Jon Taffer: the Bar World’s Harvey Dent, or More of a Two-Face?

And midget tossing? I really don’t think this guy is on the level. Perhaps he really does know the business and promotion side of things (however perverse and degrading), but I’m convinced that he doesn’t know what a bar should be. And all of this coming from a man that routinely touts the importance of getting and keeping women as regular customers. He’s about to open the “ultimate bar” on the Strip in Vegas, and judging by his work on the show, it seems that we’re all in for a horrifying treat. Ladies, you’ve been warned. And dwarves, for that matter.

And this brings me to my point: I still want to like him. Want is the operative word here. His mission of saving failing bars appears to be a noble one–he could be our White Knight, riding across the country and salvaging watering holes everywhere he goes, setting right what once went wrong. Fine, I’m mixing both Batman and Quantum Leap references, but both are valid. Seeing a bar close, no matter how terrible it is, brings with it a tinge of sadness, of regret. When real estate for the great cause of Drink is lost, which seems more likely: that a new, better bar will open up in the same spot, or that your town will get another Payless or a vegan burrito joint that sells skinny jeans and body lotion made from organic quinoa meal? Or just another shitty bar that can’t so much as serve a Scotch neat properly? Saving a bar should be an act of heroism, an exercise in American entrepreneurship, a rallying cry against the forces that would rather oust us from our communal dens of iniquity and into the shadows of our own studio apartments than give us another place to tie one on together.

However, Jon the proto-simian is apparently the screaming, strong-browed face of bar renovation, and his roughly 25% failure rate  is rather telling. Every Bar Rescue seems to hinge on turning everything into a themed joint, and it doesn’t seem to work as flawlessly as he thinks it will. But to return to Batman (because why would we not), is he not the hero we need right now, but the hero that we deserve? Do we support these kind of shameless marketing tricks and hokey sales gimmicks at the expense of a truly good bar culture? Is this hulking gorilla impersonator the kind of crusader that we have earned through our poor taste and general fuckery? And could Jon Taffer actually be Sasquatch?

I’ll leave you with this final thought: if Taffer is the hero we deserve, then the one we need is Dalton:

Taffer just might be the bar world’s Harvey Dent, a brave soul willing to step in and do what is right to save the institutions in which he believes. But, perhaps through a tragic gasoline fire that burned off all of the coarse, black body hair that protected him against all of the sticks and thistles in his native jungle environment, he has been corrupted into a half-man, half-monstrosity that moves soulessly through the world, fueled by anger and hatred at a society that just didn’t love him enough. Or maybe he’s a shitty Batman, attempting to solve the world’s problems through brute force and a pile of sponsor money for shiny new renovations. I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention to the Nolan Batman movies. But I did pay attention to Roadhouse, and there’s no problem that Dalton couldn’t solve with a pool cue, some roundhouse kicks, and that sweet, sweet mullet. It becomes incumbent upon us to work to deserve our own Dalton.

And we’ll need a Dalton. I’ll be accepting applications for review.