Have some magic with your drink

By April Corbin

Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010 | 12:29 p.m.

I've long considered bars to be magical places where, with just a few stiff swigs, inhibitions are replaced with courage and that pudgy bloke in the corner turns into a statuesque man you'd like to worship for at least as long as the buzz lasts. Bars are modern-day castles protected by moats of liquor, where anyone can feel like a queen, as long as you don't mind playing the role of joker the next morning. What could be more magical?

Well, literal magic, for one.

Meet Adam Flowers, your neighborhood bartender/magician. The one-time Strip performer can just as quickly pour a mean drink as turn a book of matches into your (seemingly) randomly selected card. He rotates through the Roadrunners neighborhood bars (Wednesdays at Pebble/Eastern, Thursdays at Buffalo/Washington, Fridays and Saturdays at Flamingo/215) and the chain's sister property, Agave (on Sundays).

I'm not sure why the western-themed bar needs a magician. I guess the prevailing theory is: Why not?

I encounter Flowers on Hump Day in Henderson. He's just made me open a sugar packet and pour it into his closed fist, where it somehow disappears. Then he pours the sugar out again, covering my table with granules of sugar and shock. Suddenly, he excuses himself — maybe he needs to make someone a drink. I can't tell; I'm still trying to figure out how he did that. I swear, I was watching the whole time!

When he returns to my table, I ask whether being a magician gets easier as the customers get drunker. After all, seeing double does not mean paying twice as much attention. He tells me the biggest issue is that a drunk will easily forget (or incorrectly remember) the card he or she just selected from the deck.

The consummate professional, Flowers has a solution: "At that point I just make them write their name on the card."