes two days to separate,

and then I push it through a vacuum filter.

It's ridiculous, and the reason that it's cloudy

is because of all the essential oils

that the lime zest give the drink,

so it louches the way absinthe does.

I'm very proud of that drink.

There's a Death in the Gulf Stream.

This is an Ernest Hemingway drink

brought to us by Charles H. Baker, Jr.

And this is the JPA martini.

250 years ago, it was white wine, genever, and cinnamon.

So you can see how that evolved to gin and vermouth.

I had our ceramics custom made.

This is Atelier Dion in West Oakland.

So before we re-painted in the space,

the bottom half of the walls were painted

in this kind of dull British racing green.

And they were going to re-paint it white.

So before they did, I went and I took some of the wall

and brought it to the ceramists

and asked if they could make ceramics in that color.

So now that that color is no longer on the walls,

we at least still have some of that color in the space.

So here's some shots of the bar now.

That's just like looking head on into the bar.

We've got now seats around the orb,

so you can engage with it while

you're sharing the space.

Cafe during the day and a bar at night.

So that's it.

Thank you.

(applause)

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