I’ve stopped by the Hop House on 15th to quietly have an ale on my way home. It’s surprisingly under attended. If I was at the location on Hawthorne, I’d be hip deep in people.
I get a Wild Ride Quencher session ale. There is no such style as “session”, it’s just low ABV, people. Quit hiding your styles behind such nonsense.
However despite the cloudy look, this is a decent enough beer with a little hint of lime on the finish. That’s…weird but it isn’t bad. The lime might make it a little too not-beery for some people but for a pint? I’m good with it.
It’s also possible that the lime is there to cover a mistake up but I’m not getting any traces of infection. Perhaps this just an interesting experiment.
That’s all I’ve got, sitting at the bar. The country has had a terrible week-and more. I think it was Patton Oswalt who recently tweeted: ‘2016, you have been a terrible year on every level…fuck you’.
It’s difficult not to echo this. Not because my personal year has been so bad but because so many of my country men and women have to suffer. Daily.
Some days, doing the work is difficult, especially when that work is so clearly irrelevant to the crisis of the time. Writing about beer is one way of writing about people and people want to be listened to.
But they’re all justifiably angry and many more heartbroken. which is almost worse. I get to sit here and have a beer, while others say the wrong kind of goodbyes.
The two women next to me are hashing out a man who is trying to gain the affections of one of them. This man–he is not coming off very well and fellas, this is the kind of conversation that when you hear it you think “men, you gotta step it up because holy crap you kinda suck…”
In a way, the mundanity of this conversation is a pleasant tonic to the toxicity of this week. The world keeps going. Men and women still try and work things out. Women still remind each other that silly men are silly and should not be tolerated, and writers gotta write.
A pint for Dionysus 