Another Reason I Love Indie Business

My mother-in-law used to live in Dover Plains, NY, a small town east of Poughkeepsie. For years, she's been giving me a gift card to an independent bookstore in the area (Oblong Books, in Millerton and Rhinebeck, NY) as a birthday present. We love Oblong, I've been going there pretty much since we got married (it's half a block from where Cathy and I spent our wedding night), so it was a real nice gift, and gave us another reason to visit -- crafty mother-in-law!

But then she moved away from the area! I had this $100 gift card I didn't know what to do with. I finally figured out that it was good at affiliated indies, so I planned to get to the one in Doylestown...and just never got there, even though it's across the street from Stephanie's; go figure! I finally got there about two weeks ago, and learned that the program no longer existed: my card was now only good at Oblong...three hours away.

Crap. So I called the store, and they said, you know, we have a website. How do I use that? Not sure, we'll have someone call you. How about email? That works, so I emailed co-owner Suzanna Hermans about the issue. I had a personal response in under 24 hours: "Thanks so much for your email - we can absolutely take care of this for you!" She walked me through how to apply the card, and said if I wanted to, she'd take the order by phone. Sweet, I was in business.

That would have been great, but...when I finally got around to making the order late last night, I got everything selected, entered the information, and hit the Checkout button -- I got an internal server error. And when I re-loaded, the order was still in the cart, but my card showed a balance of $2 and change. Did the order go through, or not? I emailed Suzanna again.

I got her response an hour ago: send her the card number. I did, and in under 5 minutes, I had her personal response again: "Got it! Your books should be shipping today or tomorrow via USPS Media Mail. Thanks for your patience!"

Suzanna Hermans? Awesome. Oblong Books? Still a favorite, even if they are three hours away. Independent bookstores? Essential, wonderful, a treasure! Please support yours!

House Full O' Corgis

By the way, in case I forgot to mention it in the Massachusetts posts?

We missed the dogs.

Nora and I went and picked them up this morning, and it was a wonderful reunion. "I can just let him go, he'll run to you, won't he?" the woman at the kennel said (Pen's been there more than a few times). Sure, I said, and braced myself. He ran right past me, to the car! Sat at the door, waiting to get in. Smart boy. Oh, it's good to have them back.

Genesee triumphantly returns to the Rochester skyline

Boston has the giant CITGO sign. Baltimore has the eerily blue Bromo-Seltzer Tower. Philly's PSFS Building's red marquee still glows, even though the company failed in 1992.

Rochester had a landmark sign, the Genesee Beer & Ale sign. But for the past 40 years, you could only see it in the daylight. One of the first things North American Breweries has done as the new owners of the brewery by the Genesee river (you can see the High Falls in the lower corner of the picture below, and the tanks of the brewery at the top center) is to repair that sign. As you can see in the video above, they lit the sucker up in July. It was a pretty popular event for the town, and a proud moment for the brewery.

Now...how about a nice cold can of Genny Cream?


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You Can't Stop the Goat

We did get to the Sly Fox Goat Races on the 3rd. I hustled out of church (had to do 10:30 mass, I was the cantor), got home and changed (and waited around for Cathy to change...), and took off for Phoenixville...slowly. It was pouring rain (little did we know it was just the start of another week of the stuff), and we were wondering if the crowd would be as large or friendly as last year. "We can probably park on-site," I said optimistically. "We'll cruise by instead of going straight to the shuttle lot."

Wow. The size of the crowd in the parking lot made it clear that we were not going to be parking on-site. (But Sly Fox is organized: we took a shuttle bus from satellite parking, and didn't wait more than 3 minutes for it.) The rain had barely dampened the ardor of goat fans. The number estimated by Sly Fox was around 1500, down a bit -- okay, down a quarter -- from last year, though last year was a picnic afternoon on Olympus compared to this wet and raw rainfest (although we did have roving beer service this time). But do you get it? 1500 people came out in the rain to drink bock beer and watch goats race. Amazing.

Still, as I said, this is an important day for beer and while having all those good Sly Fox beers on hand must have helped, I believe that what really brought people out was the good times. People actually complained because they couldn't see the goat races!

The beer was pretty awesome, though. We ran into William Reed right away, and he insisted on getting us two cups of Vienna Lager (great, malty but not thick, wish they'd make more of this). I tried to return the favor with the superlative and much-welcome Charles Bridge Pilsner, but he'd wandered off into the crowd and I gave it to Richard "Victory" Ruch. The Maibock (destined to be named DAX after the winner, shown here in the center of a long shot on his victory strut) was gorgeous, beautifully drinkable, and if I hadn't been at the edge of silly at that point, I'd have had another. I did get one sip of one of the eisbocks, and it was scary good.

The cool kids were definitely in attendance -- brewers, publicans, and others of us in the biz -- but they were by far out-numbered by the general populace: I ran into my kids' elementary school music teacher (and her husband and two toddlers). There were still plenty of very well-behaved kids this year.

That's what had a somewhat blissed Brian O'Reilly and a very happy John Giannopoulis so pleased when I ran into them. The Goat Races was not only still big in the rain, it was still big with the same kind of crowd. Folks brought their families, they watched the silliness of racing goats, they ate good food (really: we had bratwurst, I got some Shellbark Farms chevre), and some of them had really good beer, too. It was a really normal kind of thing; wonderfully so.

Eventually we had to go, before things had wrapped up. We got back on the shuttle bus, went to the car, and I let Cathy drive. But we had one more wonderfully normal thing to do...and I'm going to tell you about that over here. Because it's much more appropriate.

Bravo Beaumont!

I am always happy to claim Stephen Beaumont as a friend. That's him on the left, with another good friend, Mike Gates, hanging out in my backyard back in August of '07, helping me drink up my leftover beer. I've known Steve for, oh, maybe 14 years, been to Germany and Belgium with him, hit some fun spots in his hometown of Toronto with him, and helped him celebrate his wedding last summer.

But today I'm very pleased to claim his as a colleague. Stephen Beaumont has received the "Raising the Bar" award from Cheers magazine, an award for individuals "who have made a noteworthy and sustained contribution to the world of beverage alcohol." Stephen didn't get this just for writing. He's been consulting and advising major restaurant and hotel chains on their beer programs for a number of years. In fact, the craft beer program at the ESPN Zone that I wrote about last year as a great example of how craft beer is getting in everywhere, the program that also won an award for Best Chain Beer Program? Built for them by Stephen Beaumont. This is a well-deserved award indeed.

Like I said, I'm pleased to say Stephen is my colleague. And my friend. Congratulations, my friend!

Wawa responding?

Could we have had an effect on Coffeetopia?

Just got an e-mail from a reader (and friend) that his local super Wawa was now dispensing coffee from thermal pump carafes, or as they're known in the trade, airpots. That would be effin' GREAT!

If you happen to stop in a Wawa this week, check the coffee pots. Are they still making tar, or have they decided for well-kept java? Take a picture, send it to me.

Bravo, Wawa!

Best of the Best of the Beer Year: Our Suz

Belatedly -- because it left me slack-jawed with admiration and rolling around laughing -- I'd point you to Suzanne Woods' Best of 2008 post on her excellent "I'll Have Another Stout" blog. She's a fabulous voice for beer in the area, and no one I've talked to or heard from minds that she works for Sly Fox and is in a serious relationship with Iron Hill brewer Chris Lapierre, because Suzanne just loves Philly beer, and gives everyone their due. This list is an example: it's exhaustive, it's funny, it's engaging, it's human -- very much so -- and it's dead-on. Go now. Read.