A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
Yesterday the board of directors of the Brewers of Indiana Guild met in regular session, and new business items included a discussion of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its economic (and cultural) consequences for Indiana brewers.
In fact, as we were meeting, the Indiana legislature’s intricate timetable of committee meetings was being thrown into upheaval by the governor’s directive to amend SB/HB 101.
To paraphrase the guild’s simple and eloquent public stance, which will be released soon, “Indiana brewers make lots of different beers for lots of different people.”
Verily, this says it all, and it got me thinking about the many ways that America’s evolving better beer revolution is all about “new” and “future” economic thinking, as opposed to old.
Unfortunately, the old ways hold sway in a place like New Albany. If they did not, there’d be two-way traffic on my street. The shift toward “next” is long overdue.
It needs to start right now.
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Occasionally I’m accused of having an insufficient social conscience, in the sense of preaching about better beer when more important issues beg to be addressed.
Simultaneously, the world of better (formerly “craft”) beer wants to know why I insist on addressing social and political topics to the exclusion, mostly imagined, of those seeking fermentable knowledge alone.
But to me, vacuums don’t exist, and human knowledge rewards connectivity. About the only certainty to be gleaned from all this is that folks pay at least some degree of attention to my canon, which after all, is a writer’s prime and selfish motivation.
As it pertains to my habitat and workplace in downtown New Albany, naysayers have been known to question the growth of dining and drinking establishments over the past decade: How can gluttony and drunkenness alone revitalize a moribund area?
My answer: Unless we discover vast oil reserves beneath our decaying pavements, or find a way to mimic the manufacturing practices of Asian sweat shops and transplant them into our many remaining deteriorated historic structures, then yes, beefsteak and porter are fairly good starter options for regeneration, at least when they’re correctly prepared – the meat served rare, and the beer in a large, clean glass.
I can hear it now: “Roger, you’re just a self-centered drunkest,” and of course this a prime example of purely diversionary, yawn-inducing hokum, predictably emanating from the usual reactive alliance of disaffected troglodytes, fundamentalist nut jobs and elderly white political party members. Rather, I’d venture to say that in its purest form, better beer eloquently personifies a clear and pro-active vision of localist-style economic development.
After all, the better beer business generally reflects an ethos of localism summarized by a 1960’s-era social activist mantra, one refashioned to suit our specific brewing circumstances: “Think globally, drink locally.”
Obviously, I’ve always enjoyed using beer as a metaphor for other aspects of our shared experience, and whenever a clear connection is lacking, it’s advisable to drink beer while discussing the possibilities. The pub is every man’s university, beer is life, and vice-versa … but you already knew that.
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As an adult beverage brewed locally, a new iteration of American brewing is not to be confused with mass-produced, conceptually derivative carbonated urine from multinational industrial manufacturing corporations like AB-InBev, which has taken to foisting the word “craft” on undiscerning drinkers by means of misleading marketing tactics increasingly likely to make Herr Goebbels do a dervish goosestep in the depths of Hell.
Genuine American-made “craft” beer is best consumed locally, where we live and love and work and play, with folks who share the vision and dream the dream. I certainly do my share of sampling, even if far less than when younger, and to my delight and edification, the ongoing revival of downtown New Albany allows me to drink local beer quite locally – when merited, even copiously – and to walk home afterward in a physically beneficial and socially responsible manner.
In fact, our decision to buy the Midtown house we currently occupy, and my company’s 2009 downtown brewery expansion, both were calibrated with walking (and bicycling) in mind. It isn’t “luck” that enables my strolling and biking. It’s planning, as logically rewarding solid, traditional, locally-based principles of life and living within an urban area originally built for precisely those purposes. At one time these notions were the accepted norm. Now they’re being rediscovered by residents and business communities around the country.
Local brewing and drinking fit wonderfully within this paradigm of greater localism, as expressed here by New Albany First:
New Albany First works to create a community culture that values local independents by raising public awareness of the benefits of local buying. We promote independent businesses to help them better compete with national and transnational chains and preserve our community’s character. Through our education and outreach programs, we increase awareness and support for local independent businesses.
Locally brewed beer fully embraces these precepts. Louisville’s own excellent and long-standing locally-minded group, the Louisville Independent Business Alliance (LIBA), hosts an annual beer festival at Slugger Field, offering a stellar example of the linkages. Most Louisville breweries are members of LIBA, and LIBA’s goal of keeping Louisville “weird” (unique and independent) is shared by NA1st, as applicable to beer businesses on the Indiana side of the river.
Why does any of this matter? The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (www.ilsr.org) offers these ten vital commandments in a civic context. They have been embraced by the better beer movement, but they’re applicable to us all.
1. Protect Local Character and Prosperity
Your city is unlike any other city in the world. By choosing to support locally owned businesses, you help maintain your city’s diversity and distinctive flavor.
2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong neighborhoods by sustaining communities, linking neighbors, and by contributing more to local causes.
3. Local Decision Making
Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent at national chains. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more city services through sales tax, invest in neighborhood improvement and promote community development.
5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.
6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.
7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.
8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
Come to think of it, these Ten Commandments form precisely the sort of economic development action plan that our municipal government might encourage with more than words alone. Unfortunately, the old ways hold sway in a place like New Albany. If they did not, there’d be two-way traffic on my street, and yet, in point of fact, the “craft” beer economic development ethos has far more to do with the future of New Albany’s economy than dump trucks, slag heaps and political kickbacks.
In New Albany, the shift toward “next” is long overdue
It needs to start now.
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