Anyways, George's entry is the last in our three-part series examining the marvel and majesty that is the Asheville tradition of Brewgrass. I believed I used the adjective "Tarantino-esque" to describe what I thought he was doing, but I might have overlooked the fact that George has taken to walking around in huge sunglasses and a shotgun. Without further ado, I give you the gonzo world of my brother.
-------------------------------------------
Fear and Loathing at Brewgrass
-A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.
We were somewhere in Asheville on the edge of downtown when the beer began to take hold….
I found myself on a baseball field littered with people, tents, kegs, and pretzels. There must have been 40 breweries, 48 portable toilets, 7 police officers, 2 security guards, 5 musical acts, 100 different types of beers, and 8 different food tents. But the only thing that worried me was the toilets. There is nothing more horrible than having to use a port-a-potty. Nothing… That’s why this journey starts out at the church...
I had been given the assignment to cover the 12th annual Brewgrass festival, a gathering of breweries, music, and food for a blog I do some project work for. I had gotten the call from my editor earlier when I was in Atlanta drinking Flying Dog in the middle of the afternoon. The blog’s editor in chief had given me the tasks to write a blog on the upcoming beer festival ….
What I found was a joyous celebration of the making of BEER. Beer is one of the world's oldest and most consumed tasty beverages. It’s fucking from the 6th millennium BCE and is recorded in the written history of Egypt and Mesopotamia (thanks Wikipedia). Hooray Beer!!!
Pilsners, Ales, Weizenbocks, Wits, Stouts, Wheats, Barley wines, oh my. This joyous festival provided me with beers of different taste, color, style, alcohol percentage (fuck you Great Divide, when I say “brewers’ choice”, I don’t want the shit no one has been asking for all day, 10.5%, fuck off!). Not only was this festival a showcase of a great tasty beverage, it’s a gathering of people who REALLY like beer. Who turns out, are my type of people. Very friendly. Very opinionated. Very drunk. And sometimes very creepy.
HOLY SHIT is that a pretzel necklace!!! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? Not only were these people wearing pretzels around their necks, there were Oktoberfest hats, beer bottle shaped glasses, and bags of kettle corn the size of garbage bags (the BIG kind of garbage bags, not those 1 gallon bathroom size)…
As the beer/water ratio became a little weighted… I found my thoughts wondering to the broken levies, terrorists, rising gas prices, recessions, Russia (which you can’t see from Asheville, NC), low funding for stem cell research, John McCain, childhood obesity, and rising food prices. However, when people come to enjoy their fruits of their labor and put pride in the beer they are making (not looking at you Great Divide) it just all seems a little bit better. Beer is what was able to bring people together today. Beer drinkers are friendly people who surprisingly don’t read Steinbeck novels.
As our arrangements were made to get home to a dinner of turkey cutlets, we left Brewgrass with a little more beer knowledge, a little less hydration, and a sense of a hopeful future. However, we were given another assignment after being picked up: find a gas station in the Asheville/Enka-Candler area that has gas.
And with that, we re-entered a strange world, a different world…. a world without gas, rice, or enough pretzel necklaces. While we are preparing to fight a lady over waiting in line to get gas, I remember a better time and realize that Brewgrass is not just a festival, it’s a state of mind. I am looking forward to Brewgrass 2009. I’ll be the one wearing the pretzel necklace…
No comments:
Post a Comment