BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Doyle's Café, a treasure trove of Boston history, has died at 137 years of age.

Must sterility always triumph?

NPR's story is dated October 6. The 137-year-old pub closed not long after.

Bostonians Lament Loss Of 137-Year-Old Pub And Its Trove Of History, by Aaron Schachter (NPR)

Doyle's Café, which has been serving up drinks and food to locals, famous politicians and Hollywood celebs in Jamaica Plain since 1882, is expected to close its doors by the end of October. Its owner says he can't afford to keep the business running in the Boston neighborhood.

The landmark pub may not be fancy, but Doyle's is the kind of place where you might find a governor hanging out.

When your liquor license is worth $450,000 even before the property is appraised, it's hard to make a compelling argument for carrying on. The Save Doyle's Cafe page at Facebook tells the story of what has happened since Doyle's ceased. There was a memorabilia auction, and a measure of hope remains.

The owner's broker has agreed to let us keep the mural on the wall and it is our hope that this will serve as an inspiration and motivating force to keep this effort going! Many of the other people participating in the auction have said they would lend their memorabilia to a future owner WHEN Doyle's someday reopens.

It may (it will, due to ADA compliance renovations) take a while, but we are very optimistic that Doyle's will reopen in the future. It makes no sense to knock down the building. The easement from Boston Water and Sewer for the land underneath the building limits development on that corner lot to one story due to the Stonybrook conduit that flows underneath. We have also been told that the current owner is seeking a new buyer for a multi-use development that includes a restaurant.

RIP, Doyle's.

All about the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, which is no laughing matter.

History is endlessly fascinating. Does anyone remember the London Beer Flood of 1814?

The Boston Molasses Flood Is Worth Taking Seriously, by Cara Giaimo (Atlas Obscura)

In 1919, a viscous 40-foot wave slammed into the city’s North End, killing 21 people.

On January 15, 1919, 10-year-old Pasquale Iantosca went out to gather scraps for firewood. Although it was a warm day, his father, Giuseppe, was taking no chances: He had bundled his son into two crimson sweaters, and was keeping an eye on him from the second-story window of their small apartment building in Boston’s North End. But peril is not predictable, and as Giuseppe watched, Pasquale suddenly vanished. “A dark wall had consumed him as though he never existed,” the historian Stephen Puleo writes in Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. It would be hours before rescuers found the boy’s body, his arms and pelvis broken and both of his red sweaters gummed with brown.

The Great Molasses Flood was a tragedy. Twenty-one people died horribly, 150 were injured, and homes and buildings were destroyed. But it has become tragic in the Greek sense, too: The thing that makes it most memorable also undercuts it. The only mark it has left on the landscape is a brief plaque embedded in a wall near Boston Harbor, describing a “40-foot wave of molasses” that, like some sort of delicious Godzilla, “crushed buildings” and “buckled … railroad tracks.” The sight and smell of “brown syrup and blood,” so memorably described in the Boston Post, has been replaced in the city’s consciousness by a charming “scent of molasses” that supposedly still permeates the North End on hot days. As Puleo puts it in Dark Tide’s introduction, “the flood today remains part of the city’s folklore, but not its heritage.” The punchline takes away the punch.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Great Molasses Flood has plenty of lessons to offer at all levels: about corporate responsibility and negligence, about immigration and disenfranchisement, and about human bravery and suffering. One hundred years after the molasses tank burst, some people are trying to restore the disaster to its rightful place in Boston history ...

THE BEER BEAT: Saying goodbye to 2017 with an assortment of links.

In the leadoff slot today, December 30, is this reminder to Hoosiers from Amy Haneline of the Indy Star:

Liquor stores will be closed on New Year's Eve, because Indiana.

You know what to do, and when to do it.

Looking ahead, the fifth anniversary presentation of Tailspin Ale Fest 2018 on February 17 draws ever nearer. We'll be in Portugal, crawling from one port lodge to the next in Vila Nova de Gaia (be still, my throbbing heart), but if you'll be around for Tailspin and want to attend, it's time to start planning.

I'm guessing that NABC's Gravity Head will follow on Friday, February 23, but as Liam Gallagher once sang, it's nothing to do with me.

It may surprise you to learn that as 2018 dawns, I remain a one-third shareholder in the NABC businesses, albeit excluded from participation them since 2015 (welcome to my daily existence of "all risk, no reward") -- none of this being my exact idea when I decided to divorce -- although recently my lawyer has been informed by their lawyer that the long-awaited financial settlement might be concluded by February.

If so, I might even drop by for Gravity Head this year and bask in the warmth of an institution I created.

Life goes on, and businesses come and go; goodbye, BBC St. Matthews. With the death of Steinert's a few years back, my guess is that Vic's Cafe is the oldest licensee in New Albany, even if the tavern isn't located in its original building.

Am I right?

Paul Revere drank here: A quest to find Boston’s oldest tavern, by Brian MacQuarrie (Boston Globe)

Boston has been a drinking town through nearly 400 years of Puritan brewers, ale-quaffing patriots, drunken sailors, and picky millennials in search of the latest craft beer infused with grapefruit.

But in a city meticulous about its past, finding the oldest tavern can be a Byzantine quest. Prepare to burrow past dubious marketing pitches bolstered by obligatory knockoffs of Paul Revere portraits hung under rough-hewn beams and low, dark ceilings.

It’s enough to make the curious reach for a pint, and then another, to bring order — or not — to the competing claims and counterclaims of three popular finalists for the bragging rights ...

Assuming Pints&Union opens this year (cross your fingers), the establishment will for a time be the newest pub in New Albany. Because each swing of the pendulum leaves a segment of the market undervalued, our plan is to turn back the clock to the notion of daily excellence, and maintain a small, largely fixed selection of very good draft beers.

There will be very good bottles and cans, as well; my original thought was to have a few of the quality imports in bottles, the American craft selection in cans, and for these to be from breweries I'd personally visited, whether here or abroad.

However, this article is so thought provoking that the plan might be modified.

NEW-LOOK IMPORTS: FROM GREEN BOTTLES TO PREMIUM CANS, by Daniel Hartis (All About Beer Magazine)

... Consumer perception aside, another reason cans have yet to catch on throughout Europe is that most countries there have strong returnable bottle markets, wherein consumers can return glass bottles for a deposit.

While slow to move in their native countries, breweries have begun exporting canned offerings to the States, where there’s no such stigma against putting a premium product in cans. And though cans are en vogue across America, breweries across Europe are not always going lightly into the package.

It's been so long since this article was written (in March) that a whole new trend probably has supplanted NEIPA -- perhaps sour IPA, which I was reading about recently.

However, for the record ...

The beer world's next big trend? Look out for NEIPAs, also known as hazy IPAs, by John Verive (LA Times)

IPA is the undisputed king of the craft beer world. The aromatic, often intensely bitter style stands in sharp relief to the bland brews that defined American beer for decades. And the ever-increasing demand for IPA drives the growing craft brewing industry. It’s a style that’s evolved along with beer drinkers’ tastes, and the latest evolution shows off the softer, less bitter side of IPA.

An East Coast import, and alternately dubbed the “North Eastern IPA” or “New England IPA” (NEIPA in either case) this new breed of IPA is all about showing off fruity hop flavors without the bitter hop bite. As brewers have developed new techniques for squeezing more hops into a beer, they’ve also discovered that many common brewing processes strip out some hop character. While not all craft beers are filtered, most are clarified to some degree to remove particles and increase the brew’s clarity. Not NEIPAs — they range from opaque to downright sludgy as a complex soup of proteins, suspended yeast and hop compounds form the haze that defines the style. Which, alongside the vibrant fruit flavors from modern hop varieties and a higher perceived sweetness led to another nickname: the juicy IPA.

You may have missed this essay from October, which briefly inspired much debate. The discussion might have been even more entertaining had the author actually talked about the elephant and named some names. He didn't, and while he has a valid point, I find the argumentation muddled.

No more free passes: Not every new craft brewery is good and we need to admit it, by Jonathan Wells (Charlotte Five)

We need to talk about an elephant in the room: newly-opened craft breweries putting out subpar beer.

Finally, in 2017 there were 124 posts at NAC tagged with THE BEER BEAT, and the two with the most page views were "The Bechdel Test, and what 1980s lesbians can teach us about beer" (with 636) and "It's a cornucopia of ephemera, from Quaff On to Lazlo Toth" (1,021).

I have only one beer resolution for 2018: End the self-imposed exile, and get back in the saddle.

Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

No Boston Olympics: "I think the most important talking point we had was around the taxpayer guarantee."

This.

I think it is important to remember we should never be planning our cities around three-week events, or planning our cities around visitors. We should be planning our cities in a way that will work for decades, and will benefit the residents of the city.

The anti-Olympics grassroots campaign in Boston spent less than $10,000.

How Bostonians Defeated the Olympics, by Shannon Sims (CityLab)

... To find out how a grassroots campaign managed to shut down the Olympic juggernaut, we spoke with Christopher Dempsey, one of the founders of the No Boston Olympics movement, and a co-author of the new book No Boston Olympics: How and Why Smart Cities Are Passing on the Torch. We asked Dempsey, also the director of the nonprofit coalition Transportation for Massachusetts, what happened during the Boston opposition movement, what's up next for potential Olympic host cities, and why he believes that hosting the games under their current arrangement shouldn't be a part of any smart city's plan.

SNIP

What was the most rewarding part about being involved in this movement?

We had a broad coalition of people who came to us for any number of reasons. Some people were concerned about the taxpayer guarantee, others didn't want disruption to their life for the three weeks, others were concerned about militarization of police and restriction on rights that occurs when hosting mega-events. At our victory party, there were people in socialist alternative t-shirts sharing a beer with people in t-shirts with the Don't Tread On Me flag representing the Tea Party right. We had been able to form an incredibly broad coalition, and that’s something I think doesn't happen enough.

One of the great takeaways here is that we are lucky to live in a democracy where we can have a robust Olympics debate. No Boston Olympics was outspent 1,500-to-1 by the boosters; we spent less than $10,000. But we had the facts on our side and a press willing to tell both sides of the story. I think we are lucky that's the case. The day after the bid was pulled, I received a phone call from the primary backer of the bid [businessman John Fish] and his words to me were, "Democracy worked." That was a pretty profound and gracious thing for him to say.

Like the jaywalker said: "People don’t obey the rules when they’re driving. Why should I?"

Yes, we've been here before.

MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2016
A contrarian asks: Should there even be "walk" signals for pedestrians?

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
Blaming walkers for street danger is like blaming the unarmed for gun violence with the shooter right in front of you."

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015
The Modern Moloch": When cars were viewed as child-eating gods to be appeased.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Video: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime."

SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2015
Walking is not a crime: Dunman and others on the scourges of jaywalking in auto-erotic America.

Jaywalking isn't a crime. It's a defense mechanism to circumvent wheeled stupidity, plain and simple.

Fearless, defiant, detested: Meet the Boston jaywalker, by Maria Cramer (Boston Globe)

... The long-running tension between the city’s drivers and its pedestrians spilled into City Hall last week after Mayor Martin J. Walsh took to the radio and suggested people pay more attention when they walk and bike around the city. He was instantly slammed by cycling and pedestrian advocates who accused him of victim blaming ...

On the topic of annoyance versus causation:

“Boston is without question the most lawless city when it comes to pedestrians,’’ said Peter Furth, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University. “It’s an annoying thing, but that is not the cause of our fatalities.’’

He said that Walsh’s comments that pedestrians should remove their headphones and quit darting in and out of traffic are undercut by data that show that at least four of the 15 pedestrians killed in Boston last year were older than 65. Two others were children under 3.

“The idea that pedestrians jaywalking makes for an unsafe environment is not borne out by the data,’’ Furth said.

In fact, a 2014 study that looked at 51 major metropolitan areas ranked Boston as the least dangerous city for pedestrians. The city’s chaotic streetscape, which lacks a traditional grid pattern makes the city safer for pedestrians, in a way, because cars are forced to drive more slowly, Furth said.

Today's Tribune column: "BAYLOR: Boston’s monstrously green Fenway."

It was my first-ever visit to Boston. Did we really have to come back?

BAYLOR: Boston’s monstrously green Fenway.

What better place than New England, original settling ground of the Colonists, to view the American version of the old British game — moreover, in Boston, birthplace of the American Revolution?

And what better venue for being taken out to the ballgame than Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox since William Howard Taft resided in the White House?

Blue state reflections, and Brazilian appetizers.

Boston has survived visiting Hoosiers ranging from Larry Bird (French Lick) and Woody Harrelson (via Hanover College). It now has slumbered through the presence of a New Albanian delegation -- Mr. and Mrs. Confidential -- which traveled to Beantown last week for the annual family reunion, thanks to my cousin who resides in Concord.

Funny, that; I viewed the North Bridge in Concord, where the farmers gathered to unleash musketry on the redcoats, and there was not a tea bagger in sight.

We stayed at a B & B of sorts, although without the second "B," and it was a fine experience. The lodging is located in Somerville, just across the Charles River from Boston proper, and east of Cambridge. Somerville is a densely populated, multi-ethnic city in transition. It is trying mightily to be green. Public transportation is profuse, and both walking and biking preferred. I've written here previously of Somerville's "buy local" movement, but it isn't the only place we saw it. All around Boston, there is consciousness. It's a liberating thing.

I understand that my experience in the Boston area was too brief for my observations to be universally valid. I also grasp that making comparisons between the vicinity of Harvard and MIT and any locale capable of electing Steve Price and Dan Coffey to city council is a glib and futile gesture; the contrast is self-evident, and speaks all too plainly for itself.

Still, as my Facebook friends already have heard me spout: I now feel what Peter the Great felt, and didn't have to leave the country of my birth to grok it. Quite simply, and I'm sorry if it offends you, my homeland here is immeasurably backward. I persist in believing that this owes to an over-abundance of fundamentalism, and far too little education.

Good beer eases the pain, though. If there's time, I'll write more. For now, it's back to work putting out fires. Many thanks to Jeff for pinch-hitting, and to our diligent cat-sitters.

Fenway Park.

Know anything about where to stay in Boston?

Okay, readers: I am looking for accommodation recommendations in Boston, Massachusetts, a place where I've never been. We're not planning on renting a car, so public transportation access is a must. Relative proximity to Fenway Park also is a plus. Brewery lofts even better. Any ideas?