Drink Beer for Angelo

On Thursday night, you should go down to The Commons and have a pint.  There's an event there exactly typical for Portland--beers from the host brewery along with Breakside, Deschutes, Fort George, Gigantic, Laurelwood, Ninkasi, Occidental, Upright, Vertigo and Widmer.  But actually, it's totally unlike anything that normally happens here in Beervana.  The proceeds for the night's swillin' go to Angelo De Ieso, the pied piper of Portland beer.  You surely know his face and probably have spent some time with him.  If so, you know him as one of the most genuinely nice guys in the world. 

Unfortunately, Angelo's had some extremely bad luck.  His friend and co-Brewpublican DJ Paul explains:

Last month while I was in Seattle I heard some horrific news that my friend and Brewpublic’s founder, Angelo De Ieso, suffered through some intense seizures and was in the hospital at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon. I was able to track Angelo down through his wonderful and caring brother Mario just before Angelo went into brain surgery. The doctors needed to do this so they could do a biopsy on what they found to be a brain tumor. I remembered this call quite vividly as tears were brought to my eyes. How could Angelo be going into brain surgery I asked myself? I just spoke to him a few days prior finalizing some locations for his upcoming KillerBeerWeek. Everything seemed just fine.

After almost 2 grueling weeks in the hospital Angelo was finally discharged still without any knowledge of the results of the biopsy on his brain tumor. Then the time came last week for him to travel back down to Springfield with his brother to meet with his team of doctors to discuss his biopsy results. Dr. Eller informed him of the great news that the brain tumor is benign. However, Angelo will still have a long road ahead of him since he may continue to suffer from future seizures. And with this comes more and more medical and pharmaceutical costs.

It is absolutely unforgivable that anyone should go without health care in the US, but lots of folks fly without it.  Bloggers, for example.  But that's the country we have, and Angelo is one of those folks.  As a consequence, he's $200,000 in the hole.  I doubt very seriously that you can drink enough beer Thursday night to cover his tab, but by god, you ought to try.  You've never had a better excuse.

If for some reason you can't make it to The Commons, go over to this website where you can help defray his costs. 

Angelo and Dr. Eller