Photo of Chris Kollmar by Jennifer Korman Photography
For visitors of the Fox and Hounds inside the Cheshire Inn, Chris Kollmar can be seen tending bar like a shepherd tending his flock. Jovial, he greets those who saunter up to his dimly lit workspace with cocktails and conviviality.
Living most of his life as a closeted cartoonist, Kollmar has been a doodler his whole life. After realizing that something could come from combining his job with his sketching, he decided to fuse his practice of daily drawings into something more.
Kollmar commented on how he chose being a mixologist as a career path.
“I was trying to avoid turning into my father, who is an inveterate salesman. So, I fell into it and thought, I’ll just do this until I figure out what I can do that isn’t sales.”
He also commented on how he became interested in drawing.
“It’s the only way I could concentrate in school. My hands had to be busy for me to be paying attention.”
From here, his love of comics grew. He began to draw more.
“I remember copying cartoon strips in the newspaper. I even made a couple of my own when I was a kid. I never followed up with them or anything. I even made a caricature of one of my teachers for an independent high school rag. Stuff like that.”
This lifelong passion for expressing himself via illustrations never went away. Looking at the world through prints, serials, and word bubbles, Kollmar decided to carry his passion into the workplace.
Over time, his scribbling began to infiltrate other areas of his life. So, it was only inevitable that his hobby would carry over to his gig at Fox and Hounds. Keeping scores of his sketches behind the bar, he’d hand them to patrons and ask them for captions. He also would take the bits and pieces he heard of conversations, scant phrases heard while working. When heard without full context, these vignettes were often sublime or hilarious.
His work was also a great way to get folks at his bar to open up or talk to the person next to them.
“I use them as a crutch in that if I don’t have time to talk to somebody and they are there by themselves, I don’t want them on their phone. If you’re on your phone, you’re not available for your neighbor’s conversation. So, if I give them a stack of drawings, then it’s open season,” he says.
From this synthesis of drinks and drawing came So, You Walk Into A Bar: Ramblings from the Fox and Hounds, his first book, published in late 2024. Featuring drawings with snippets of overheard conversations and notes from his customers, Kollmar’s hobby was quickly turning into something more.
With his creative juices flowing at home and at work, the victualler described his creative process.
“The drawings I make aren’t necessarily from conversations. Very often, I’ll be hearing a conversation at two ends of the bar, and they’re just disparate enough that when they come together as an image, they work. Other times, there is something going on in my life or something that’s going on in the world that ties it all back together.”
“But it’s not always a conversation that’s happening at the bar that turns into an image. However, many of my favorite ones are because they form a bit of a scrapbook for me,” he notes.
Kollmar also reflected on how the idea of writing a book germinated.
“The first book was organic. Somebody smeared some glitter on my arm, and I outlined it to look like a jellyfish. Then I drew that on a notepad with a farmer milking it. Then I suggested she make a joke on the next page. When she gave it back to me, she asked, ‘Are you going to do this every day?’ The next day, I had an idea, and the day after that, I had another idea. It went on from there.”
Popular with regulars, out-of-towners, and barflies alike, So,You Walk Into A Bar has gone through several printings. Knowing he was onto something, Kollmar began thinking about a follow-up.
Earlier this year, Kollmar dropped Another Round, his second book. For this one, he changed things up a bit. The formula of having customers interact with his drawing remained, however, this time, the more confident author brightened his illustrations with vivid color
With his second book, Kollmar found himself with the perfect cocktail, an abundance of images and a plethora of musings to choose from. In addition to jokes about bats, the book also has puns about oranges, moon pies, and snowmen.
Feeling like he’s found his groove, Kollmar is happy with how Another Round turned out.
“The jokes are better. This one also has color and crisper line work. It’s a book of whimsy. I wouldn’t ever call it deep. But in this book, things are getting deeper in my heart,” he says.
His second round finds the author a more seasoned storyteller, one who provides readers with more of his personality in his pages. The result is a charming, witty, and pleasantly inane insight into bar culture and the musings that come from the human psyche.
For Kollmar, getting the ideas from his head onto the page is a process.
“I’ll do a sketch on a notepad and pencil. Occasionally, I’ll do it straight into ink if it’s simplistic enough. But I’ll do it in pencil, and then while that’s happening, it’ll be solidifying in my mind as to what it should be. Then it goes to ink. After that, I take away the pencil, and then it is right on the notepad. For the book, I just got the images into my tablet and essentially traced them, and then just put a little color into them too.”
Kollmar also emphasized how The Fox and Hounds has become an epicenter for his process.
“Many of the images I’ll do at the bar. The first couple of pages that I did on Another Round here, I did digitally at home. But pretty much everything else I did at the bar.”
Bartending can be chaotic and frantic. With Kollmar’s focus on his job, mixing pints and pictures is not always possible. Luckily, the barkeep has backup in coworker, Jatia.
“Making the drinks is autopilot. Ringing people in and getting their orders right, that’s on autopilot too. But I don’t hear like I used to, but Jatia does. She hears everything. If you’re sitting at the bar, don’t have a private conversation because your bartender hears everything. That’s always the case. But, as far as logging information goes, if I miss something, I’ll have somebody repeat it and jot it down.”
While bartending is a natural outlet for Kollmar to tell stories, start conversations, and get people loaded, he takes profound joy in seeing people succeed.
“If somebody’s working on becoming a better version of themselves, that’s always my favorite conversation to have. I also love it when somebody’s passionate about something. I guess that goes back to personal growth. After all, what are you going to be more passionate about than yourself?” he quips.
With Another Round out in the world, the Cheshire’s bottle jockey
reflected on the challenges he faced making it.
“From the first couple of pages, I really wanted this book to be a love letter to St. Louis too. I’ve got some aerial views of the city in it. The whole book, it takes you from a plain window down to just above the tree line view, and then you just come into the bar from St. Louis. I used those images and kept perfecting them.”
“Then, for the seasonal chapters, I gave a two-page spread for each of those. I just kept getting lost in the details on those and wanted to make them more perfect. So, the hardest thing for this book was to stop drawing, really.”
Despite his career as a budding author and illustrator, Kollmar remains, at heart, a bartender. It’s a profession that finds him not just pouring drinks but pouring his soul into making sure everyone is having a good time.
“I don’t look at tending bar as making drinks. I think of it as hosting a party. If everybody in the room is having a good time, then I can relax. If somebody in there is messing up that ecosystem, that’s the only time I’m not relaxed.”
Looking beyond Another Round, the suds slinger plans another book in that series as well as a few other projects.
“My partner in crime Jatia has an amazing gift for making drinks and has made at least five different cocktail lists that I can think of. The bar has been there since 1963, and it has had cocktails on the list since then. So, she and I have been secretly putting together a compendium of recipes from the Fox and Hounds. It has a little bit of history and other surprises. We’re putting that together, and we don’t have a timeline yet.”
Another project involves a subject close to his heart, a boy and his dog.
“I have always been writing cartoons and strips about my dog. That’s going to become a graphic novel memoir, because it’s from the day I got the dog until he passed away. It’s very much done in cartoon strip style, and I am so happy with it.”
So, You Walk Into A Bar, and Another Round are both available at the Fox and Hounds at The Cheshire Inn (6300 Clayton Rd.), Leviathan Bookstore (3211 Grand Blvd.), and on Amazon.com. | Rob Levy
