Today begins the 8th annual Strong Beer Month once more, with six new extreme beers each at 21st Amendment and Magnolia throughout February. Try them all, and you get to keep the commemorative glass. To see a list of the twelve beers, check out the Strong Beer Month website. This year’s theme is the wild west and specifically High Noon.
Today’s works of art is called the Bartender, and is by a contemporary Massachusetts artist named David Hatfield. Though most of Hatfield’s paintings are landscapes, he does do the occasional portrait, such as the Bartender, though I don’t know much about the painting apart from the fact that it was sold in July of 2007. Also, it was an oil painting and was 40 x 29.5 in. But who the model was or where, if anywhere, the bar was where it was painted remain mysteries.
Here’s part of Hatfield’s biography from the gallery where he exhibits his work, State of the Art Gallery:
David Hatfield showed early talent, creating his first painting in 1952. He received a BFA degree from Miami University, Ohio, and began his art career as an illustrator in New York City, completing studies at the School of Visual Arts and the Arts Student League before discovering the art colony in Rockport, Massachusetts and Hoosick Falls, New York. Here he devoted himself to his own work, painting outdoors, capturing the rural towns and farms in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts; the quaint seascapes and towns of Cape Ann; and picturesque cities of Europe. His sensitive portraits are much admired.
Mr. Hatfield continually paints outdoors, even in the cold of winter, creating large and small paintings in an impressionistic style, often including figures in the compositions. He states, “I am trying to create a rich painting in which each part is interesting in itself and becomes even richer in its relationship to every other part of the painting. This is a very difficult thing to do, which accounts for history’s few masterpieces and the beauty that these paintings possess. The shapes, forms, colors and subject matter all combine to form a complex and aesthetically pleasing unit”. He exhibits his work locally at State of the Art Gallery in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
You can see more of Hatfield’s work at the State of the Art Gallery and his American Gallery.
I confess I knew it was coming, but now that it’s here, I couldn’t be more thrilled for Anat Baron and her film, Beer Wars. Starting tomorrow, February 1, the film’s reach should extend beyond the well-insulated beer community. It will then be available to watch online, on your television or gaming console thanks to a deal Ms. Baron inked with a big-time distributor.
From the press release:
How did this happen? Well this David (me) made a deal with Goliath — Warner Bros. — to distribute the film. You should know that very few independent films, let alone documentaries, ever get this far, especially without a big name like Michael Moore or major festival buzz. I am humbled and elated that this movie will be available to tens of millions of people.
But I still need your help. Just because it’s available doesn’t mean that people know anything about it. Without word-of-mouth it could just sit there without any takers. So please, tell everyone you know by forwarding this email, or posting on Facebook and/or tweeting on Twitter. We even have web banners should you want to display them on your site or blog. You’ll not only be helping this indie filmmaker, but you’ll help convince studios like Warner Bros. to continue supporting these kind of films.
I think this is great news. Whatever you thought of the film, in my experience the people who got the most out of it were the people who knew the least about the beer industry going in. This distribution deal through on-demand and for download will make it available to a wider swath of the population, and many more of the people who I think need to see it. If only a fraction of the mainstream public sees the film and is moved or motivated by it to at least sample craft beer, then it will be a great victory for better beer.
Below is the nuts and bolts of how it can be seen, starting tomorrow. Spread the word to all your non-beer geek pals.
In the U.S., Beer Wars is available to rent on demand through Digital Cable and Satellite providers Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Cablevision, Charter, Insight, Bresnan, Verizon FiOS, AT & T U-Verse, Dish Network and DirecTV. It is also available for download on iTunes, Amazon Video On Demand, Xbox 360 and PS3.
Another highlight of The Brewing Network’s Winter Brews Festival, held yesterday at Linden Street Brewery in Oakland, was the music. There were some terrific bands playing. But my favorite was, as usual, the down home blues stylings of Tony Magee, owner of Lagunitas Brewing. He taught himself to play just a few years ago and in fact his debut performance was at the Celebrator 15th Anniversary Party when we held it at the Great American Music Hall in 2003. Since then, Tony’s been getter better every time I see him play. Here he is performing a Big Bill Broonzy song, Key to the Highway.
The third Guinness poster on our John Gilroy odyssey is also one of his earliest and most famous. The tagline is the also popular “Guinness For Strength” and features a construction worker able to carry a steel beam effortlessly with one hand after drinking Guinness.
One of the highlights of The Brewing Network’s Winter Brews Festival, held earlier today at Linden Street Brewery in Oakland, was Rosa, a sour beer brewed by the new Sacramento brewery, Odonata, recently started by former Sacramento Brewing’s Peter Hoey and Rick Sellers, formerly with Draft magazine. Here’s a short video of brewmaster Peter Hoey talking about Rosa.
Since Friday’s ad is number 33, I thought it only appropriate to feature one for Rolling Rock, since they so successfully exploited the mystery surrounding the number “33” being printed on their bottles, though the likeliest story isn’t that mysterious. This humorous ad plays on that theme with some of history’s greatest thinkers contemplating the mystery, which they call “Great Theories of ’33.'” The bottom row is Charles Darwin, Ludwig Van Beethoven and Thomas Edison. The top row is Sigmund Freud, Galileo and William Shakespeare. Also, the painting is called “Great Minds Drink Alike,” which is a pretty great name IMHO.
If you live in the Bay Area and have nothing going on tomorrow morning (or have Tivo), I’ll be on television in the early morning to promote SF Beer Week. It will air around 8:45 during the three-hour KRON 4 Weekend Show that’s on from 7:00-10:00 a.m. The exact time will depend on how the show develops, then they’ll cut to us at a remote location. I’m told it will be a very short segment, something like 3-4 minutes during which time I’ll try to taste the host, Henry Tenenbaum, on three beers paired with cheese, sausages and ice cream. And at the same time, I’ll try to talk about what he’s sampling and also discuss SF Beer Week, too. I expect it will be a lot like juggling while riding a unicycle. Did I mention I don’t know how to juggle? Or ride a unicycle or that matter. So tune in to watch me make a fool of myself or do Bay Area beer proud. Either way, it should be good for a laugh.
UPDATE: My sister-in-law Kit made a video of the spot and I’ve uploaded it to my YouTube Channel.
It appears MADD is up to their old tricks and actually this has probably been going on for some time albeit somewhat under the radar. In 1996, MADD created a youth organization of indoctrinated kids to do their dirty work for them called Youth In Action. One of their many “projects” is called Sticker Shock, which is described on their website:
YIA teams meet with local retailers that sell alcohol and ask permission to place warning stickers on the packaging of alcohol products (primarily beer). The stickers are very visible and warn of the consequences of purchasing alcohol for people under the age of 21. This project is designed to remind adults that they can be arrested for purchasing alcohol for minors.
Thanks for the “reminder” kids, but surely you could do something more constructive with your time. Maybe it’s the old curmudgeon in me, but it’s times like these when I miss the old days when children were to be seen and not heard. Do we really need these Stepford teens to lecture adults on the law?
This practice has apparently heated up in Massachusetts, with the state chapter there conducting raids of stores that sell alcohol to sticker the beer there.
Happily, Todd and Jason Alstrom, from Beer Advocate, take them to task in a recent column in Boston’s Dig entitled Fascist Youth Vandalize Liquor Stores. It almost reads like a headline from The Onion, except that it’s true. After detailing MADD’s Hitler youth in action, they strike the right note of indignation, certainly the same one I had.
Shocked? No, we’re pissed off! This is wrong on so many levels! First, while we agree that selling alcohol to minors is not cool, these sticker shock campaigns are outright acts of vandalism. Who cares if the storeowner gave permission? Who cares if these neo-prohibitionists are accompanied by an adult? Who cares if the adult’s a cop? Their little stunt is still illegal: Brewers must get approval from federal agencies for all packaging, including labels. Not only do these stickers alter the packaging, but sloppy placement could cover crucial information that, by law, must be visible to consumers.
And what about that cop? C’mon, with a cop backing these kids up, it’s no wonder that storeowners are consenting. And why “primarily beer”? Show us stats proving that kids are more likely to be hitting up adults for beer than for spirits. And why sticker all the beer in stock? Why not restrict it to the brands most popular with teen drunks? And why do we, the adult consumers, need to be “reminded” that purchasing beer for minors is illegal in the first place? Who said we forgot? Who decided this crap should be shoved in our faces? The YIA site says: “YIA teams look for community solutions instead of focusing their attention on their peers” — but isn’t that exactly where the primary focus should be?
This is not “reminding,” it’s intimidation, pure and simple.
The stickers read “Providing Alcohol to Minors is ILLEGAL. 4th Degree Felony. 18 Months in Jail. $5000 Fine. MADD’s Youth in Action.” All true, but why stop there. Why not sticker cans of soda with warnings that they can cause obesity. Coke and Pepsi would never sit still for that. In the UK several years ago McDonald’s sued a couple of activists literally for years because they had the audacity to criticize their food in what became known as the McLibel trial. But criticizing alcohol is perfectly acceptable because law enforcement and especially politicians are afraid to be reasonable thanks to the very vocal and active temperance minority, bowing to almost their every demand.
Jason and Todd conclude with an excellent suggestion.
So we’re challenging all true beer lovers to refuse to buy any product that has been vandalized by YIA, and to tell shop owners you’ll be boycotting their establishments until they get their beer from under MADD’s thumb — literally.
Amen to that. Don’t buy if you see the sticker. We have to start standing up to these bullies. I know in some cases the retailers had little choice in reality, but if they know there are consequences for acquiescence, ones that hit their bottom line, then they’ll begin to do the right thing, which is tell these gang of youths to go “remind” somebody else. That the police give these stunts the imprimatur of legality is quite frankly Orwellian and more than a little frightening.
Thursday’s ad is for a classic Schlitz ad from 1951. Like many ads from that time period, it was drawn by Bill Fleming. His work has a distinctive look to it. I confess I have a “thing” for old Schlitz memorabilia, especially their Schlitzerland campaign and the period of years where they used the globe logo prominently, as I also had an obsession with globes, too. This one is still funny nearly sixty years later.
