New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
This is me drinking Pilsner Urquell, which is always on tap at Pints&union. In 2019 it's probably what I drank most often while haunting the pub.
Loving the world's classic pilsner beer as much today as I did 35 or more years ago is an undisputed highlight of my year in beer. I believe the hash tag is #winning.
Following are nine other mile markers for 2019, some stateside and others abroad, united by being situational -- of the moment, at a place, with good people, in a special time.
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Getting behind the bar at P&u and pouring 18 liters and 24 half-liters of Weihenstephaner Festbier in a little more than an hour as we celebrated Oktoberfest.
Visiting the Union brewery in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I walked past it in 1987, and 32 years later went inside. It engendered a strong sense of accomplishment.
Discovering the existence of an Italian beer brand called Theresianer Antica Birreria di Trieste 1766, and drinking the Vienna lager with pizza in Trieste. We see so few Vienna styles; it was quite good, and I toasted the late, lamented Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson, who I'm sure would have approved.
Enjoying a perfect pint of Guinness, albeit in a plastic cup, at a pint-sized Irish pub called Spike Milligan's by the Lake Erie shore in Dunkirk, New York on the 4th of July.
Having the great pleasure of dining on regional pork specialties at the Gostilna Pri Planincu ("Mountaineer's Restaurant") in Bled, Slovenia, and drinking Komunajzer Broz, and unfiltered draft lager named after Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia's longtime head of state.
Being allowed by Food & Dining Magazine's publisher John Carlos White to write about myself and the idea behind the "retro" beer program at Pints&union.
Resuming diplomatic relations in April with L.C. Nadorff & Son, wholesaler of AB-InBev brands in Floyd County, but also a family-owned business in New Albany for 148 years, including a lengthy period prior to Prohibition as an active brewery. While it's probably impossible for an AB-InBev wholesaler to be a true underdog, local family ownership qualifies Nadorff as a dying breed in corporate franchise-happy America, and it's scrambling like all the rest of us to find a place in the crazy patchwork quilt of the Post-Craft Beer Era.
My year in beer wouldn't be complete without the bittersweet reality of NABC's Bank Street Brewhouse closing in May. I drank hundreds of gallons of beer in that building prior to my departure from the company I helped found, and have the pleasure of knowing we left this little corner of New Albany better off than we found it.
Here's what I've been drinking while compiling this list: Schlenkerla Eiche (oak-smoked) Doppelbock from Brauerei Heller-Trum in beautiful Bamberg, Germany.
Helluva way to get my 2020 year in beer off, up, and rolling.
ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2019 Remix).
R.I.P. Miss Nadia (2002-2018)
This column contains bits and pieces published previously in varying forms at various places. Each year, it functions as the blog's unified, omnibus Christmas utterance -- or, if you will, a primal scream. It happens each holiday season.
During an otherwise random conversation about the uncanny tendency of local Democrats to experience tumescence whenever Jeff Gahan spits on the downtrodden, eventually someone looks at me with palpable dismay.
“Roger, you’re such a Grinch.”
My response never varies.
“Thank you very much.”
The roots of my longstanding Yuletide antipathy might be traced to Freudian conceits, Jungian counter-thrusts, references to childhood toilet training habits or the sheer pervasiveness of psychological repression stemming from residency in a nakedly fascistic state like Indiana, but in truth, it’s far simpler.
It goes back to that original, defining moment in every American boy’s life – not when it becomes clear that he’ll die some day without the saving grace of being able to hit a curveball, but the sudden, gut-wrenching discovery that in spite of the shameless propaganda fed to us by adults, who’d assured us that excruciating behavioral self-regulation would be rewarded by a gaudily costumed fat man parking his tricked-out sleigh on the roof and descending the chimney, that nope, in the end, it was nothing more than a shameless ruse.
Then it hits you: Santa Claus doesn’t really exist.
At all.
Our house didn’t even have a chimney, and you’d think this would have made me suspicious, but I was oblivious. When the shameful day of infamy arrived and my school mate chided me -- “c’mon, don’t tell me you still believe in Santa?” -- I did much more than merely shake Santa’s grip, cold turkey, right there on the spot.
I irrevocably disavowed the whole contrived Christmas spectacle, because even at such a tender age, I could see the dominoes falling as the previously sacrosanct Santa myth vaporized in plain sight, because if the grownups could mislead us about Santa, where would it end?
They might also be fibbing about those other edicts demanding compliance and conformity, from the civic foundational edifices of religion, patriotism and obedience, all the way to the commandment forbidding jaywalking.
The worst of it was sitting alone in my room, cross-legged on the cold tile floor, and experiencing the devastating frustration of knowing that I was far too young to properly drink my way through the rampant disappointment.
Santa’s unused cookies and milk were the best I could do, and then, as now, I udderly DETEST milk.
---
In 1991, at the age of 31, I spent Christmas in the city of Košice -- today located in sovereign Slovakia, which then comprised the easternmost lands of Czechoslovakia. It was the mid-point of a six-month stint teaching conversational English to doctors and nurses at the city’s main hospital, an experience made possible by the Cold War’s end.
In 2016, Santa brought the gadget to digitize those
Košice slides from 1991-92. It's ongoing, into 2020.
Upon returning stateside in 1992, there was a brief break, and then I went back into the food and drink business, where I’ve been for the most part ever since.
Grinch or not, the approach of the holiday season in Košice proved fascinating. With no Thanksgiving to serve as mile marker, few signs were evident that Christmas was coming until the eve of St. Nicholas Day (December 6), when children scrubbed and polished their shoes, placing them on windowsills to be filled with candy and chocolate. Presumably, bad children would receive a bundle of twigs bound together for swatting their butts … as it should be.
In Communist times, the regime attempted to persuade the populace that a chap named Grandfather Frost brought these goodies, presumably on behalf of the benevolent leadership. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, back came Christmas trees and caroling in the streets, and while these were familiar to me, decorations didn't even begin to appear until the first part of December. I remarked to my uncomprehending students that they should contrive a holiday like Halloween to mark the true beginning of the shopping season.
Shopping season? It was quite ephemeral. Surely it’s different in 2018, but in 1991, only a few understated window displays were to be seen in shops, and high pressure, guilt-laced sales tactics were nowhere to be found.
However, one necessary seasonal item became ubiquitous during the week preceding Christmas. This was delicious carp, raised and fattened in farm ponds, not river bottoms, and brought to market in street-side barrels and oversized plastic tubs. Some buyers brought their own buckets to take the living fish home for a few days of further bathtub cleansing. Others had their purchase killed, weighed and wrapped on the spot.
Carp is the traditional Slovak meal for Christmas, accompanied by an array of special side dishes, and perhaps some steaming sauerkraut soup. There always was plenty of bottled lager, but the Christmas Eve toast in 1991 was chased with homemade peach brandy from a student’s village nearby: “To peace, health and a good harvest.”
---
Two or three lifetimes later, there was a second chance to be in Europe for Christmas. In 2009, we stayed in a rental apartment in Bamberg, Germany, a mere stone's throw from the Fässla and Spezial breweries. With the requisite open-air Christmas market, mulled wine and naturalistic decorations, Franconia’s version of the Yuletide season was obvious without being garish.
The Grinch in me was shaken, if as yet unbowed.
On Christmas morning, we strolled through the Altstadt’s deserted streets and climbed Altenburg hill to the medieval castle, affording a sweeping view of the valley and Bamberg's dizzying number of church spires. Most businesses were closed, but pleasingly, some food and drink purveyors were open in a city blessedly free of the archaic blue laws still existing in purportedly secular Indiana, which up until 2015 prevented alcohol from being served on Dec. 25 – a purely Christian holiday.
Clouds rolled overhead, and it was a bracing and exhilarating walk. Descending the commanding heights back to our riverside starting point, we passed the city museum in the old town hall astride the Regnitz and saw that the doors were open. Inside was a fine collection of 18th-century porcelain from Meissen, and one of 38 nativity scenes on display in and around Bamberg during the holiday season.
A reconnaissance of Ludwigstrasse's expanse revealed that Bamberg's Chinese restaurant owners are not as ambitious as metro Louisville's, with all three closed for the day. However, at the train station, the bakery and small grocery both were open, and I bought a handful of half-liter Schlenkerla Märzen lagers to accompany the evening's home cooked vegetable soup.
With no close friends in Bamberg, we kept ourselves company, having procured groceries and libations in advance. With bottles of Fässla in support, Christmas evening selections on the telly revealed a diverse Euro holiday tableau.
There was a Basque celebration from Bilbao, with crazy costumes, quasi-operatic tunes and the inexplicable, prehistoric language spoken by the world's first cod fishermen. The whole time, I kept expecting a Muse concert to break out.
We watched a performance in Salzburg of Mozart's The Magic Flute; snippets of a schlocky Bavarian idyll, rather like the Osmonds meeting Lawrence Welk, but in lederhösen and dirndls; and then a Berlin performance by Max Raab and the Hotel Palast Orchestra, a stagy society presence reminiscent of Joel Grey’s role in Cabaret.
Finally came City Lights, the not-so-silent masterpiece by Charlie Chaplin, without dialogue but featuring a musical soundtrack as a concession to new 1931 technology. The Little Tramp falls for a blind flower girl ... and meets a drunken millionaire along the way.
On the 26th, Café Abseits beckoned again, with a fine draft list of regional, seasonal Bockbier. Later, at Spezial, delightful Ochsenbrust in horseradish sauce with a dumpling was accompanied by several of the brewpub’s quintessential smoked lagers.
No, I don’t “do” Christmas ... although on occasion, vague and ambiguous exceptions are allowed.
---
More recently, we've enjoyed the good fortune to be in Munich and Bamberg (2018), and Zagreb, Ljubljana, Lake Bled and Trieste (2019) during their annual Christmas market season.
Whether it's thousands of Bavarians thronging the streets of Munich, or a few dozen Slovenes congregating around the market stalls in Bled, one can't help being impressed by the sense of community on display -- and I'll leave it at that.
---
Through it all, music soothes the heretical breast, just so long as it isn't the pervasive and disgusting same-old-suspect soundtrack heard playing in every public place, beginning the day after Harvest Homecoming and lasting through January.
Each year I make a special effort to listen to a recording of "Ring Christmas Bells." As always, it reminds me of our high school choral director, Michael Neely, who warned us that later in our lives, we'd come to regret taking our singing voices for granted. We scoffed, and of course, he was absolutely right.
Three decades of beer and tobacco have rendered my singing voice moot, and now I’m little more than an interpreter of songs, with the atonal wailings occurring well out of human earshot. Our cats suffer the most.
Imperfect pitch aside, the only Christmas songs I can even tolerate are the ones we sang in choir, and the only other performance I truly enjoy is "Fairytale Of New York" by The Pogues, with a guest appearance by the late, lovely Kirsty McColl.
To repeat, I don't "do" Christmas ... but in spite of myself, the holiday occasionally provides a few pleasant memories -- even if, quoting Chico Marx, some things never change, and “There ain’t no sanity claus.”
Especially in New Gahania.
Recently these lumps of coal are being personally wrapped by the snowman, Gauleiter Duggins, to be thrown through the windows of public housing residents who've inadvertently found themselves residing in the path of our mayoral dullard's petty ambitions.
That's why I won't be ending this year's holiday column on a pleasant note, for peak Scrooge is alive and well and inhabiting Jeff Gahan's well-fed and highly financed body.
For the sake of our city most vulnerable residents, let's hope the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come makes an appearance at Dear Leader's bunker -- although it won't do much good if Mike Hall comes out to greet him.
ON THE AVENUES: As a new year dawns, I’m existentially yours.
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
In 2019, ON THE AVENUES moves to Tuesday -- unless I change my mind again.
According to the dictionary, an existential crisis is a psychological episode in which a person questions the meaning of their life, and of existence itself.
Okay, but to me the word “episode” is misplaced because it implies an exception to the everyday, and an event occurring rarely or even randomly. I firmly believe that for most of us, an existential crisis is ongoing and everlasting. “Episodes” are those special times when we’re able to ignore this existential condition, and for a short while at least, to enjoy a little peace.
Since you’re probably already jumping to conclusions, kindly heed the advice of Archie Bunker and stifle yourself. I’m not depressed or morose, merely surprised at anyone being so sure about the meaning of life that they’re not questioning their premises every single day spent in it.
For those responding to this provocation with an affirmation of one or the other religious belief systems, thanks but no thanks. I know you mean well – now please, vacate my internet porch.
However, now that YOU’VE brought up religion, and not li'l ol' heretical me, here’s a brief excerpt from a book I recently read: To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949, by Ian Kershaw.
Where a significant threat from the Left posed itself, however, the Churches of both major denominations invariably backed the authority of the state. And the more extreme they perceived the threat to be, the more extreme was the reaction they were prepared to support.
Nowhere was the reaction more extreme than in Germany. Here, the Protestant Church – actually divided doctrinally and regionally but in its various forms nominally embracing more than two-thirds of the German population – had since Martin Luther’s time seen itself as closely aligned with state authority. The revolution of 1918, the removal of the Kaiser and the new democracy that replaced the monarchy brought widespread dismay in Church circles. The perceived ‘crisis of faith’ (Glaubenskrise) promoted hopes of the restoration of the monarchy or a new form of state leadership that would overcome Germany’s moral as well as political and economic plight.
A true leader was needed, in the eyes of many members of the Protestant clergy. He would be, in the words of one Protestant theologian writing in 1932, a ‘true statesman’ (as opposed to the mere ‘politicians’ of the Weimar Republic) who holds ‘war and peace in his hand and communes with God’. In line with such thinking, Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933 was widely seen by Protestant clergy as the start of a national reawakening that would inspire a revival of faith. There was even a Nazified wing of the Protestant Church. The ‘German Christians” rejected the Old Testament as Jewish and took pride in being ‘the stormtroopers of Jesus Christ’. Such extremes, the preserve of a minority of the clergy (though with substantial support in some areas), were rejected, however, by most Protestants, whose ideas of a revival of faith were for the most part both doctrinally and organizationally conservative.
Imagine it: an unfettered strongman boasting pure power, as better to interpret the prince of peace’s musings. Not that I’m suggesting something like this could ever “happen here” – wink wink, nudge nudge.
Just the same, be still my quivering middle finger!
--
If travel doesn’t induce a frenzied whiplash spate of good, hard thinking, then chances are you’re doing it wrong. Even if your holiday of choice is on the beach at a tequila-soaked resort in Cancun, there should be something there to ignite the synapses.
If not, why bother going away in the first place?
For me, books and travel collided during the fourth quarter of 2018, combining to create the feel of a graduate-level history course, albeit without the obligation of writing a term paper.
Except for today's column, of course.
In October, I read The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. It’s a novel, although much of the story takes place in pre-WWII Danzig (subsequently called Gdansk), and the author masterfully evokes a place and time on the verge of being lost forever.
November brought our pilgrimage to the Gdansk of today, with visits to the Museum of the Second World War and the European Solidarity Centre. I was deeply moved by both, and they contributed to a broader understanding of present-day Polish culture and politics.
Upon returning stateside, still in November, there were midterm election results to interpret and Kershaw’s text to begin reading. I finished it prior to embarking for Munich just before Christmas, where Bavaria’s history was revisited against a backdrop of Mexican walls, government shutdowns and Trumpolini’s latest Twitter meltdowns.
It was intense, to say the least. Past seemed to meet the present, and the process proved exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure.
The blurriness went beyond too much exquisite pork and too many full-throttle beers. I’d been bingeing on knowledge, and it made me tired. Perhaps my body and brain are trying to tell me it’s time to read a romance novel – with a side of steamed vegetables, a six pack of ice-cold Miller Lite, and lots of television.
But then again, no. These milquetoast habits might make me depressed and morose.
---
Ironically, the first use of the term “existential crisis” was recorded during the 1930s, as it became increasingly clear to reasonable people that Nazism in Germany posed a very real threat to the very existence of Jews, Slavs, gays, the Roma, developmentally disabled persons and others landing outside the addled perimeter of Hitler’s crackpot racial theories.
Eight decades later, these tidbits of lunacy are enjoying a renaissance among mouth-breathing devotees of a president who’s never met a book he actually read.
But as Kershaw observes, science isn’t always the cure for stupidity. It’s important to remember that Hitlerian doctrines of racial purity flowed quite naturally from seemingly legitimate doctrines which had been venerated by polite society in Europe and America prior to the Great War, in particular the “science” of eugenics:
(Eugenics was) the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.
Not to exclude something almost as bad, phrenology: "The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities."
The terms ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ come from phrenology, the nineteenth-century science of regarding the shape of the skull as a key to intelligence. A ‘high’ forehead meant intelligence; a ‘low’ one meant stupidity. Phrenology thrived as a popular science in the late nineteenth century and led eventually to the racial theories of the Nazis, for whom the Jewish cranium and pale, sunken face were clear indications of Jewish racial inferiority.”
Our days in Munich in December were a time to reflect on all these themes of 20th-century history, to observe how much (and how little) the city has changed since my first visits in the late 1980s, and to ponder certain existential questions – as opposed to crises, strictly speaking.
In the 1980s, World War II was only forty-odd years removed. These days, living memories of the era are confined to a fast receding generation of 90-year-olds. What we’re witnessing in Brexit, Trump and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, whether we approve or not, is the final dissolution of the post-war international order. It lasted a scant 70 years, which isn’t much of a run by the standards of the Dark Ages or Pax Romana.
The difference: this is the one we’re living through, if not grasping particularly well. Maybe it’s always been like that. Not everyone alive today has time to think about history, or cares to learn more about the past. However, it might be helpful to think more about the real world and less about those diversions intended by the architects of capital accumulation to keep us numbly quiescent.
In the 2012 book Thinking the Twentieth Century, the late historian Tony Judt and his co-writer Timothy Snyder discussed the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and Judt made a point that I think covers more ground than he intended.
The vast majority of human beings today are simply not competent to protect their own interests.
Granted, the context of Judt’s remark was financial decision-making. Before the modern advent of easy consumer credit, it was so difficult for ordinary people to borrow that they simply couldn’t, and were confined to the bare necessities of life. There were other problems then as now, but a crushing burden of personal debt tended to be avoided simply because society kept it off-limits to ordinary people -- prior to concluding it was an ideal way to maintain control.
I believe Judt’s words apply to other aspects of contemporary life. It might help to know that our food doesn’t come from Kroger, but through it, and when you rail against multinational corporate tyranny and still take the kids to Disney World … well, you know, debt isn’t the only potential entrapment. Governing one’s life by pervasive fantasy is an impediment to activism, too.
I regularly take a few days off from competitive drinking, and these are the times when my existential crises exit the carefully curated lock box and creep back into view.
After a day or two of detox, I notice myself becoming more organized and efficient, like my mother, who was obsessively such. By the third or fourth day, clarity and perception have re-emerged to such a disturbing extent that I can look around me and see this place for exactly what it is: Nawbany as a grassroots component of L’America, both right here in broad daylight, the flaws of neither in any way capable of being cloaked.
My friends, that’s an existential crisis – and that’s also why I always crawl back into the beer mug, where it's safe.
I'm writing these words on the 15th of December, imagining that on the morning of the 21st, I'll have consumed too many delicious Rauchbiers at Schlenkerla in Bamberg on Thursday night. Vegas won't touch the action on this particular assumption.
By early afternoon, we'll be taking the train back to Munich after the overnight stay, and pausing only momentarily before heading to the arena for the basketball game (FC Bayern and Braydon Hobbs vs. Real Madrid).
Prior to leaving Bamberg, something I never find it easy to do, let's turn back the pages to a post prompted by our 2009 visit during Christmas.
In the purest of anthropological senses it was a revelation to witness the holiday observed with a manner of dignity and traditional restraint, at least by prevailing and manic American consumer standards.
In 2009, the genuine wintry weather in Bamberg provided ample opportunity to drink beer and eat pork indoors, in proximity to grandly tiled stoves fairly pumping heat, with an inevitable chilly contrast when it came time to use the restrooms. While not about Christmas in any specific sense, these observations now invariably strike me as seasonal.
---
Beer ... and the pissoir.
Any farm boy can tell you what happens in winter, when hot liquid hits frozen ground and steam rises, and so my youthful reveries tending our livestock came back to me after I made my way from the toasty upholstered interior of the beer café, through the entry door, across a corridor, through a second door, and outside to where the restrooms were located just off the snowy, arched passageway leading from the street.
They were unheated, with a predictable temperature differential. I was in and out in a flash, returning to cool smoked lager in a far warmer room.
At least there was plumbing, albeit frigid fixtures.
It hasn't always been the case. In 1999, while drinking draft Baltika in Moscow at a tiny bar located in the concrete bowels of a towering modern concrete housing block, my fumbling water closet query in deficient Russian was met with a shrug. The bar man gestured in the direction of what proved to be a slippery collection of muddy shrubs around the darkened corner.
It may have been Archie Bunker who observed, “You don’t buy beer, you rent it,” and your humble columnist has gleaned a fair amount of experience in such matters in his career as professional beer drinker, especially when imbibing in Europe. Many aspects of the continent’s beer and brewing cultures have changed since 1985, but none more so than a steady escalation in cleanliness and comfort of the facilities at a typical watering hole.
Good, bad or indifferent, my personal theory is that such improvements owe more to the course of the women’s liberation movement than the interest of most males in facets of basic hygiene. In all likelihood, publicans continued pointing to the bushes out back until modernity brought changes in migratory patterns, in the form of female patronage. Only then were modern plumbing solutions contemplated.
Beer and Bamberg (Germany) are gloriously intertwined, which is why I became a regular visitor so long ago. During the 2009 Christmas trip, it suddenly dawned on me that the pleasant modern urinals in the men’s room of Brauerei Spezial (founded in 1536) weren’t there until the late 1990’s. Before that, men urinated into tiled trenches running along the floor. These trenches presumably emptied into the sewer system, although sometimes it’s best to take nothing for granted.
While I hardly can attest to how it was done during the Middle Ages, or even as recently as the 1970’s, my impression is that the process of waste disposal always has differed little from my experience in Moscow, or this one in Albania, circa 1994: A lovely, contemporary wood-lined room with a spotless, modern stainless steel urinal … connected to PVC pipe, which led outside to termination just shy of the town’s riverbank.
Unscientifically speaking, you can look at the many centuries-old brewery taps and public houses in places like Bamberg and see that restrooms weren’t included in the original architectural designs. They were added later, away from the seating areas, often tacked onto the interior courtyards that are a familiar feature of these older buildings.
Modernity has deprived us of the European waste disposal mechanism I miss the least: The fearsome female restroom attendant. Sometimes she was ensconced behind sliding glass windows, but more often she remained seated at a rickety wooden table in front of the battery of stained tiles, guarding her ceramic plate, which was intended for loudly smacking coins into, indicating you’d paid the required tariff and qualified for a square of toilet paper (if really necessary).
In theory, the women were there to keep the area clean, and surprisingly, they often did just that, sometimes while you were otherwise engaged in your business. It made for initial embarrassment, but after all, they were skilled and highly professionals, only doing their jobs.
Male toilet attendants were permitted, but invariably they were less reliable than the elderly ladies, especially as the geography passed eastward from capitalism to communism. When I was teaching English in Slovakia, I was a frequent customer of a venerable drinking establishment where the restrooms were in the basement (not uncommon).
My preferred brand of beer also was the nightly preferred beverage of the subterranean lavatory commandant. Whenever his plate contained the requisite number of coins, he would climb the stairs for another pint of pay package, and by closing time, he could be found unconscious at his post, snoring in the sour, fetid air.
ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2018 Remix).
A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.
This column contains bits and pieces published previously in varying forms at various places. Each year, it functions as the blog's unified, omnibus Christmas utterance -- or, if you will, a primal scream. It happens each holiday season.
During an otherwise random conversation about the uncanny tendency of local Democrats to experience tumescence whenever Jeff Gahan spits on the downtrodden, eventually someone looks at me with palpable dismay.
“Roger, you’re such a Grinch.”
My response never varies.
“Thank you very much.”
The roots of my longstanding Yuletide antipathy might be traced to Freudian conceits, Jungian counter-thrusts, references to childhood toilet training habits or the sheer pervasiveness of psychological repression stemming from residency in a nakedly fascistic state like Indiana, but in truth, it’s far simpler.
It goes back to that original, defining moment in every American boy’s life – not when it becomes clear that he’ll die some day without the saving grace of being able to hit a curveball, but the sudden, gut-wrenching discovery that in spite of the shameless propaganda fed to us by adults, who’d assured us that excruciating behavioral self-regulation would be rewarded by a gaudily costumed fat man parking his tricked-out sleigh on the roof and descending the chimney, that nope, in the end, it was nothing more than a shameless ruse.
Then it hits you: Santa Claus doesn’t really exist.
At all.
Our house didn’t even have a chimney, and you’d think this would have made me suspicious, but I was oblivious. When the shameful day of infamy arrived and my school mate chided me -- “c’mon, don’t tell me you still believe in Santa?” -- I did much more than merely shake Santa’s grip, cold turkey, right there on the spot.
I irrevocably disavowed the whole contrived Christmas spectacle, because even at such a tender age, I could see the dominoes falling as the previously sacrosanct Santa myth vaporized in plain sight, because if the grownups could mislead us about Santa, where would it end?
They might also be fibbing about those other edicts demanding compliance and conformity, from the civic foundational edifices of religion, patriotism and obedience, to the commandment forbidding jaywalking.
The worst of it was sitting alone in my room, cross-legged on the cold tile floor, and experiencing the devastating frustration of knowing that I was far too young to properly drink my way through the rampant disappointment.
Santa’s unused cookies and milk were the best I could do, and then, as now, I udderly DETEST milk.
---
In 1991, at the age of 31, I spent Christmas in the city of Košice -- today located in sovereign Slovakia, which then comprised the easternmost lands of Czechoslovakia. It was the mid-point of a six-month stint teaching conversational English to doctors and nurses at the city’s main hospital, an experience made possible by the Cold War’s end.
In 2016, Santa brought the gadget to digitalize those
Košice slides from 1991-92. It's ongoing, into 2019.
Upon returning stateside in 1992, there was a brief break, and then I went back into the food and drink business, where I’ve been for the most part ever since.
Grinch or not, the approach of the holiday season in Košice proved fascinating. With no Thanksgiving to serve as mile marker, few signs were evident that Christmas was coming until the eve of St. Nicholas Day (December 6), when children scrubbed and polished their shoes, placing them on windowsills to be filled with candy and chocolate. Presumably, bad children would receive a bundle of twigs bound together for swatting their butts … as it should be.
In Communist times, the regime attempted to persuade the populace that a chap named Grandfather Frost brought these goodies, presumably on behalf of the benevolent leadership. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, back came Christmas trees and caroling in the streets, and while these were familiar to me, decorations didn't even begin to appear until the first part of December. I remarked to my uncomprehending students that they should contrive a holiday like Halloween to mark the true beginning of the shopping season.
Shopping season? It was quite ephemeral. Surely it’s different in 2018, but in 1991, only a few understated window displays were to be seen in shops, and high pressure, guilt-laced sales tactics were nowhere to be found.
However, one necessary seasonal item became ubiquitous during the week preceding Christmas. This was delicious carp, raised and fattened in farm ponds, not river bottoms, and brought to market in street-side barrels and oversized plastic tubs. Some buyers brought their own buckets to take the living fish home for a few days of further bathtub cleansing. Others had their purchase killed, weighed and wrapped on the spot.
Carp is the traditional Slovak meal for Christmas, accompanied by an array of special side dishes, and perhaps some steaming sauerkraut soup. There always was plenty of bottled lager, but the Christmas Eve toast in 1991 was chased with homemade peach brandy from a student’s village nearby: “To peace, health and a good harvest.”
---
Two or three lifetimes later, there was a second chance to be in Europe for Christmas. In 2009, we stayed in a rental apartment in Bamberg, Germany, a mere stone's throw from the Fässla and Spezial breweries. With the requisite open-air Christmas market, mulled wine and naturalistic decorations, Franconia’s version of the Yuletide season was obvious without being garish.
The Grinch in me was shaken, if as yet unbowed.
On Christmas morning, we strolled through the Altstadt’s deserted streets and climbed Altenburg hill to the medieval castle, affording a sweeping view of the valley and Bamberg's dizzying number of church spires. Most businesses were closed, but pleasingly, some food and drink purveyors were open in a city blessedly free of the archaic blue laws still existing in purportedly secular Indiana, which up until 2015 prevented alcohol from being served on Dec. 25 – a purely Christian holiday.
Clouds rolled overhead, and it was a bracing and exhilarating walk. Descending the commanding heights back to our riverside starting point, we passed the city museum in the old town hall astride the Regnitz and saw that the doors were open. Inside was a fine collection of 18th-century porcelain from Meissen, and one of 38 nativity scenes on display in and around Bamberg during the holiday season.
A reconnaissance of Ludwigstrasse's expanse revealed that Bamberg's Chinese restaurant owners are not as ambitious as metro Louisville's, with all three closed for the day. However, at the train station, the bakery and small grocery both were open, and I bought a handful of half-liter Schlenkerla Märzen lagers to accompany the evening's home cooked vegetable soup.
With no close friends in Bamberg, we kept ourselves company, having procured groceries and libations in advance. With bottles of Fässla in support, Christmas evening selections on the telly revealed a diverse Euro holiday tableau.
There was a Basque celebration from Bilbao, with crazy costumes, quasi-operatic tunes and the inexplicable, prehistoric language spoken by the world's first cod fishermen. The whole time, I kept expecting a Muse concert to break out.
We watched a performance in Salzburg of Mozart's The Magic Flute; snippets of a schlocky Bavarian idyll, rather like the Osmonds meeting Lawrence Welk, but in lederhösen and dirndls; and then a Berlin performance by Max Raab and the Hotel Palast Orchestra, a stagy society presence reminiscent of Joel Grey’s role in Cabaret.
Finally came City Lights, the not-so-silent masterpiece by Charlie Chaplin, without dialogue but featuring a musical soundtrack as a concession to new 1931 technology. The Little Tramp falls for a blind flower girl ... and meets a drunken millionaire along the way.
On the 26th, Café Abseits beckoned again, with a fine draft list of regional, seasonal Bockbier. Later, at Spezial, delightful Ochsenbrust in horseradish sauce with a dumpling was accompanied by several of the brewpub’s quintessential smoked lagers.
No, I don’t “do” Christmas ... although on occasion, vague and ambiguous exceptions are allowed.
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Through it all, music soothes the heretical breast, just so long as it isn't the pervasive and disgusting same-old-suspect soundtrack heard playing in every public place, beginning the day after Harvest Homecoming and lasting through January.
Each year I make a special effort to listen to a recording of "Ring Christmas Bells." As always, it reminds me of our high school choral director, Michael Neely, who warned us that later in our lives, we'd come to regret taking our singing voices for granted. We scoffed, and of course, he was absolutely right.
Three decades of beer and tobacco have rendered my singing voice moot, and now I’m little more than an interpreter of songs, with the atonal wailings occurring well out of human earshot. Our cats suffer the most.
Imperfect pitch aside, the only Christmas songs I can even tolerate are the ones we sang in choir, and the only other one I truly enjoy is "Fairytale Of New York" by The Pogues, with a guest appearance by the late, lovely Kirsty McColl.
To repeat, I don't "do" Christmas ... but in spite of myself, the holiday occasionally provides a few pleasant memories -- even if, quoting Chico Marx, some things never change, and “There ain’t no sanity claus.”
Especially in New Gahania.
This year the lumps of coal are being personally wrapped by the snowman, Gauleiter Duggins, to be thrown through the windows of public housing residents who've inadvertently found themselves residing in the path of our mayoral dullard's petty ambitions.
That's why I won't be ending this year's holiday column on a pleasant note, for peak Scrooge is alive and well and inhabiting Jeff Gahan's well-fed and highly financed body.
For the sake of our city most vulnerable residents, let's hope the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come makes an appearance at Dear Leader's bunker -- although it won't do much good if Mike Hall comes out to greet him.
My first reaction was this: I haven't seen Liege, but at least I had a beer in the city's train station once -- the old one, because now there's a completely new train station (2009).
Then I remembered that our intrepid band of beercyclists had traversed Liege in 2004, approaching from the north along the Meuse, pausing to watch as the Tour de France got underway, then continuing to Durbuy.
Liege is a city that usually doesn’t make the top of a traveler’s bucket list. But Liege taught me to never underestimate an under-the-radar destination. It may not be as big or flashy as more renowned places, but discovering the hidden gems of a city can be a pleasure in itself.
This is so very true. The list of lesser renowned European cities we've visited in recent years includes Mechelen (Belgium), Porto (Portugal), Catania (Sicily), Tallinn (Estonia) and Gdansk (Poland). Each of these places yielded ample and at times incredible treasures sufficient to reward a short stay.
It's understandable for us to covet Paris, Rome and Prague. However, we shouldn't neglect Perpignan, Trieste and Brno.
Way back in the spring of 2002, I organized a small group tour of selected beer heritage sites in Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria. We flew in and out of Budapest, and rented a mini-bus. A wonderful Los Angeles-based Hungarian expat named Jeno was our guide and master of ceremonies.
In the middle of the 10-day itinerary we spent an evening on the Slovak side of the Tatra Mountains. Some of us had a meal of locally harvested mountain oysters at a restaurant called Stary Mama's (Grandma's), and then the next day the minibus executed a flanking movement to the east and north, winding up in Krakow, Poland.
Our reasons for visiting Poland included mead and porter. We found both, although not without considerable effort.
The city of Żywiec (ZHIV-yets), roughly 65 miles to the southwest of Krakow, was our choice for a namesake brewery tour. We set off for what was billed as a journey of 90 minutes and arrived just shy of three hours later. Luckily I'd factored in some extra time for strolling, so we weren't very late -- and we didn't have time to stroll, just drink beer.
By way of background, arguably Żywiec and Okocim were the best-known Polish breweries during the Communist period. Sporadically during the 1980s these beers and other ones like them from the East Bloc (for instance Krakus, which was a Żywiec label) were available in Indiana, which is nothing short of amazing even though they weren't always in the best condition. I remember the rough cardboard cases and vintage throwback labels -- still in everyday use in Poland at the time.
Most of them had the name of Stanley Stawski attached to them, and therein lies a story.
Stawski Imports’ market of beers, wines, cordials, and spirits started over 50 years ago by the man who’s name is over the company’s door: Stanley Stawski.
Born in Poland in 1924, Stawski survived the 1939 invasion of his country by the Germans. In 1944, he took part in the Warsaw Uprising as a member of the underground Home Army. Captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, Stawski headed to Italy after his camp was liberated, and joined the 2nd Polish Corps.
Two years after the war ended, the British sent his unit to England and when the British demobilized his unit in 1951, Stawski left for the United States. He had $20 in his pocket.
By 1954, Stawski was working as a liquor and wine salesman in Chicago. Six years later, he opened his own company, importing beers from Poland and Austria.
As with any new business, the beginning years were difficult, especially in dealing with countries that were, at the time, run by socialist governments who distrusted anything American. Sales were appropriate for a small operation.
Stawski credits its success to “hard work and perseverance.” This perseverance is now bearing fruit. Stawski Imports’ dealings with the state-run liquor monopolies of the Central European nations are successful because of its product-knowledge and personal contacts to bring over the best and newest products.
I've looked high and low, and there seems nothing reliable to indicate whether Stawski remains in business, although the company seemed to exist just a few years ago. It appears that the company's founder is still alive, now in his nineties, and accordingly, I drink a toast to his health.
After Communism ended, many breweries in the East Bloc were snapped up by foreign interests. Okocim has long since been Carlsberg's possession, and Żywiec has been a subsidiary of Heineken's.
When we finally arrived at the brewery in Żywiec on that day in 2002, the tour was exhaustive and the hospitality bountiful. It was afternoon, and when the tour was over we were seated in a rustic tap room. Draft golden lager beers began appearing, along with platters of hot food, including soup and an entree.
However, I'd been having trouble all afternoon conveying to our marvelous hosts that my group was interested in Żywiec Porter far more than the brewery's admittedly pleasant lagers. As we ate, one of the representatives disappeared, then returned with a single crate of 11.2 oz bottles, which we quickly dispatched.
It was the only case he could find of a beer we thought had been brewed a stone's throw away from our tables, and this discrepancy confused me until I learned much later the rational explanation: Żywiec Porter wasn't being brewed in Żywiec at all. So little of it was being brewed during this period that production had shifted a sister brewery in Cieszyn (CHESH-in).
In 2008, award-winning British beer writer Roger Protz described his visit to Cieszyn in search of the nectar: POLAND: LIVELY LAGERS AND THREATENED PORTERS (All About Beer Magazine).
... The opportunity to see Zywiec Porter brewed at source was therefore not to be missed.
But the source had moved. Since 1994, Zywiec has been owned by Heineken and the small volumes of porter did not suit the new plant the Dutch giant has built to churn out millions of hectolitres of pale lager. Porter has been transferred to Archduke Albrecht’s original brewery at Cieszyn.
On the map, Cieszyn looks a short drive from Krakow, but the highways are poor and under repair, causing endless delays. We drove for three hours on rutted roads that curved through dense woods at the foothills of the Tatras. At one point I was given the chilling information that I might catch a glimpse of the towers of the Auschwitz concentration camp through the trees. I couldn’t make out the towers but I needed a calming beer when at last we drove up the twisting road from the town of Cieszyn to the brewery with its mellow brick buildings, cobbled courtyard and a brewery cat on rat patrol.
Protz detailed the brewing process.
Zywiec Porter is now a cold-fermented black lager, but at 9.5% ABV it has all the richness and complexity of the warm-fermented original. It’s made with pilsner, caramalt, Munich and roasted grains, and hopped with Magnum, Nugget and Taurus varieties. As Poland grows hops of excellent quality in the Lublin area, I was surprised to find the brewery importing most of its supplies from Germany.
The porter has an astonishing four-hour boil in the kettle as a result of the high level of grain used. It then has 15 days primary fermentation in open square tanks before it’s transferred to the lager cellar, 15 meters below ground. The cold cellars, with the temperature held just above freezing, holds 100 small lager tanks with a total capacity of 20,000 hectos.
Porter is held in the tanks for a maximum of 60 days to ripen. The beer that emerges has a deep coffee color, with powerful hints of espresso, licorice, molasses and burnt grain on the palate. Dark fruit and hops build in the mouth and a long and intense finish is packed with rich fruit, burnt grain, silky coffee and bitter hops.
I hope this lengthy tale provides partial explanation for the expression on my face on October 31st when I realized the Żywiec Porter on the menu at the bar/restaurant in Gdansk was draft.
I'd never had it before, not even once. One and a half of them left me loopy, but feeling vindicated. I contend that irrespective of Żywiec Porter's brewery of birth, it remains one of our planet's finest beers. Unlike humble Krakus in 1985, we cannot get Żywiec Porter in Indiana.
My friends and I took several beer hunting trips to Baltimore two decades ago. If memory serves, the first was in 1996, and the most recent in 2002. 16 years is a long time away, and it's hard to imagine replicating the giddy thrill of finding an IPA (!) by Wild Goose in a BWI departure terminal lounge.
The only constant is change, but there'll be wonderful beers aplenty, more than I could possibly have time to drink -- and our lodging is a block away from the legendary Max's Taphouse on Broadway in Fell's Point.
Baltimore has always been a first-rate beer town, and to prove it, there's even a Beer Legends Hall of Fame.
The Baltimore Beer Legends Hall of Fame is dedicated to annually inducting individuals, institutions and icons based on outstanding innovation, achievement, influence and their contribution to the beer industry and culture in Baltimore and the surrounding Chesapeake region. The Baltimore Beer Legends Hall of Fame mission is to recognize and honor the history, iconic individuals, and institutions both past and present, who by their singular influence, innovation, achievement, and/or contribution, and by the example of their lives, personify the significant impact that beer has made to our way of life in the “Land of Pleasant Living”.
In 2009, a dedicated group embarked on a mission to create a vehicle that would allow us all to “Celebrate All Things Beer in the Land of Pleasant Living”. Through the last 10 years, over 3000 individual events have been held by over 1200 various sponsors throughout the region and nationally. Awareness for the sheer beauty of craft beer has risen dramatically and countless tens of thousands of beer lovers across Maryland and beyond have attended our breweries, pubs, restaurants, museums, sporting events, concerts and festivals. Local media has taken keen interest as well and shared Baltimore Beer Week with their many listeners and viewers.
The organizing committee both past and present sincerely wish all of you a HUGE THANKS for putting Baltimore on the map as one of America’s great beer towns. Our roots run deep, our history tells incredible stories and our industry folks have overcome some insurmountable odds to become what we are today. In this spirit and as we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Baltimore Beer Week, we ask you to “Embrace All Things Beer in the Land of Pleasant Living.”
A few of us were chatting last evening at the pub, and before I go any further, allow me to observe how wonderful it is to have such a pub for relaxation over tasty beers and meaningful words.
For me, the experience these past few nights has been like one of those caper flicks when the gang comes back together for a final heist, and of course my personal preference is that this long-awaited reunion of the like-minded, once launched, lasts a very long time.
Profuse thanks to those of you who’ve dropped into Pints&union for a beer, a cocktail, a bite, or just to look around. Joe Phillips and his staff still have sawdust in their nostrils, and there are dozens of details in need of attention; however, the results thus far have been overwhelmingly positive.
Now comes the long march forward in the general direction of a legacy, and as much as one might like to speed this process of timelessness, it simply can’t be done.
It’s like watching a tree grow or a barrel of bourbon age. Human nature must be allowed to take its course, and at some indeterminate point down the road, the fledgling notion is declared a valued tradition, and deserves it. If you have to ask when this will occur, it’s possible you’ll never understand it.
The same can be said about building a community. These things take sweat, patience and time – hence last evening’s conversation.
There’ll always be gossip, intrigue and strangeness; we’re humans, after all, but it seems to me that at present the downtown New Albany food, drink and dining community hasn’t ever been closer. This also might be said of the independent business community as a whole.
This is critical, because as I’ve noted on numerous occasions in the past, and as Benjamin Franklin may or may not have said, independent businesses in a setting like downtown New Albany must hang together – or most assuredly, we all will hang separately.
New Albany is a city of 37,000, and a Louisville metropolitan neighborhood; it is not a tourist destination in itself, although thoughtful strategy and tactics can leverage the advantages and minimize the shortcomings.
Food, drinking and dining options make up one economic and cultural segment of many pertaining to the city as a whole, and yet their concentration downtown is a marketable asset in a way Summit Springs cannot ever be.
In this context, food and drink establishments are obliged to be the guardians of their own reputations, and since the collective entity wields vastly more influence than its components, we need to work together.
Despite the potholes, I remain bullish about the prospects for unity.
Pints … and union. Joe picked that name for a reason.
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I’m the first to admit that my transition from center of attention to cog in a machine is a bit weird.
But it’s also gratifying to occupy a place in the shadows to play rhythm guitar and take an occasional lead vocal on one of my previous hit songs, like the ever-popular “Our Beers with the Retirees at the Roman Brewery in Oudenaarde, 1998.”
Boy, was that a memorable afternoon.
There were something like 18 of us riding a motorcoach in Belgium, traveling between breweries as a dress rehearsal for later “beer travel” group trips I organized between 1999 and 2004.
I’d arranged for a stop in Oudenaarde, East Flanders. Just outside of the town center in a locale called Mater, there’s a brewery called Roman, established in 1545 and operated by the same family since 1600; currently, the 14th or 15th generation is at the helm.
Roman gave us a fine tour, then we adjourned to the tasting hall for samples -- except the samples, normally a few ounces, proved to be full pours of various house ales, many of them of higher octane. I was told my group could get a beer each on the house, after which they were asked to pay (in the end, all efforts at payment were rebuffed).
The seating area was large and ornate in an early 20th-century manner, and numerous senior citizens were chatting, drinking and playing cards. The atmosphere was sedate and restrained, then suddenly a type of Belgian polka music started playing loudly from the sound system. The pensioners rose and formed a line, and raucous dancing spontaneously began.
There were more women than men among the seniors, and more guys than gals in our group, and as they circled the room we were pulled into the scrum and paired on the basis of opposite sex. Soon a large pair of female panties appeared -- ritualistically, it would seem -- and eventually it landed on the head of one of my friends.
This went on for 10-15 minutes, then just as abruptly as it began, the music stopped. So did the dancing. Smiling, the older folks returned to their tables to gather their belongings, and it was obvious that our time at Roman had concluded as well. The two groups made for their respective buses.
I’ll never forget what happened next. Quite a few of the senior citizens loitered near the doorway, and as we went past, they thanked us in variable English for visiting Belgium and enjoying “their” beer. What’s more, almost all of them appended heartfelt thanks for America’s help in getting their country back from the Nazis in World War II.
It was tremendously moving, and I’m unashamed to admit there were tears in my eyes as we climbed aboard the motor coach. I certainly wasn’t alone.
As I noted already, pints … and union.
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Obviously, it’s difficult imagining a scene like this today, in the here and now. Two decades on, and it is 73 years since war’s end. The war is no longer an active memory, which is a contributing factor for the deterioration of the post-war world order, which has been unfolding since Reaganism and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
There’s always a precarious balance between tradition for the sake of tradition, and tradition from an imperative of merit. Societal change surely must come, but can the Roman brewery please stay intact, brewing a delicious variant of the East Flanders brown, and welcoming busloads of elderly natives and visiting Louisvillians alike?
An hour ago I sat down and started writing, and the preceding spilled out. I’ll be 58 tomorrow, and the contents of my noggin seem to be caught between two perspectives: whether the genuinely important parts of my life have already occurred, or are yet to emerge.
I’m aware that nostalgia is in many ways a feeling of longing for the never-was, and the seeming simplicity of the past is a trick by the brain to relieve us from the burden of reliving the less appealing bits.
My hope is for this dichotomy between past and future to serve as dynamic tension, keeping my head in the game as the pub evolves. It’s never altogether clear, and this is why we simply have to keep moving. A few pints and some union sound appealing to me right about now.
As noted earlier today, it's time for the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. In 2018, we're experiencing a wonderful trifecta for Europhiles like me, with an all-European World Cup final four, bicycling's Tour de France, and the always epochal San Fermin occurring all at once.
Oh, to be on a veranda somewhere in the Pyrenees just about now. Instead, I'll be doing yard work most of the day. It's too depressing to contemplate, so here's a repeat of a previous Pamplona report, following a Le Tour remembrance.
I've never been to a World Cup match, although viewing the competition while touring Old Albania in 194 was a kick (pun intended).
This column originally took the form of a considerably longer electronic essay from 2005, itself dating back to the year 2000 and the FOSSILS club newsletter. The 2005 version of 4000+ words includes much supplementary information on food, drink and attendance at an actual bullfight.
In my travels, I've been fortunate to witness a May Day parade in Vienna, frenetic all-night Greek political rallies, Munich's fabled Oktoberfest, U2 performing live on stage in Ireland, selected soccer matches and small snippets of the Tour de France. The fall of the Berlin Wall in ’89 was an epochal one-time celebration, requiring three decades of preparation and packing a visceral punch, but I missed that one, just barely.
To me, the top Euro-fest of them all is the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, which runs from July 6 through July 14 each year. My fourth and last visit was in 2000, and I miss it very much.
Pamplona’s festival is a multi-hued hybrid. Spectacular public displays of orgiastic, besotted and scatological indecency occur alongside proud and dignified demonstrations of traditional values extending too far back in time to be consciously understood. Rather, they’re felt.
San Fermin is a primitive, almost mythological outburst balancing seemingly disparate elements. Confrontations between man and bull, gatherings of grandparents and grandchildren sharing hot chocolate, feasting and contrition, outpourings of religious and political conviction, incessant musical cacophony and extraordinary alcoholic lubrication all suffice as snapshots of the grandeur and debauchery.
I’m so glad that Papa “discovered” Pamplona.
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During the Roaring Twenties, an adventurous native of Oak Park, Illinois chose a dusty Spanish market town and its unknown local religious festival as the setting for a novel that made him famous. He was Ernest Hemingway, and his book was “The Sun Also Rises.”
In it, Hemingway offered an enduring behavioral framework for self-aware but intelligent Anglo expatriates. At his San Fermin, foreigners respectful of local color and tradition are contrasted with others who’ve cross the sea for all the wrong reasons, unable to grasp why Pamplona is not Peoria.
Hemingway also established drinking norms for several generations of travelers. Imagine the effect on contemporary readers encumbered by the orthodoxies of Prohibition-era America to read about incessant aperitifs, teeming sidewalk cafes and sweaty pitchers of cool lager beer in the hot Iberian sun.
Eight decades after the novel’s publication and a half-century following Hemingway’s death, San Fermin remains intact, affording the opportunity to walk, talk and drink like Papa.
And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.
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As Hemingway undoubtedly would agree, the greatest two minutes in sports do not take place at Churchill Downs each May.
Each morning during San Fermin, muscular beasts and eager humans take to the streets of Pamplona to memorialize the death of the festival's namesake patron saint. The ritual is known as the "Running of the Bulls," as the six bulls scheduled to appear in the coming evening's bullfight (along with six heifers) are released into narrow, barricaded streets and driven 900 meters -- a little more than half a mile -- to the bull ring.
In the path of these bulls are thousands of thrill-seeking festival-goers, roughly divided into two groups.
A tiny minority of sober true believers makes the run each morning in quasi-mystical ecstasy, metaphorically reliving the primitive fears and urges buried in mankind’s collective subconscious, and now brought jarringly to the surface. These native purists and foreign aficionados genuinely want to run WITH the bulls -- to run near them, just ahead of the powerful animals, or alongside them.
Most other “runners” quite frankly are unconscious, having been consumed, digested and expelled by the singular intensity and alcoholic promiscuity of a festival that never sleeps. They desire nothing more than to tell their friends that they "ran with the bulls," and as accommodation, masses of humanity are advanced to starting positions near the end of the course, permitting most to jog a few drunken yards into the bull ring, declare victory, and begin drinking all over again.
At 8:00 a.m. a rocket explodes, signaling the release of the bulls from their pens. A second rocket indicates that all of them are out and running, driven by expert native runners who wield canes and use them -- not on the bulls, but to lash humans who attempt to create problems that might lead to the animals becoming separated.
This is important, because as long as the bulls stay together, chances are the only injuries will come as a result of humans falling over each other. But if a bull becomes separated from his brothers, he becomes annoyed and may begin flicking his massive head, ramming, goring and tossing people across the street with relative ease.
Indeed, someone is killed every now and then, and yet running with the bulls is surely less dangerous than bicycling in New Albany, where know-nothings texting, eating Rallyburgers and applying lipstick while simultaneously failing to properly navigate a vehicle prove far more deadly than a half-ton of rampaging meat on the hoof .
The run ends inside the bull ring, where the bulls are driven into their pens. A crowd of triumphant “runners” awaits charging heifers, their horns padded, which are sent into the ring to wreak havoc among the drunkards. Meanwhile, the true aficionados are absent, having already adjourned to bars like the Txoko on the Plaza de Castillo for post-run champagne and lengthy analysis.
Me? I’ve never run with the bulls, and neither did Hemingway, or so I’m told. There are three very good reasons why I haven’t done it.
First, I’d surely spill my drink, and that’s blasphemy.
Second, I couldn’t run 900 meters drunk, sober or anywhere in between.
Third, I’m a coward.
I’ve no idea what Papa’s excuses were, but in his stead again this year, I’ll spend a week in July remembering the good times and wonderful people in Pamplona, all the while craving a bowl of fresh toro stew, a glass of addictive Pacheran liqueur, and a sizeable stogie, one recommended for smoking during that special bull run voyeur's afterglow.
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