Newport in New Albany, Tuesday, March 10.

Newport, Kentucky's position as a small urban center directly across the river from Cincinnati is strikingly similar to New Albany's. Thanks to Ted Fulmore, Newport's Main Street Coordinator will be in town tomorrow to help tell the story of that city's successful revitalization efforts.

It's been building, for sure.

It's great to be sitting in a quiet room, away from the bedlam of the past two days. I'll begin the Sunday morning Tribune wrap with the newspaper's letters to the editor.

LETTERS: March 1, 2009

— Reader thanks city council for proposed adult ordinance

— Reader has something to say to landlords

The first reader is Vince Garmon, a member of Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK), who thanks the New Albany City Council for being so very diligent in tackling the grievous threat to our community posed by adult entertainment, even as the same council congenitally refrains from tackling any of the other dozen (two dozen?) threats that don’t conveniently fall beneath the hot-button umbrella of evangelical preoccupation with sex to the exclusion of interest in all those “other” mundane threats, which after all, don't really affect life in the non-blighted exurb where the real church-goers live -- right, Gary?

Coincidentally, today's front page headline informs us: Adult ordinance faces changes with New Albany City Council.

The minute adjustments include extending the hours of operation and changing the no-contact distance between customers and dancers.

Sorry, but it's venting time for the Publican.

Perhaps well intentioned councilman Bob Caesar, who is quoted in the article, would do well to consider Terry Stalwar’s recent column about unintended consequences.

Bob, you’re permitting the Christian Right to frame the rules of the game, and you do so at the peril of us all. You are risking a slippery slope that will be greased when these (currently) one trick ponies declare victory over the current imaginary peril and change focus to another just as ephemeral, but as "defined" by a specifically religious outlook that jibes not one solitary jot with the secular legal tradition that we ostensibly observe in this country.

Their object is a theocracy, Bob.

Also, recall that every word currently devoted to depicting the damage inflicted by adult entertainment was once deployed to explain the need for the enforced sobriety of Prohibition. It's bad enough that so few of the newly elected council persons ever bothered to study the body and function of that which they wanted to become a member. It's even more depressing to conclude that none of them have read history, either.

The second letter comes from our own Highwayman:

However, don’t walk in the door with fairytales about how being a landlord is not being a business person.

Lloyd is referring to the latest instance of landlord gibberish, as reported by the Tribune last week:

“It’s just another tax. You cannot convince me that it’s anything other than that,” (Haeseley) said. “My biggest concern is that they’ve already established that we’re a business, and I disagree with that.”

He buys it and he resells it for a profit, making use of all available legal quantifications while doing so, and yet in the past, Brian Haeseley has referred to his rental properties as “products,” and echoed the current propaganda that he so freely rehashes that his chosen vocation should not be described as a business.

What is it, Brian? A xylophone? Girl Scout cookie? Cumulo-nimbus cloud?

That rumbling sound you hear is George Orwell doing somersaults six feet under, but perhaps Goebbels was right: The bigger the lie, the more likely that a benumbed public will swallow it.

Stray note to Pat Harrison: The preceding is an historically accurate reference to history in the context of the Gestapo.

Finally, something encouraging to balance the idiocy: New Albany on the Levee?, in which it is suggested that the experience of Newport, Kentucky, might have relevance to our own.

A jolt, to be sure. Believe it or not, there are people living in the city of New Albany who are capable of gazing upon a similar-sized river city less than two hours away and learning something.

I know, I know ... learning probably is illegal, and if so, it'd be the only ordinance we ever bother to enforce, but the point is that these people want to bring someone to New Albany for all of us to learn something.

That's positively subversive for the Open Air Museum.

Freedom to Screech almost certainly is against it, and the concerned troglodytes are preparing to self-immolate on the courthouse steps in protest of the government taking a penny more of their Wal-Mart shopping money -- you know, the cash that keeps Chinese sweat shops ticking.

I'd like to finish this essay, but there's a semi-trailer caught in a pothole outside my door. Gotta go hitch up the team of Dalmatians and go pull him out. Wish me luck. And if anyone finds one of the those anonymous letters circulating to the effect that I lack sufficient moral character to be permitted to do business here (alas, B, that's what I persist in calling it), please forward it to me.

Now more than ever, I could use a good laugh.

Get thee to the Hofbrauhaus Newport. Seriously.

(Originally published a few days ago at Potable Curmudgeon, my beer blog)

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Few institutions in the world of beer and brewing are as revered as Munich’s Hofbrauhaus.

Few are as misunderstood.

People the world over tend to confuse regional Bavarian culture with that of Germany as a whole, something that never fails to elicit sighs from residents of Bremen, Idar-Oberstein and Hannover. In like fashion, the Hofbrauhaus is erroneously viewed as the exact model of how German beer is made, served and celebrated, but in fact it is uncommon to see such a large-scale beer and food service entity outside of Munich itself, even in the remainder of Bavaria.

Other than a shared fondness for pilsner-style lagers, which is a relatively recent historical development, beer and beer culture vary widely throughout Germany. Munich has no smoked beer; Bamberg does. Cologne and Dusseldorf brew Kolsch and Alt, respectively, and both are top-fermenting, but neither city has a tradition of wheat ales, which are a Bavarian innovation … except for Berliner-style wheat ales, which are something entirely different and come from much further north.

To be sure, Bavaria’s self-promotional savvy conjures imagery of Lederhosen, Bratwurst and “Ein Prosit!”, and as such, it is perhaps appropriate that a pilgrimage to the Hofbrauhaus at its Platzl address has been de rigueur for tourists in Munich ever since the current building was constructed in 1897. Be as curmudgeonly as you please, and yet no one seriously doubts that a visit to the Hofbrauhaus is fun, memorable and infinitely capable of being photographed.

Paris feasts may be moveable, but Hofbrauhaus stories are expandable. Typically soft, clean Bavarian lagers are served in oversized liter mugs, pork in all its conceivable bodily incarnations is expertly prepared, a vast and sprawling acreage of diners and drinkers clink noisy toasts and sing along as they are regaled by tuneful brass bands, and restrooms the size of Rhode Island are patronized constantly and tended by grimly serious cleaning personnel.

While the Hofbrauhaus well represents Bavarian beer, cuisine and communal traditions at an almost lunatic, exaggerated extreme, experiencing these wonders would be nowhere as delightful if their intrinsic worthiness were not so transparently obvious to beginners and veterans alike.

But can that worthiness be transplanted to foreign climes?

In 1999, and with much fanfare, the Hofbrauhaus was cloned and a second location opened in … yes, Dubai, of all places. This was followed by a third site in Newport, Kentucky (across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio) in 2003, and then another in Las Vegas. A fifth Hofbrauhaus is slated to open in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the fall of 2007. More are sure to follow.

I had not had the chance to visit the Hofbrauhaus Newport until last Saturday afternoon, when it was crammed to the rafters with locals and tourists devoting a gorgeous day to enjoying resurgent Newport’s aquarium and surrounding shops and eateries, or, like my party, preparing to walk across the nearby pedestrian and bicycle bridge to watch the Reds play at Great American Ball Park in downtown Cincinnati.

Hofbrauhaus Newport’s web site takes a reasonable approach to expectations in spite of muddling the Bavarian with the German:

The first authentic Hofbräuhaus in America is here. Guests are now able to enjoy many of the traditions from Germany that have made Hofbräuhaus famous.

So it was for us, and we enjoyed the ongoing translation of these venerable traditions into something comprehensible for the masses, and that for the most part has not lost its potency and relevance during the course of the conversion. As one who has been to the Hofbrauhaus Munich and numerous establishments throughout greater Bavaria many times since 1985, the ultimate compliment that I can pay the Hofbrauhaus Newport is that during much of my time there, while devouring a workmanlike facsimile of Leberkase and several (small for varied sampling) mugs of tasty Bavarian style Helles, Dunkles and Export, it was indeed possible to drift off into an incredibly relaxed continental reverie – and accordingly, almost impossible to resist hopping a cab to the nearby Northern Kentucky airport for an immediate flight to the original Munich address to sate the voracious desires thus released.

So, just remember: You’ll enjoy “many” of the traditions, and “much” of it will be authentic, at the Hofbrauhaus Newport, but an exact match it is not (and to its credit, does not claim to be).

Brewing is licensed and supervised by German brewers, and it shows, although the presence of a “light” version reminds you that it’s the Ohio outside and not the Isar. Televisions at Newport make sense; not in the Munich Hofbrauhaus. The Newport menu has numerous reliable Bavarian beer hall options, and the overall effect is quite close to the mark, but to be blunt, Americans simply don’t do pork as pork is done in Bavaria – and burgers aren’t exactly on the Speisekarte at the Platzl location. Finally, Bavarians instinctively understand one crucial truth about beer and the average male: Allow him to drink liters of tasty lager, and he will make frequent trips (somewhere) to return that spent liquid to nature. That’s why the Hofbrau Munich restrooms are so thoughtfully large … and the HB Newport might profit from it.

By and large, these are niggling criticisms, and a trip to the Hofbrauhaus Newport is highly recommended by the Publican.

Riding back to Louisville after the game with a busload of human karaoke machines is much less desired. In Bavaria, they’d have been speaking German, and while still obnoxious, not so painfully fact deprived.