This week San Francisco welcomes two hammer-wielding warriors: Thor, the god of thunder, and Steve Schneider, the god of crushed ice.
Schneider, from New York's Employees Only bar, will be guest bartending at Beretta and Delarosa. The 27-year-old's story could easily be the subject of a graphic novel.
Schneider enlisted in the Marines after 9/11, but his life took a dramatic turn after an accident left him in a coma with traumatic head injuries. Life-saving brain surgery put three plates in his skull and a distinctive trademark scar on his hairline.
Schneider regained his motor skills; he picked up a shift at a bar in Maryland near his rehabilitation clinic. When it was determined that he was no longer able to do his job in the Marines, he was discharged, at which point he embraced the challenge of working at the bar. Schneider describes it as "a terrible bar, smelly, slinging 'disco shots,' but it was high-volume," which taught him speed, eventually preparing him to win D.C.'s Fastest Bartender Competition in 2009. He was soon working at New York's Macao Trading Co., then Employees Only, successfully making the switch from dive to craft bar.
