Beer Invades the Metroplex

Note: Because it's apparently not clear in the post, Portland has had beer in theaters since at least the late 1980s.  The McMenamins may well have had the first theater-pub in the US when it opened The Mission in 1987.  Now probably 80% of the indies and local chains serve draft beer.  It is Regal, the Tennessee-owned chain, that has finally--at least in one location--decided to get on board.

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I abandoned movie theater chains a decade ago. They had become too abusive: a high-volume onslaught of TV-style ads in the theater before the movie, sky-rocketing ticket prices, and concessions that were as bad as they were over-priced. Meanwhile, the proliferating indies offered ad-free viewing, low prices and--now almost uniformly throughout the city 4-8 handles of great beer and cider. I could go to the St Johns Cinema on opening day, grab a slice of pizza and a beer for barely more than it cost to go to a Regal metroplex. I was not alone. I watched as the traffic abandoned the Regal experience (a deliciously ironic name) and came over to the indies. 

Yesterday Sally and I decided to catch a Christmas Day matinee of the latest spectacular spectacular, but the indies were not available. (Good for them, giving the employees the day off.) So off we went to the Lloyd Center Regal and: ho!, what is this?

They haven't yet gotten to installing draft lines, but you can actually get a decent bottle of beer now. 

(1) This illustrates an interesting fact about the rise of drinking culture in the US. We no longer drink as much beer as we used to, but we like good beer when we go out to get a bite or catch a movie. This was never going to happen before craft beer came along. (2) Is this a thing everywhere, or just beery Portland, Oregon? My dataset is way out of date. 

"A Surprisingly Fruity Note Which Lingers on the Tongue"

Two of my very favorite comedies of all time came from the brains of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright (and are channeled, winningly, through the boulder of Nick Frost's body): Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  When they added a third leg to the stool with World's End, I bellied up to the bar.  I would put it a notch below those first two (or perhaps it's just that this one is shot through with a melancholic sense of reality the others lacked), but it's got added pleasure for the beer geek. 

Off to tour the hop fields today, so don't expect a lot more content.  I'll try to tweet photos of lupulin pornography along the way, though, if you're interested (@Beervana).

Beertickers: A Great Beer Movie

Someone asked me recently, "what's your favorite beer movie?" The question is as depressing as it is easy: none. Beer is ubiquitous, but capturing anything interesting about it on film seems impossible.* TV shows seem no more successful. I have despaired of every seeing something that captured the essence of beer culture--entertainingly--on screen.

In late 2009, Phil Parkin released his indie production called Beertickers, and finally managed what his predecessors could not. The difficulty is telling an entertaining story that allows a filmmaker to peel back the layers of beer culture in the process. So Parkin's movie, ostensibly about quirky obsessives called "beer tickers" (akin to trainspotters), is really about the nature and history of British pub culture.

Beer tickers are a strange variant of cask ale enthusiasts. Their goal is to "collect" beers by tasting and recording them ("ticking" them off). They go around to pubs and festivals, trying new beers and recording them in loose-leaf notebooks. Amateurs record hundreds of ticks a year; the real competitors do more than a thousand. We watch as "Brian the Champ," Britain's king ticker, records his 40,000th tick. Unsurprisingly, he's been doing it for decades.

The ticking is ultimately just a device to tell the real story, which is Parkin's deep appreciation for the institution of the corner pub and the art of cask ale. As he follows tickers around, Parkin tours English pubs, brews his own beer at Thornbridge, and learns about the history of British brewing. As you're watching, you begin to see that the tickers aren't the center of the show; rather, they're a consequence of a country so in love with a nice pour of real ale. Americans are proud of our burgeoning good-beer culture, but it's nice to be reminded, as I was when Parkin visits a 12th-century English pub, that we have a long way to go.

The story is entertaining enough that when Sally walked by my computer as I was screening it, she was instantly engrossed and sat down to watch it with me. It's a low-budget movie that neither looks or feels low budget (although you do see a boom mic in one shot). I could live without the chirpy music, but that's the kind of quibble I have to dredge up to find anything wrong with it.

Beerticking will not be getting a theatrical release in the US, but Phil is trying to get Americanos to watch on iTunes. You can watch it for a buck or own it for fifteen. The link is here, but if you might find it easier just to boot up the program and search for "Beertickers." Below is a trailer that focuses more on the ticking side of things--but gives you a sense of the piece nonetheless.

Definitely spend the buck and watch this movie.

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*Strange Brew is of course, nostalgically entertaining, but it's about drunkards, not beer.