On the night of the start of the Rotterdam Barshow, the Dutch Flair scene strode down in Hollands first ever flair bar “The Breakaway” in Rotterdam.
It was time for the UFL Dutch Finals 2010 and a special night it was. The barshow’s first day had ended and the whole circus moved to the Breakaway, legendary bartenders like Nicolas Saint-Jean, Andy Collinson, Tug van den Bergh and Fabio Milani all made an appearance in the venue and supported the local Dutch heroes.
As the place filled up, and the Jagers were flowing the crowd was getting hungry for flair and that’s what they got. At eight o’ clock sharp the comp kicked off with eight of Holland’s best flair bartenders that had qualified throughout the past year.
A special notice goes out to Paddy Kacpersky, Breakaway’s ex bartender that came back to Rotterdam to show his home crowd what he still got in store. He went off with some ocd flair and nailed all of his multiple objects and had a clean solid round. The crowd and the Breakaway crew loved having him back for a night and cheered him into 4th place.
The ‘forever 3rd’ place’ was given to (who else) Mads Voorhoeve representing the Underground Flair Space in Amsterdam. Mads has only been competing for 1,5 years but has shown us he is progressing real hard and real fast. With a stage presence that always makes me smile he is one of my favorite dutch bartenders and this guy always gets the crowd going, well done Mads.
Runner up from the night is the current Dutch Champion Dillan van Heusden, who with his technical flair and amazing smoothness blew me away (again). With his amazing 3 bottle tin working flair, and his signature 2 tin 2 bottle routine Dillan made it to 2nd place and showed Rotterdam What is going down at The Underground Flair Space.
Big Champ of the night, representing the Showshakers in the Netherlands is Matthijs Groen. With a solid and like always a very smooth routine Matthijs took most of his points on his crowd interaction and his ”total package” of all the aspects you need to have to win a comp. Matthijs will be sent over to Singapore to represent Holland in the IBA finals later this year. Congrats Matthijs and looking forward to see how you get on in Singapore!
After the results and the jagers and beers were doing their jobs the Breakaway got woken up by future Rock and Rita’s colleague’s Nicolas Saint-Jean and UFL organizer Anthony Pullen battling it out on stage in an amazing flair off, Nic and Andy gave away one hell of a show and this was nothing like the crowd in Holland has ever seen before and showed what we can expect this summer as the world largest and craziest flair bar in the world will open his doors in Vegas, thanks Nicolas and Anthony for a great show.
As the night went off I was glad to see how flair in The Netherlands is growing to an international level, great to see that such a big crowd turned up in Rotterdam and that the bar is set for this years UFL.
Shout out to some great organization by Moniek and Anthony Pullen, my fellow judge from the WFA Tug van den Bergh, Alberto (breakaway cafe) for lending your venue to us, Rickbox on the microphone all night and all the crowd that turned this night into something special.
Mike Breuker
Delirium TV
Mike Breuker started as a professional bartender at the age of 18.After working in the Netherlands he progressed his career overseas and worked as a bartender in different countries in Europe and Asia.
He entered the world of the competing bartending industry at the age of 20. After taking the National Bartending Championship at the age of 24 and competing in more then 30 international flair bartending competitions he started what you all know as, Delirium TV.
