“Fancy” Beer for Simple Folk
A friend linked me to this article on askmen.com. It reads like The Onion, and the tone is full of pretension that the author is trying to attribute to craft beer, but it’s presumably a serious post. The author misses the days when beer was simple, bland, and cold. He yearns for the days of simple working class people getting together over a couple of beers, and simply drinking them. It amuses me that he goes on and on about working class beer but goes out of his way to use ‘fancy’ words like emetics, gullet and twee.
It’s an okay sentiment, if one I don’t agree with, to enjoy, even prefer, a beverage that is quaffable, a cheap hobby, and gets you to that tipsy and relaxed state that many people enjoy whether from beer, wine, or cocktail. What’s not okay is to suggest that his preference is both the real way to enjoy beer, and that it’s secretly what I want as well. The idea that craft beer drinkers are hipsters drinking the beer solely to make a statement and stand out is not a new one, but it’s been steadily disproven with the growing market of not only craft beer, but of homebrewing. There are lots of people out there making strange tasting beers in their own basements and consuming them themselves with no regard to what’s popular or trendy. Many people have different taste buds, and enjoy the different tastes beer offers beyond a vaguely malty cold beverage. One of the great things about beer is how many different types there are.
The writer of this article, one Patrick Smith, makes himself out to be the archetypal character in a marketing commercial. He admits to being influenced by beer commercials well before being of legal age, he repeats the common marketed point of beer being better as cold as possible,and he recites commercial taglines and insinuates that he believes them that it makes him cool to drink those beers. Personally I think he’s stuck in a 1970s view of what’s manly. I think, and maybe we’re not all keen with the labels in today’s society, the typical manly man in today’s world is different than it was then, and they drink craft beer, but that’s a discussion that deserves it’s own post.
The more I think about it, what Mr. Smith is really missing is a time when he could be a “functional alcoholic” and be praised as a man for it. Luckily we’ve progressed to a point where we recognize the desire to drink heavily after work, at ballgames, as a child, or at every gathering of men as symptoms of alcoholism.
Tags: appreciating beer, askmen, beer drinking, craft beer, fancy beer, homebrew, real men, real men drink craft beer
‘Upstate’ Noun May Be Confusing
I grew up on Long Island. We often refer to Upstate when talking about anywhere from Buffalo to Plattsburg and in-between. The southern border varies, as many people don’t consider the counties just north of the Bronx as Upstate. Geographically, just about every location in New York is upstate from where I grew up on the south shore of Long Island.
I still use the term, but just recently it dawned on me that it’s not quite clear now that I live in New Jersey, and in the north part of the state at that. Much like referring to Manhattan as “The City” can be confusing depending on location and context, referring to “Upstate” when you’re less than 10 miles from the northern border of your state doesn’t make a lot of sense. For the first time when referring to the Finger Lakes area of New York, I had to use the phrase “Upstate New York” to clarify. I was referring to the herd of white deer I used to see occasionally off route 96 between Seneca and Cayuga lake when travelling between Ithaca and Buffalo.
Do people in South Jersey ever refer to the northern parts of the state as Upstate?
Tags: albino deer, finger lakes, new jersey, new york, seneca white deer, the city, upstate, upstate new york, white deer upstate new york