“Sleepless” Chapter 4: “Broxon”
An Interlude:
The finest aesthetic and ethos behind an aesthetic is that of the perfect balancing of brutal and elegant.
Elegance in its purest form is fragile.
Picturing in one’s mind representations of the word elegant may bring one to conjure images of emerald green, 1930s Art Deco interiors or the formal attire of the Gilded Age, but elegance can be far broader than fine lace and fine dining.
Elegance is the final flick of the conductor’s baton in a furious display of motion from his pit.
Elegance is the scalpel moving with patience in the twelve hour neurological marathon.
Elegance is Anderson Silva baiting his opponent into a counter-strike.
And yet, countries of great cultural elegance tend to be fragile in nature whether in relation to threats within their own borders, or in relation to the periodic hoards that come to steal the spoils of the land.
Can a nation with an affinity for delicate things truly foster a martial culture?
Perhaps, but for how long?
France is the most victorious nation in military history, but in essence, French combat has been prone to sweeping offensives of a romantic fury that make for great history with a lack of defensive discipline that has led to its ultimate defeat. Even Napoleon was prone to this with his ill-advised invasion of Russia, a land lacking the resources to feed his grand armies. Yet France has never lacked a mastery of the fine arts whether it be in cuisine, painting, opera, ballet, and literature, with its seventeen Nobel prizes for Literature and producing the greatest book ever written in Alexander Dumas’s “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
And then there is the brutal, the vigorous, the violent.
The willingness to throw bones at another man and taste one’s own blood in his mouth is a powerful thing.
The martial way is the greatest way for many, and organized, regimented brutality is its fruit.
Many a martial artist is a pure technician, a chess master of sorts. In the boxing world, particularly in the United Kingdom, he is called a “classy boxer.”
But no matter how many tens of thousands of repetitions of strikes are under one’s belt, if a martial artist is unwilling to be a fighter when one engages in true conflict, these countless reps are nothing.
Without a willingness to be brutal, a man not cannot be an effective combatant.
In order for that brutality to be effective however, one must be precise, disciplined, and organized within one’s mind.
Raw aggression never accomplished anything for extended periods of time.
For brutality is the discipline that drives men to march in lockstep.
Brutality is the throwing of one’s body into the ice bath at four in the morning.
Brutality is the refusal to lie and the refusal to die.
Brutality is the Mongol horde sweeping the steppes, seemingly formless, but fluidly efficient.
But to balance elegance and brutality is to create a kind of miracle.
Ramon Dekkers is lauded as the European who conquered Muay Thai. The Dutchman of a shorter stature found himself in the same weight classes as legendary Thai natives, and his technique was known to be elegant: full of tactical steps and well-placed combinations, but it was his explosive power that carried a kind of brutality to strike fear into his opponents upon first sight.
“Hunger” by Knut Hamsun is a gut-wrenching read of a brutal will to stay alive, but the text itself is elegant in its descriptions of autumnal Christiana (present day Oslo), grace of joy in forming new creative ideas, and half-thoughts induced by the human psyche. This 1899 text is the reason we have “stream of consciousness” writing and legendary authors like Hemingway, Woolfe, and Sartre.
To be generational, or even transcendent as a man is to achieve a mastery of elegance and brutality.
In the world of watering holes, there is only one establishment I have ever seen that has achieved this in its aesthetic and its essence.
That bar is not the ironclad Los Angeles cocktail den called Harvard & Stone. That bar is not the Nomad of New York City. That bar is Oakland’s own, Broxon.
A steel grid shield for a sliding back bar to guard the tall shelves of rare bottles, the 1950s Havana-style walls, dense concrete columns, pitch black bar top, and secluded theatre seats upstairs are equal parts industry dive bar and upscale craft cocktail bar.
To be a neanderthal dive bar man is an equal offense to being a pencil neck cocktail snob. I have never had patience for either. One will be intimidated by you reading a book or taking your health seriously, and the other will see their tending bar as “life-changing,” when at the end of the day, they can’t even lift a keg.
Walking into Broxon, you get the sense that you’re around masters of the craft, with that mastery tempered by an even greater humility and a grounded nature that won’t think twice about throwing someone out themselves. When gun shots are a couple blocks West, and the detriment to society that is “Hello Stranger,” is two blocks to the South, one has to be ready for anything.
This kind of culture can only come from the top, and at that spot is the greatest bartender I have ever witnessed, Alex Conde.
Stepping into Broxon for the first time induced a judge of essence and aesthetic followed by a word vomit request to Alex in my freshest encounter with him, asking if they needed another man behind the stick.
“I’m all staffed up, sorry bud. But if you leave your resume with me, I can circulate it around the neighborhood.”
Ingratiating myself with the Broxon culture was something I grew hellbent on achieving just in case a spot ever opened up in that glorious, shady room.
Each and every visit with Jeremy followed an identical script.
“Hey Arthur, how we doing?”
“I’m doing very well thank you, how are you?”
“Im good, I’m good. So what are we thinking today?”
“Let’s do something with Islay scotch that’s spirit forward and savory.”
“Let’s do something with akvavit that’s refreshing and floral.”
“Let’s do something with mezcal that’s spirit forward and spicy.”
“You got it.”
“You got it.”
“You got it.”
“Alex, I think this is the best cocktail I’ve ever had.”
“Alex, I think this is the best cocktail I’ve ever had.”
“Alex, I think this is the best cocktail I’ve ever had.”
“You say that every time.”
“You say that every time.”
“You say that every time.”
“Well maybe if you made a shitty cocktail for once, I wouldn’t have to say that.”
I had been served by the name bartenders of New York City and San Francisco who had every accolade under the sun.
I sat across from Jillian Vose in the parlor room at the Dead Rabbit drawing from 300+ pre-prepared “cheater bottles” of spirits, vermouths, liqueurs, cordials, and syrups like that conductor towering over the orchestra.
I once walked from the tip of Manhattan to the West Village to bump into the London-based Czech legend, Eric Lorincz.” I said his name in front of him and his wife in my low, curt manner of speaking to evoke an expression of pure terror from him and a loud gasp from his wife before I granted them both relief with the words “I’m a big fan” and a handshake before being on my way. Lorincz, the recent winner of “world’s best bar,” and “world’s best bartender,” was coming back from my destination of “Katana Kitten,” headed by Japanese dynamo, Masa Urushido. Masa speaks to you as if you’ve known him for decades before serving you a sakura martini in a small bamboo box of crushed ice after the finest display of Japanese bartending outside of Tokyo.
I had the pleasure of being served in San Francisco’s own “Pacific Cocktail Haven,” by local Filipino legend, Kevin Dietrich and winner of bartender of the year at “tales of the cocktail” before his bar cocktail den burned down in 2021. His joy for service was always of note for any critic or patron alike.
None of these stars of the industry came close to Alex Conde’s creativity on the fly, technique, level of service, and hospitality.
Alex was an Oakland native who was once an actor like myself. He was a victim of the bizarre, introverted, and insular nature of the Bay Area acting scene. Theatreworks, San Francisco Playhouse, and A.C.T were the major theatre houses, and to be elsewhere was to be thrown into obscurity. Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep, and Palo Alto Players were all in the background, but it was difficult to build a career in any of these places. It was clear he had a talent, an intelligence, and a charisma to be successful, but an unwillingness to move to Los Angeles or New York saw him move on to other options. Alex was half European and half Caucasian Mexican descent and was fluent in Spanish, English, and bad English. He stood about 5’10, with shoulders, arms, and chest that reflected his daily 300 pushups and was put on display with his trademark tight black v neck. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear anything else. Slicked back hair and an angular jaw completed a look that was clearly popular with the female following of Broxon’s beloved team, and while many of the Broxon’s bartenders had their own personal following, no following was bigger than Alex’s.
Alex had a kind of brooding, a kind of rage that was all too familiar. A war with the self was note-worthy and couldn’t be ignored. You could tell people annoyed him, but he didn’t want to be rude. You could tell he knew he was talented, yet he still strived for humility. He was flashier than any bartender I’ve seen, but he managed to keep a kind of masculine grounding. He is who I’d want to be if I remained in the bartending world as a lifer. Alex was 37 when I met him, and it was clear that since he decided to stay in the industry, he would never allow himself to be outworked by anyone.
He never seemed to stop moving at any point. That war within the self was his fuel, and it was both a mirror and a marvel. He would pace up and down the bar, cleaning, washing dishes, closing out checks, giving hugs to regulars, roasting his co-workers, and dashing for a smoke break all with a sneaky kind of speed. When you would order one of his famed dealer’s choice cocktails, he would give you two nods, one slow and steady, the second, swift and sure. He would turn around to the back bar, grab seven or eight bottles off of the back bar, and go to work. He would finely measure odd pours of niche liqueurs, overlooked sherries, and storied spirits. No, not a standard 3/4oz but a 3/8oz because the balance needed to be flawless. The stir or the shake was performed with a high posture, a precision of movement rarely found in any barman, and a violence that only an Oaklander could have.
Brutal & Elegant.
Mastery in motion.
It is never the acts themselves that matter alone. It is the essence with which we do them that make or break our lives.
When the alchemy was finished, he would place all of his chosen bottles in front of you before presenting the final product in front of you.
“Base spirit, inflections, mid palette,” he’s explain while pointing to each set of bottles, breaking down his personalized piece of drinkable art.
Any cocktail he made for you would never be made again, that was the allure of the dealer’s choice culture he carried with him from his practice from across the bay at the beloved bar, Benjamin Cooper. At Benjamin Cooper, he created a new menu each and every week, and no higher level of dealer’s choice bartending had been achieved anywhere in the nation.
He is everything I strived to be as a bartender: fast, creative, precise, artistic, brutal, and elegant.
If he were to read any of this, he would want to punch me in the face for throwing this kind of praise at him.
I’ll happily take that punch.