Pinnacle of Bartending 4

Updated: September 1, 2004

Pinnacle of Bartending 4
July 24th, 25th & 26th
Vancouver, Canada

By Tony Cogburn

This years installment of The Pinnacle of bartending is the fourth installment of this great competition. Held in Vancouver British Columbia it’s western Canada’s premier Flair bartending competition. The Pinnacle is held each year near the end of July around founder Chuck Macintosh’s (pictured below center with the other Judges) Birthday. Past winners include, Argentineans, Christian Delpech, Adrianno Marcellino, and Vancouver native Mark Mital.

For those of you familiar with Bottleslinger the movie you’ll know that the Pinnacle has a reputation of not only being a great Flair comp, but as an event as well.

Each year, Chuck, Nick, Grant and company promise a bigger and better event.

This starts with the meet and beat. The past two years has started with a tour around English Bay on a chartered boat and finished up with a bar crawl down Granville street.

This years meet and beat held up to its reputation for being a good time. By the numbers. One person overboard on the cruise, “Port Side”. Three (possibly more) times Ivan Chew was tackled by Levi Donaldson. One trip to the drunk tank by event organizers.

After the meet and beat, qualifying day was a bit rough. Especially for event organizer Chuck Macintosh. Chuck spent the night in jail after an unfortunate meeting with a female police officer.

This year’s competition was wide open as none of the past winners were on hand to compete. Last years champion Mark Mital was present to judge.

New this year was MC Chico Garcia (pictured left) . Chico made the trip up from Vegas to pinch hit for MC Pete Raptis who was out of the country.

Twenty two bartenders were on hand for qualifying, and twelve would make it through to the finals.

I was happy to see three ladies throwing down at this years event. Pinnacle vet Mimi Franks, Erika Scott, and Shoko Tomita (pictured left) of Japan.

I really enjoyed watching Shoko work behind the bar. I would best describe her style as dainty and then BAM! big move out of nowhere. I hope to see her at this years Quest.

Also in from out of town were Levi Donaldson from Tampa, Katsumi Ushiki from Japan, Steve Mclavish from Edmonton, and the Kahunaville, Vegas crew of Dorian Oldan, Shawn Oana (pictured at top of page) and me, Tony Cogburn.

There were a couple of surprises on qualifying day as Ivan Chew, for what may have been the first time ever, actually completed his drinks and made it through to finals. Way to go Ivan. We are all proud of you.

Katsumi Ushiki (pictured left), leaving nothing to chance, busted out a five bottle move during qualifying and finished with the days highest difficulty marks and a spot in the finals.

Not so surprising was another perfectly clean round by last years cleanest round champion Shawn Oana. On the strength of the clean round and sponsor promotion points Shawn qualified in second behind ‘Great White Hope’ Levi Donaldson.

Levi had a great qualifying day and only had eight points in deductions. Also qualifying were Dorian Oldan, Brad Thompson, Dave Simpson, Steve McLavish, Tyler Tronnes, vets Ryan Baldwin, Pistol Pete Glavis and myself.

Finals night was held at the Roxy on Granville in downtown Vancouver. It was a bit of a thrill for me (pictured left) to compete in this venue as it was the home of Scott Young from Extreme bartending. Watching Scott’s videos was the start of my Flair career as it has been for many other bartenders.

Finals night started with Pete Glavis busting out some old school and followed by Ryan Baldwin who made a point of entertaining the crowd. With this comp so wide open the theme of the night seemed to be go big or go home.

Deductions sent qualifying day champ Levi Donalsdon home without the big prize. Levi did win the coveted Bottleslinger award. This award is for the person who stays out the longest and has the best time throughout the competition. Levi kept the trophy in the states following in the footsteps of past champions myself and Ed Hibbert. It’s time for team Canada to step up.

Deductions also knocked out Katsumi Ushika who finished with the Flairco/FBA ‘Big Ass Move‘ award.

Tyler Tronnes, going third, had the second cleanest round of the night while Canadian favorite Steve McLavish (pictured left) had an unfortunate break during the last ten seconds of his round. Dave Simpson showed promise as an up and comer while Ivan Chew finished his drinks for the second night in a row and was too drunk to accept his fifth place trophy. Brad Thompson carried the day for Team Canada and finished one and a half points out of third.

The top three spots were awarded to Team Kahunaville. Shawn Oana bested Legends finalists Dorian Oldan, second, and myself, third, to capture his first finals championship.

Shawn (pictured left) had a very entertaining round using music and costume changes to entertain the judges and the crowd. Shawn posted solid marks across the board and had the top marks for overall performance and sponsor promotion.

When it was all said and done, a good time was had by all. Big ups to the judges for coming out and scoring us. A big happy birthday to Chuck ‘I’m Tanked’ Mcintosh. Special thanks go to ‘G-Money’ Grant Reil, who keeps this runaway train on the tracks.

For all of you who said you’d be there and didn’t make it…start saving your money and go get your passport now. Not only are you missing out on a great comp but one of the best parties of the year. Until next year TONY COGBURN ‘Tanked’ signing off……Man overboard….Portside. You had to have been there.