A brief desultory response to some comments made on Gothamist.

It's generally useless to attempt to reply to web chatter--people who actually spend their time to snarkily respond to a blog post are kind of a self-selecting group of people who aren't worth responding to--but some of the comments to a Gothamist article about our Frequent Drinker Program (comments you can find here) contain errors or misconceptions that are too egregious for me to let stand:

--Our Frequent Drinker Program doesn't mean we don't give buybacks! We have any number of "real bartenders" who do give buybacks, we assure you, and would be instulted at being slighted by people who probably haven't even met them.

--This isn't a "gimmick" and I don't know what a "yupster" is. This is an honest attempt to reward our friends and present and future regulars. If that's "trying too hard", then yes, we do try too hard. In fact, fuck it, we pride ourselves on trying too hard--if you've met me and Jon Stan, you know that we are very genuine dudes who loathe self-conscious trendiness of all types, and are trying really hard to create a bar that we and our patrons can love. It's sad that an honest attempt to do something interesting and fun is met with criticism like that. Do these people like anything except cigarettes, black coffee, and dive bars?

--You do not have to spend, say, $1500 at Pacific Standard for a $75 value reward (which, even if you did, by the way, is far more remunerative than credit card rewards programs). If you think that, you missed the fact that double points are being awarded almost half the time, triple points quite often, and random points giveaways are happening occasionally.

In summary, I encourage those of you who have actually been to Pacific Standard to respond to the comments made on Gothamist. I want people to get a realer view of our bar, our owners, and what we're up to. Thanks, and see you around.

John Rauschenberg