Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
Such utter tourist we were yesterday. From walking by the river killing time before a hall of fame opened, to sucking back fantastic BBQ (the barnyard special at the Double T), to wandering around Notre Dame, to hitting the ugly hotel swimming pool with the eastern European 1973 paint scheme, to taking in another ballgame. All good. The equinox of the trip is upon us and we slowly turn back east north east.
Just a bit of praise where praise is definitely due to the good folks at City-Wide Liquors at Jefferson Street in South Bend. I was able to stop in twice and found the place one of the beer best shopping experiences in my life, you know, with good beer. Why? Here’s why:
a. There is an Indiana law that folks 21 and younger can’t even open the door at a drinks store. So the folk good at City-wide provided a clerk to wait at the door with the lad. Irritating law. Well handled.
b. The place is in the downtown a block from the courts, a block from the College Football Hall of Fame, surrounded by professional office space and looks like it fits right in. Neat and tidy, clever and kind.
c. Note the awning. It says “micro-brews” and not “beer” or whatever. These folk promote the good beer along with fine wines and spirits without a tie to food or a fest or a flavour of the month. If someone is looking how craft beer should be placed in the market to send the message that it is a stand alone quality product, check out City-Wide.
d. Great selection and great prices. I was happy to open the wallet to pick up beers by Indiana’s Three Floyds, Back Road and Barley Island along with St. Louis’s Schlafly of St. Louis and a New Belgium Mothership Wit for 3.49 a bomber. None of these are available in Ontario or from what I have seen in New York – and maybe not even in neighbouring Michigan.
e. Did I mention it is open from 9:00 am on into the evening? Sounds too early but when you are heading out of town at the beginning of a 15 hour haul east, well, 9:00 am makes a lot of sense.
The only quibble is their website isn’t telling the story well enough. It looks like it is focusing on the class of product other than those getting the focus at this downtown – and I would assume flagship – location. As with this evening’s experience of buying Arbor IPA, Founders IPA and Bell’s pale ale at a grocery store in Michigan, shopping at City-Wide in South Bend will only drill home all winter how poorly served Ontarians and folk in many other locations are.
What to do on a Wednesday morning in South Bend? Well, we are a couple of blocks from the College Football Hall of Fame so it was worth a shot. These things can go a number of ways but little did we know that Joe Montana would be in the house. It was a private get together but we left about when he did and got a few glimpses.
Other than that, the Ohio State v. Michigan rivalry display is one of the best “sitting in the museum at the movies” experiences ever. Now the boy knows that Woody Hayes was one tough bastard.
Off to the Double T BBQ.
So far, the food of the eastern mid-west is not so much different as altered. This morning I had a cherry burger that had a patty that was half beef and half chopped cherry. It was mostly indistinguishable but, still, had half the red meat. Lunch included chicken and noodles which is chicken noodle soup with the soup aspect strangely removed. The potato salad had shredded spuds and the pies were fantastic. The peanut butter pie was like coconut cream with the coconut replaced with a thin layer of, you know, peanut butter. Who knew peanut butter could be subdued. I was bested by the fresh strawberry pie which kicked the strawberry pie of Helen of Machias’s all over town. Unlike the food, we are not so sure about the hotel. The nearby convenience store where the clerk sat in a plexiglas booth was one hint. The lack of any other guests on any of the 15 floors was the other. Tomorrow we seek out Notre Dame, BBQ and mini putt.
When we got to Lansing it was too late to do anything like shop for beer. We had a hotel pool to cannonball into, then a supper to find as well as a baseball game to attend. The tickets seven rows back of home were nine bucks, my Two Hearted Ale was four-fifty with dinner and huge mug of Miller at the game was six. It was all good. The Miller was perfect on a hot hot evening, sweet corn and grainy barley with none of the off tastes like boiled veg and damp cardboard that too many of the basic macro brews get labeled with. Cooling with no bothersome strength to speak of. A craft beer would be spoiled by the temperature that I wanted with this stinking mid-western humidity.
Stan H. and E.S. Delia have both written posts in the last few hours that go to the very heart of beer blogging. Stan’s post “The end of beer writing as we know it?” and Mr. Delia’s “On Beer Writing” both explore the relationship between blogging – an amateur form of expression – with profession beer expressions like movies or beer magazines. Dalia writes:
The bigger issue is the nature of beer writing. Carroll quotes filmmaker Anat Baron’s take on beer writers versus beer bloggers, implying that the writers’ assessments were more astute or level-headed than that of the beer bloggers. I don’t get paid for this, so perhaps my opinions are less valid.
Nothing is so embarrassing as when condescension meets foolishness. It reminds of the old joke “what do you call a doctor who got ‘D’ in first year anatomy?” The answer is, of course, “doctor.” Like Dr. Johnson said of nationalism, this sort of idea about professionalism can also be the last refuge of a scoundrel. For further study on this idea, I suggest you seek out the works of Ivan Illich. You may not agree with the idea that professionalism in itself carries downsides but the perspective is nonetheless worthwhile.
Fortunately, both Mr. H and Mr. D reject such poppycock. Both suggest the far better idea that beer blogging is not in any way illegitimate and in fact can uniquely advance the discourse on beer culture in ways that profession beer sometimes can’t. Delia reminds us of the need to look to and weigh content. Hieronymus looks with hope to innovation and new beginnings. Sure, there is a lot of crap in blogging as well as failed technicalities like poor grammar. But there is also a lot of crap in magazine writing and in documentary film making as well as failures such as the business botch of misplaced trust in an illusory homogeneous craft beer community which will buy your tickets or purchase your subscriptions like unthinking autobots. What has been going on for years – and what some still don’t get – is that all this writing is a collection of disorganized personal explorations which, like this post exemplifies, feed each other and weave another part of a large tapestry with ideas. It is a better more complex and richer way.
Thirty-three years ago, Bill Gates complained about the very same thing in relation to software “hobbyists” but he as wrong, too, as history has proven.
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I was thinking the other day about scare-dee cats. While good beer for fans is fun, easy, relaxing and genial for others it can be another nail in the coffin of the moral and secure society we all grew up with or supposedly wished we did. There is something about this dichotomy that makes no sense to me. Craft beer should be making alliances with parts of society which would enhance its vision. For some that is the swank or even the snob but I don’t buy that either. I go to a fine restaurant about six times a year… maybe. Pinning craft beer’s star to fine food is niche and excludes. Similarly being pals with brewers or considering them rock stars is the slightly embarrassing refuge of needy geeks. Not to mention a bit of a sidetrack.
There are bigger issues which neither embarrass or exclude. One of the biggest problems related to drinking is, of course, driving. And drunk driving is primarily a problem caused by driving. No car, no crime. Lew posted about this today in relation to New Jersey’s Flying Fish’s Exit Series beers. When I pointed out that the state’s executive director of MADD had changed her view, Lew commented “Craft brewers and craft beer drinkers do NOT take this seriously enough.”
That was my moment. I was all ready to blast craft brewers for their inaction on the question when I thought about what Lew wrote a bit more. It’s true – craft beer drinkers do not take drunk driving seriously enough either. So we will from now on. By being BBADD. I am going to think about this a bit more and suggest that it is the role of beer fans to promote safe drinking, to present the responsible beer geek as the guy who takes pal’s keys or takes the cab or the bus… or acts as designated driver. We need to ask craft brewers to do the same. For me, this is a no-brainer. Craft brewers have the opportunity to be fight drunk driving and place themselves in the lead of the cause. Social responsibility in the cause could develop as a distinguishing aspect of being a craft brewer and a craft brew fan. There might also be an alliance MADD would welcome one day to confirm they are not the new dry but truly anti-stupid-death. But until that day comes, we can be BBADD to prime the pump.
So, spread the word. Paste the logo at your website. And I know it’s a bad BBADD logo up there so if anyone can make it better or, you know, bad ass or sick or whatever fill you boots. Write a post. Tell a friend. However you relate to beer, make sure it is BBADD.
Finally, I made it to the life of if not a jet setter, then, maybe a border hopper as this morning’s Watertown Daily News proves:
While heckling from the “cranks,” or fans, was not an official requirement of the game, there was certainly plenty directed toward all four teams. Mr. Drinkwater himself engaged in a fair amount of good-natured bantering as umpire and later as a player on the Rochesters, who won their first game against Kingston 9-2 but lost 12-4 in the championship round against the Ontarios… For Alan C. McLeod, organizer of the Kingston team, it was international collaboration that brought his players to the vintage games in the first place. “Obviously there’s a lot of camaraderie. Sackets Harbor got us interested in this two years ago,” Mr. McLeod said. According to the organizer, teams from Canada used to cross over into the States to play baseball with Americans as early as 1870.
Getting whupped 9-2 by the Rochester best nine is not exactly bad when you consider it was the fourth game for the Kingston St. Lawrence Brown Stockings and Rochester has run a weekly program for years. We got tagged for five in the sixth, too. We were down by just one before that. Have I made enough excuses? Need a lighter bat as well. And a bit more work on the fielding. And I shouldn’t have tried for second that one time but they did say that a ball that went into the bush was a double when they meant that a ball that went into the bush and stays in there was a double. I should have done a Billy Martin on those Rochestarians but I was way too out of breath.
I was clicking away last Thursday as the Binghampton Mets beat the Portland Sea Dogs 2-1 in a pitchers’ duel. Got the bunt in a good sequence of shots. We had pretty good seats for seven or eight bucks and got to witness a lot of players who will never make the bigs. Some might. I really liked the Sea Dogs shortstop Diaz as well as all of the Met’s pitchers. Great Sox hope Lars Anderson did not have a good game going 0-4 with two strike outs. In fact in the ninth the lad was shouting “Swing At It, Would’ja Lars!!” as another strike went by as the bat sat nestled on his shoulder. Earlier, after bobbling and almost dropping a foul pop fly he was dubbed “Two Hands, Lars!” after the advice the boy shouted field wards a couple of seconds later. Super tiny midget level softball is paying off. Lars hit 3-4 the next night.
