PITTSBURGH — He might be built like a bear with shoulders as wide as Atlas', but as Cecil Usher addressed the crowd assembled upstairs at Emerson's in Market Square on the night of Feb. 28, he couldn't help but get a little emotional.
"I love seeing all the Black excellence in the room," he said. "I couldn't have imagined this 12 years ago. Pittsburgh I love you for this."
The event, "Make Moves That Start Movements," was a cocktail competition showcasing some of the top Black bartenders in the city, to close out Black History Month. Pittsburgh boasts a small but mighty cadre of elite-level Black bartenders that is among the most talented and well-respected in an industry overwhelmingly dominated by white faces, and where Black employees were historically pigeonholed to back-of-the-house roles.
Usher is the co-founder of Mindful Hospitality Group, a consulting firm for restaurants and bars, and co-owner of St. Clair Social in Friendship. A New Yorker, he came here in the late aughts after graduating from Penn State.
When he started working in the service industry, he'd get a common question: Did he know Byron and Nicole?
That referred to Byron Nash and Nicole Battle, a pair of prominent Black bartenders who worked mostly in the East End. They were beloved, but they also stood out at the time as something of an anomaly.
"I heard stories about Byron and Nicole before I ever met them because it was like, 'Hey, you know there's another Black bartender over there,'" he laughed. "I'm like, no, I don't know them. I just moved here. There's not like a registry where we all meet each other."
He did eventually meet them and became close friends with both. Nash and Battle have since moved on from bartending, but their influence in the local service industry remains.
Cortney Buchanan was in attendance, too. He came to Pittsburgh from Erie to attend Pitt with designs on dental school, but could probably cure any toothache under the sun now with his savant-like knowledge of whisky, a spirit he fell in love with while working for many years at Piper's Pub on the South Side and later Butcher and the Rye Downtown. He said that through his career the overwhelming majority of his customer interactions have been positive. But not always.
Buchanan's father is Black, his mother is white, and he has a very fair complexion. Occasionally a customer would reveal themselves unaware of that.
"I always thought that aspect of it was interesting, because regardless of my complexion or regardless of what my racial makeup would be, the person who was speaking about such things just assumed that I would be receptive to hearing it in the first place. Which shouldn't ever be the case.
"In a weird, warped way of looking at it, I was doing my job of hospitality so well by making this person so incredibly comfortable that they were just OK with saying some of the most vile stuff I've ever heard. Depending on what time [it was] in my career, I was either going to gently change the subject, or look the person directly in the eyes and say, knock that ... off."
At some point in the middle, he got really good at calling other people over and getting the person to repeat what they just said, which was, again, fascinating. "Like ... I heard what you said, I just want all these other people to know this too, and then they either revise their statement, or they'd say it again. Like, wow, OK, well, at least everybody knows you're a jagoff."
Now a partner in The Warren Bar & Burrow Downtown, and with another spot in development, he'd been well-versed on this kind of thing from his father at a young age.
"There's a speech that [Black kids] all get from our dads that as soon as you walk in the room, and you look like you're an African American man or woman, they automatically discount what your contributions are. So in order to be considered as good as your peers, or even half as good as your peers, you have to work twice as hard and produce twice as good results or twice as many results."
Stephanie Dickson was one of the bartenders featured at the event, which raised $4,500 for nonprofit organization 1HOOD Media.
"I had a ball. That was such a positive event. I want to see more things like that. It's awesome," she said.
But she's also quite familiar with why it's necessary in the first place.
The Woodland Hills alum started working in service for a Columbus, Ohio-based restaurant group while attending Ohio State. She transferred to a Pittsburgh-area location at the Waterfront in the mid-2000s and, despite being the head trainer for the serving staff, "They wouldn't even consider putting me behind the bar," she said.
"I'm certain one of our regional managers was very specific about not having African Americans behind the bar."
She took a bartending job at nearby Blue Dust, where she flourished. She now works at The Abbey on Butler Street in Lawrenceville.
Despite droves of employees of all stripes leaving the service industry during the pandemic, Buchanan said he is heartened by what he saw at the event.
"I was so blown away at the skill level of the bartenders relative to each other. Sometimes in these contests, there's a clear winner that's just ahead of the pack. These drinks were all different. And they were all within a very narrow margin.
"I was joyful that at that event alone, there were half a dozen elite black bartenders, and five of them were women," he continued. "That was just great. I'm confident, at least based on the display last month, there are going to be some very competent, very talented young Black bartenders in Pittsburgh."
