How Not to Win Shaken & Stirred
Elton John, a $1,500 necktie, a Playboy bunny, and more factors contributing to Saratoga Living's hard-fought loss in UPH's 10th annual bartender competition.
This was supposed to be our year. After a slightly-better-than-last-place finish in Shaken & Stirred 2024, Team Saratoga Living returned to Universal Preservation Hall’s annual bartending competition on Thursday evening ready to win it all. But the gods (and by gods we mean the DeCrescente family) had other plans.
The first step to winning Shaken & Stirred is explaining to people what the event even is. “So, what exactly is going on?” one woman asked me shortly after arriving at the Prime patio on Thursday. It was a more than fair question: I was dressed as a paparazzo standing next to a cardboard cutout of myself dressed as a track dad trying to sell strangers a $1,500 tie, and 20 feet away, Marcella Hammer was dressed as Reese Witherspoon dressed as Elle Woods dressed as a Playboy Bunny, trying to get strangers to play beer pong with plush hot dogs. (“I’m on my way to find my dignity,” Marcella said to me as I passed her early in the evening.)
So, yes, Shaken & Stirred is a bartending competition, but over the course of the last 10 years, it’s grown into much more than that.
For those of you who aren’t as intimately familiar with Shaken & Stirred as those of us who subject ourselves to ridiculousness in the name of fundraising every spring, here’s the premise. Each year, eight local businesses send teams of 10 people each to Saratoga National for a four-hour competition to raise the most money for UPH’s children’s and family programming. They can raise money in a few different ways: by collecting donations online before the event, by collecting tips when they’re behind the bar at the event, by selling pre-made mixed drink shooters that come in oversized plastic syringes to people on the patio, or by way of an “activity” each team has to dream up. Team DeCrescente Distributing’s activity was a golf putting competition that you had to pay to enter, Team Palette had the aforementioned hot dog beer pong, and Team Saratoga Living was charging people to get their photo taken for the next issue of the magazine. (Keep an eye out for the pics in our July/August issue!) Each team has a theme that, in theory, matches their activity—members of the DeCrescente team were all wearing Masters golf tournament blazers, and we were dressed like the paparazzi. Why the Legally Blonde–themed ladies of Palette were hosting a hot dog toss wasn’t quite clear, but somehow it was on brand.
Each team captain also got a cardboard cutout of his or herself, as well as a specialty Shaken & Stirred necktie that was up for silent auction (attendees could bid on it, or “buy now” for the low price of $1,500). “What the hell am I going to do with that?” Rotor-Matic Plumbing and Drain owner Jason Lorenz asked me when I tried to get him to bid on it. “Whatever,” he continued. “Put me down for $125.”
Jason’s quote pretty much sums up the collective attitude of Shaken & Stirred attendees every year. No one wants another shot of mixed drink served in a syringe, but with enough peer pressure—”but it’s for a good cause!”—you can usually convince people to take one. At one point in the night, as I made my way through the crowd trying to convince people to get their photo taken for the next issue of the magazine, I started saying “$20 to have your photo in a magazine, $10 for me to stop talking to you.”
But even with a sales pitch that strong, a guy like Jason on our side, a celebrity appearance by Elton John himself, and more than $4,000 raised, we were blown out of the water not just by reigning champs DeCrescente Distributing (who raised a whopping $18,970), but by Mohawk Auto Group ($15,324), Bonacio Construction ($11,528), The Bonadio Group ($7,188), and Fingerpaint ($6,731). Maybe it was the fact that I spelled “free entry” wrong in a social media post about the event, or maybe it was the fact that one of Elton’s feathered shoulder pads fell off as he made his grand entrance. Or maybe the other teams know some secret we don’t. Regardless, there’s always next year.
—Natalie
See more images of the evening by photographer Zack Skowronek here!