Whether it’s consoling a customer's sorrows or fueling a wild night out, bartenders witness Gainesville at its rowdiest —– and help keep the chaos alive.
These late-working mixologists form the backbone of Gainesville’s nightlife scene and are the silent recordkeepers of the effects of alcohol. A night might feel erased by spirits — but the bartender remembers.
Francesca Nelsas, a 19-year-old UF history sophomore, started bartending in the summer of 2025. She worked for MacDinton’s Irish Pub before moving to White Buffalo and The Range, where she works currently.
Nelsas is no stranger to crazy experiences working in nightlife. She recounted an experience she had following the Fall semester’s home football game against Florida State University.
“This one guy just kept coming back to me for every little thing,” she said. “[He] wouldn't order from anybody else, even when I was swamped with a lot of other people in my area, and then he just started saying, ‘You're beautiful.’”
The student from FSU continued to compliment Nelsas and get progressively more drunk, and he would only accept drinks she made. He even concluded at one point in the night that Nelsas was too pretty to go to UF and insisted that she show him her student ID.
After being cut off, the student approached Nelsas for a final shot at love.
“He started whispering, and then he grabbed the back of my head, and he was just like, ‘You're so beautiful. I need you in my life. Why are you here, not in FSU?’”
Security promptly escorted him out.
While Nelsas affirmed that stories like these aren’t common, especially now that she works at White Buffalo, they’ve happened enough to build a thick skin.
“I’m desensitized to it,” she said. “Honestly, I just find it fun. I just like to joke around, and I know for a fact you're not going to remember me the next morning, so I really have no care for it.”
Dealing with unruly customers can be a challenge, and Nelsas noted that as a female bartender, she is often taken less seriously, especially when it comes to cutting customers off.
“They fight back a lot, actually,” she said. “They always say, ‘Why is a girl telling me what to do?’”
Making tasty cocktails isn’t the only passion of these late-night workers, however. Before the bars open, Nelsas and Michelle Ucelo, a 20-year-old business management junior and bartender at the Midtown nightclub Grove, pursue degrees at UF.
Finding a balance between maintaining academic performance and working a job that has shifts stretching all the way to 3 a.m. can be challenging, but there are ways to make it easier.
In Ucelo’s case, she tries to schedule her classes no earlier than noon, giving a comfortable amount of wiggle room to accommodate the late nights. Unfortunately, not every student is this fortunate, Ucelo said.
“One of my coworkers, she’s a grad student, and she has her 8 a.m.s, and I don’t know how she does it,” Ucelo said. “They somehow do it — could not be me.”
But through all kinds of weather, these Gator bartenders stick together. Even after the shift ends, there’s still a strong sense of community among bartenders. Ucelo and her coworkers often spend time together off the clock, and even if it's with someone from a different bar, there’s a sense of mutual respect among them.
“I love my co-workers, genuinely. They're like my family,” Ucelo said. “It is the best workplace ever.”
Gainesville’s bartenders can also serve as emotional support for their customers.
Evan Berben, the 36-year-old general manager and bartender at Gainesville bars Cry Baby’s and Baby J’s, has likened the role of a bartender to that of a therapist.
Customers come in and relay their struggles, whether it’s a recent divorce or a lack of paternal love. Berben said serving such a wide array of clients over his 15 years of bartending opened his eyes to new perspectives and made him more sympathetic.
“The nice thing about being in the service industry and growing is changing your perspective and realizing you don’t know everything. You don’t know what everybody is going through,” he said.
Contact Christopher Rodriguez at crodriguez@alligator.org. Follow him on X @ChrisRodri29386.
