Something in the coarse familiarity of a down-and-dirty hospoda beckons to all of us once in a while. The pubs are places where we can ditch the panoply of class and culture, work and family and just slurp down a few beers.

Martin Sasek just seems to fit this dive-bar atmosphere. He's approachable and easygoing. But, most of all, the 30-something Prague native looks every bit like a guy who just grabbed the cleanest threadbare shirt from a cluttered floor and rushed over to join friends for a drink. Once, he actually did down quite a few and started dancing on a table in a discordant, topless, belly-shaking jig. Or maybe it was twice; he can't remember.

Don't let the unkempt appearance or crude stories fool you, though. Behind the show of blue-collar indifference is a serious bartender well-versed in the ways of humanity locked in a hospoda's spell.

Nad Viktorkou's timeworn surroundings are like a second home to some. In the summer, when regulars head off to weekend cottages, business slows to a trickle. Kids from nearby hostels pour in for a taste of working-class Prague and live music, but, for the most part, Sasek knows the names and faces who pass through the door. So, despite instances of alcohol-induced dancing, or the slow, dreary day when he perked things up by turning it into an "anti-bar," paying 20 Kc [91 U.S. cents] to customers for ordering beer, he treats the famed Borivojova bar and its customers with respect — until a lounging regular tries to interrupt a conversation.

"Don't mind him, he's just part of the furniture here," Sasek says, urging guests to ignore the comment.

The pub's the thing

Sasek can get away with little digs. For, if he looks the part of a longtime Zizkov bartender, he has the personality to match. Sincerity shows in his expressions — a wry, knowing smile in this particular case, or a look of dejection when he recalls local kids who wasted away over the years, consumed by drugs, alcohol or the want of a decent living.

His obvious emotional investment in Nad Viktorkou and the people who drop by is the type of thing that makes good neighborhood joints so meaningful. In one sense they are small, almost egalitarian communities where residents care very little about one another's real-life status.

"Neighborhood bars take on their own life," Sasek explains. People earn reputations or nicknames inside the doors of a hospoda that stick with them, whatever their position outside the place. For example, on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago, several Czechs who had lived abroad began acting superior to other guests — until a regular dismissed them in the rudest of possible terms. After that they were simply known as the ... nope, can't use the phrase here ... but in a more good-natured sense.

That, to Sasek, represents the best part of a pub: Social trappings hold little sway and momentary lapses are excused, becoming part of the thing that bonds regulars together. And the guy pouring beer is the center of it all: confidant, friend. But it's not something that just happens. A good publican must encourage the development of a community, one that feels safe yet never gets stale.

Creating that kind of atmosphere is something Sasek works at constantly, though (dancing aside) without obvious fanfare. "You have to keep your eyes open when you're back here," he explains. "You actually select people and divide them. The guests don't see this; it's something you do quietly."

He doesn't elaborate on the tricks, although deciding where along the bar to set someone's beer order might divert an argument or build relationships. Imperceptibly slowing pours for someone whose temper changes after four or five rounds alleviates potential outbursts later in the evening.

It's all part of what bartenders call "looking after your pub."

Tending bar is part art, part psychology and part just about any discipline you can think of. It's a trade Sasek picked up on his own after studying horticulture — sort of. Treating his class schedule as more of a list of suggestions, he admits to "officially" using up all his allotted sick days and more. But his come-what-may approach to life helps him understand the folks on the other side. "You have to know people and act on situations," he says, which is shorthand for understanding when guests want to talk, when they wish to be left alone, and who is approaching critical mass. "A bartender has to be flexible, change with the crowd."

The schedule, five days one week and two the next, may sound like paradise to common working stiffs. But this is a job with some rather bizarre requirements. Though the place shuts down at 1 a.m., staff members tab out and finish clean up around four or five in the morning.

"Sometimes you feel like you just want to leave, get out," he admits, "but you gotta make it through somehow." Before closing time, he watches alcohol transform people from lucid to slobbering, their commentary oozing from a coherent rehash of daily troubles to a slurred discourse on the world. In between there are old jokes to laugh at, stories to retell and so on.

The difficult part is that a bartender can never let any of this get old.

"Of course you can come to work and just go through the motions," Sasek says. After all, anyone can pour a beer or mix a drink. "Or you can come to work and enjoy it, host a party. People can tell the difference."

A guy walks into a bar ...

Even more difficult are the random acts of drunkenness that occur almost daily. The job tests a person's tolerance for the obscure and the obscene. Before the onslaught, a bartender checks daily orders and deals with little problems, such as when a shipment of beer fails to show. He checks the till and calculates the afternoon orders, acting as finance officer and logistics person — humdrum stuff. It's what happens in between ...

One night a guy stumbled up to the bar, repeatedly asking to borrow a knife. "I kept telling him we don't give weapons to drunks," Sasek recalls. Turns out the near-comatose customer only needed to cut through his underwear.

But that's an incident you laugh about later. Aggressive drunks are more common and grind a bit more on a bartender's psyche.

"If he picks on me, I can handle the abuse — part of my job," Sasek explains. "If he bothers other customers, I feel responsible."

Taking care of the pub means showing a lifetime's worth of self-control, almost every night. "You get four bad customers and you hold in all your anger, then blow up at the fifth guy — who didn't do anything."

"I've done that a few times in my career," he says. "But each time I'd have a moral hangover."

Of course, bad days happen in this messed-up milieu. Some bartenders pound down shots on the job to cope with the hours and the demands of the job. Tempting, Sasek admits, but not really appropriate. Relaxing for a couple of days doesn't help much, either. "On Sunday I went into this place and I hear someone call my name: 'We'll have two more beers.' How far do you have to go to get away from people who know you?"

Twice over the past 14 years, he bailed out of the life completely, spending time with a beer distributor and at a surface mine. Years ago he likewise abandoned a nascent career as an arborist (he may be the only bartender in the world able to move and replant 300-year-old trees) after disputing the city's plans for tree removal in one Prague district. Besides, he says, "I couldn't make enough money as a gardener."

Then, the veteran barman laughs. "Today gardeners are better off than bartenders."

Yet he returned both times to the dingy Borivojova joint. He can't explain why, just that he knows how to control a bar, confront troublemakers and joust with regulars. And that, ultimately, it all makes sense.

"It's basically the same over time," he explains. "But the people change every year. They change with age, their behavior changes, what they drink changes. And then the young crowd comes in and they behave they same way we once did, so it all starts over again."