The firestarting co-owner of a popular Chinatown nightclub has been ordered to stay away from the bar after making it too much of a hotspot.
Albert Trummer, whose pyrotechnic liquor displays have gotten him featured in “The Real Housewives of New York City,” has been ordered to stay out of his Apotheke club because his partners have had enough of his fiery antics.
Trummer, a self-described “cocktail artist,” is currently awaiting trial on reckless endangerment charges for allegedly lighting the bar in the absinthe-den-inspired club on fire this past June.
Fire investigators, who’d previously warned Trummer to cut out the cocktail conflagarations, said his brandy, vodka, and whiskey concoction resulted in a five-foot fireball that came close to reaching a fabric canopy and other combustibles.
Trummer’s business partners said his passion is still burning, and that he tried to go out in in blaze of glory on October 17, when he went into the club at around 1 am, got behind the bar, “took four bottles of Champagne, shook them and then cut off the bottles with a sharp knife. He then sprayed the Champagne from the open bottles aroudn the vicinity of the bar, wetting patrons and employees who happened to be nearby,” the suit says.
The hothead then took two bottles of Sambuca and “smashed them on the granite bar,” and tried to light bar with a match, the filing says. “If I’m going to be arrested, it’s going to be for real,” the suit quotes him as saying.
A quick-thinking bartender poured water on top of the bar to stop it from catching fire, and Trummer’s business partner, Heather Tierney, called 911, the suit says.
The filing says the club’s been put on the hotseat because of Trummer’s antics – the State Liquor Authority has indicated it may not renew Apotheke’s license – and they’ve had enough.
The suit seeks a permanent court order barring him from the premises, and unspecified money damages because his “illegal and dangerous pyrotechnics” have put the business “at grave risk.”
“It puts at risk the continued employment of the people who work at Apotheke,” as well as the safety of members of the public who patronize Apotheke and the safety of the employees who work there,” the suit says.
A lawyer for the club said a judge had signed the restraining order.
Trummer could not immediately be reached.
After a court hearing this past August, he insisted there’s nothing wrong with his fire shows, which he said was simply his way of mixing drinks. “There is no (fire code) requirement for flaming drinks,” he said.