God save the Pub.

THE TOUR OF POURS BEGINS! So the first thing I did when arriving at my parents house in England, was roll the family up and head over to the Cow and Calf. If I have any solid representation to show my growth of interest in pubs, this would be the place. The Cow and Calf is a pub that resides right next to my house, and to this day I am confident that the only reason we live here, is because my Dad wanted to live next door to a pub. This means that almost every other day, Lunch was at the Cow and Calf, and I purely hated every second of it.

The place is a very old fashioned pub. It was originally a farm house, so there are wooden beams everywhere, fireplaces instead of central air, no T.V, no pool table, just an old room, with benches and stools. As I grew up I would start appreciating things more and more about the place, and now, this is my favorite pub in the world. Why would anyone want to go to a bar with no pool, no music, no tv and no hot chicks? Well the main reason the locals come here is because the pints in the cow and calf are the cheapest one in the city (at a stunning £1.20). But the reason I keep coming back is just because of the lack of amenities. This is a place to drink beer, and talk, and that's chuffing lovely.

The beer served here is from of my favortie breweries, Samuel Smith. The factory is only 30 minutes from the pub. It is so close that Horses deliver it to the pub, straight up GANSTA! I always know that a new batch of beer is in when I walk to the pub and see tons of horse shit spewed across the street. Now normally, if beer is only $1.20(about 2 and a half dollars), it is a sign that it is going to be pure shite. This isn't the case though, the reason the price is so low is because the bar choose not to have any extra fees. Theres no gaming fee, no TV licensing fee, no cargo truck shipping fees. Nothing. With all those fees away, the bar can just charge beer for what it should be. And with no distractions in the place, the beer can be the best it can be.

Think of a bare bones DVD, a disc where the only thing on the dvd is the movie. It has no extra materials, no poorly put together behind the scenes documentaries, or poorly slapped audio commentaires. The only thing on there is the movie, the real reason for why you are buying the DVD in the first place. All the flashy stuff could be selling points, but at the end of the day, you like, and you want to watch the movie. Thats the same train of thought with this Pub, you come here for the beer, so you will get beer, and since its the only thing in the bar, you are going to get a really good quality of beer. The owners wont have to worry about getting money from anything else in the bar, Beer is the only thing, so beer is going to get the full attention of the staff.

Also, it allows the patron to converse. I still feel the reason people go to bars, is to be social. If you want to zone out and just veg, you can just get some beers and watch tv at home. The event of going to a bar is to meet with your friends, share a drink, and catch up, converse, talk about things. When you have a pub with no distractions, it makes it a lot easier to have fun conversations, because thats the only entertainment of the night. This also allows more chances to converse with strangers, rather than just stick to a group and huddle near a T.V

So the Cow and Calf, a place I used to hate going to, is now one of my favorite spots. It's dependable, I can recommend the beer there to anybody, and i know they will never go on an off night. The brand of the beer is one of the best out there. A nice pint of Pure Brewed Lager after a hard day of vacationing hits the spot like no other. But mostly, its great to know that i've been going here all my life, and I have a feeling that even though managers will change, and new clients will come in, as long as this pub is owned by Samuel Smith, I know there will always be a recluse to enjoy good company, and a good pint.

I left my pint in San Francisco

This past weekend I went to San Francisco and had the fortunate oppurutunity to watch the Phillies lose twice in a row. Now I was hesitant about seeing a sports game in San Francisco. I pictured fans at the ball park not being allowed to drink unless they brought their own bottle of wine from the Napa Valley with them to the game. Instead of Hot Dogs I imagined some sort of hippie subsitute, like Leaf Green Spincah Rolls on a stick. However, the most suprising thing about San Fran, other than getting a tan there, was that it was very friendly and very up to date in the world of Beer.

The first thing that shocked me was that on game day, bars were open at 8am. Since moving to the West Coast, I found sports cities to be...how should I say, pussyish? In Philly or in New York when it was game day, you could tell. People would be walking around rocking jerseys, tailgating, being obnoxious the whole shibang. This was something I had not yet seen in LA,Phoenix or San Diego. The Lakers are the number 1 team in the NBA right now and you would have no idea by looking at anyone on the streets. Well lets just say, San Fran held up.

My friends and I were on the prowl for a bar named Vesuvious which we heard opened at 8am. After walking for about 10 minutes we realized we were lost. Upon asking a 42 year old lady on how to get there, she informed us that we were nowhere near by, but that Fishermans Wharf had a bar that was open at 8am. How a random 42 year old lady knew this was beyond weird to me, but she pointed us in the right direction, and in no time at all we were tailgaiting in bars. The best part was fans were already starting stuff with my friends for rocking Phillies Jerseys. We were trash talking in a bar at 8:30am, for a game that was meaningless. Good times. After that we stumbled from bar to bar on our 2 mile trek to AT & T park. And we would find that more than one bar was open and ready for business.

It was only when I was about 2 bars in did I remember that San Fran has many good breweries nearby. Anchor Steam was the main one, but there was also Speakeasy ales, and then my favorite of them all; Bear Republic. All of these beers were served very fresh and with much dedication. When you are in a bar at 9am, the bartender doesn't really have to do much to keep you happy, so it was really nice to see the bartenders still watch the pour instead of just running the tap and walking away. I got the feeling that people appreciated beer there on the same level as wine, maybe the city got so bored of being wine connaisseurs that they redirected their attention to beer, as is evident with the recent uprising of breweries.

And the beer love goes beyond the sporting world. At night we went to a trendy spot in North Beach, and found that beer was very much alive there as well. While it seemed all the restaurants advertised Wine Wine Wine, there were some bars that were big into the beer and spirits. One I can't remember, but I think it was called Tonka. It was a neat Soda Inspired Bar and there was a good mixture of cocktails being made and beer being kicked out. Across the street from that was the Vesuvious we were seeking ealier. It had a great feel of just a socializing place where you could kick back with a drink and just chat. I gave San Franscico less credit than I thought, thinking it was going to be this prententious wine town, I found that its a lot more laid back, in a non hippy sense.

There is one thing I must warn you about San Franscisco though. When you get there you realize you can walk around the entire place since its built like a city in the east. Bar Crawling becomes a possibility, unlike in LA where you would always have to hop in a car afterwards, making it very hard to bar hop. Now, like all bar crawls, the walk back is always the harder part of the journey, normally because you tend being near to piss drunk. In San Fran, this is murder. If you are ever there, and you decide to bar crawl, just remember your route. Those pretty hills you walked down on the way to the bar, you will now have to walk up, and when you have been drinking since 9am, walking up the hills can easily be the hardest excercise you will end up doing in the year. So people with Beer guts, know that San Fran is open to your folly, but the gut doesn't help anything when you have to walk back to your hotel.

On a side note, I am taking a two week vacation and heading back to the Land of Beer. I'm going to be hitting up the pubs in the U.K, and then travelling to the holy land of ales, Belgium. So be on the lookout for the Perishing Thirts International Tour of Pours!(How lame was that?)

Inflation at its worse.

I never took Economics. Nor did I take that much Math to be honest,( and based on my grammer in recent posts, English classes was something else I sorta missed out on). With that said, this post may be filled with rather ignorant statements and questions, so if you have a problem with that then.....suck it?

When I started driving and found that gas went from 3.20 to 4.06 a gallon, I didn't really get pissed, i just accepted that, it was something that needed to happen. When gas prices went down to 3.20 I was a very happy trooper. Suffice to say, Prices are up again. Now I believe the reason is a mixture between supply and demand, and inflation, but once again I don't know. One thing I do know is that, Tonight was the first night I was sick of the rising prices, and decided I wouldn't stand for it anymore. Oh and if your wondering why I'm talking about Oil in a Beer Blog, I'm not. The price raise that sickened me today was when I saw that a cup of Beer was 9 freaking dollars.

Now we all know that Venues make most of their money on concessions, people need to eat and drink, they will buy it no matter what the cost (I think thats actually supply and demand,no?). Today I went to a show at the Gibson Ampitheatre, and was shocked to find a cup of Beer in the 9 dollar range. The rising of prices has become such a serious issue, that when Artie Moreno bought the Anaheim Angels in 2003. The first change he wanted to make was nothing to do with the Roster or Staff, but to lower beer prices in the stadium.

But its not just in venue places. In New York for instance Yuengling can be up to 5 bucks in Brooklyn, and 7 bucks in Manhattan, as opposed to the 3 dollars in Philly. Now I get it costs more to ship it to New York, but is it really 2 dollars more from Brooklyn to Manhattan? And the quality of this beer isn't even good, its not like I'm paying more because they've specially delivered the beer from Pottsville to New York and are taking good care of it. The beer normally sucks, your paying 7 bucks for a stale crappy beer. Damn you New York, if you're going to over price me, you should at least make the Yuengling taste the way it should.

Theres a movie theatre chain in LA called the Arclight, It charges about 3 dollars more than your average theatre, but with that you are getting fine projection, good patrons, proper maintenance. You are paying more to get more. So the whole idea of not even knowing if you are getting a fresh beer, or stale beer, when you are dropping down almost double digit dollars, is rather absurd to me. It's Russian Roulette with my liver, and my wallet.

If beer is now in the 9 dollar range, I think its time we set some rules as to why it is, and what we as consumers should expect back in return. If people started going into stores and buying moldy bread for twice the price, you think no one would complain? I fear that just cause the current demographic in question is full of Beer Drinkers, the companies can do whatever they want because they feel we are too juvenile to care about it. Well if Wine connoisseurs can be taken seriously and respected, then dammit...we should be too. Eff 9 Dollars for a pint of beer.

P.S, It may be obvious that this entire post may have been written just bec ause I am going through a Yuengling withdrawl. It should not detract from the main point at hand though. God I miss Yuengling.

70 Hour Work Weeks = Forced Lent for Alcoholics.

Working nights and doing recent 70 hour weeks on average makes it really hard to get a pint. There's something very wrong about coming home at 11am after a 14 hour work day and grabbing a cold one out the back of the fridge, It just screams "Alcoholic". However when my Highschool buddy visits LA and asks me to take him to just one place, and I end up taking him to a Bar. Then maybe I should just admit that when it comes to being an Alki, I'm in the gray zone. The only redeeming factor is that, its a really damn great bar.

Fathers Office is the best thing to do in Santa Monica. They have the best taps in LA, the best burger in LA, and on a general scale, some of the nicest people in LA. I was a bit shocked to find out that when I showed up this time, there was a line outside the door. I thought it was going to be turned into another full packed bar where you have to wait 10 minutes just to order a drink, but it turns out that they only let 75 people in at a time. The upside is you don't have to be smushed and yell in order to speak to anybody. The downside is once your inside, and your friend shows up late, he has to wait in the line in order to get in.

The bar strengthens in domestics, but they have some pretty interesting imports. For example, not only do they have Maredsous 8, but they have...you ready? Maredsous 10! I didn't even know it existed, what would 10 be? 2 better? Sadly it wasn't, it was 3 under. By attempting to make the original stronger it lost a lot of the flavor that makes Maddy 8 so yummy. But a bad beer is made better by a great burger, and Fathers Office provides it. Normally I don't like Onions and other junk on my burger, but this is the one exception. They only let you have it the way they want to prepare it, but trust me its good. So you can either go there for a great burger, or if you get some masochistic kick on Chef's telling you how you should eat, Fathers Office can provide you with all your kinky needs.

And with that said, here's a new section called, "Paul's Drunk Questions". Remember when the teachers would say "There's no such thing as dumb questions." Well, there are. But when you're drunk your totally allowed to ask them because people will either be entertained by this random act of stupidity, or they will forget the next day. There is only one rule, you cannot look up anything to answer, it has to be as if you're in a bar, and totally pissed. So here it goes, What came first, Orange the color? Or Orange the Fruit? Most people retort with the color, but really? Where does the natural color orange exist other than a fruit? A sunset sky? This leads to another path, the origin of words, such as, were the first colors..in Latin? And is Orange the fruit, the same as Orange the color in Japanese? Once again, you can't look up any answers online, feel free to give your two cents.

Sunshine in Santa Monica

As I mentioned in my last post, I just had my 200th beer. To make sure it wasn't an event where I was just chugging a bottle at home by myself, I invited some friends out and decided to hit up a bar that I'd be hearing rave reviews about, The Daily Pint in Santa Monica. Lets just say, If having intercourse with a bar was possible, I would so have gotten the place pregnant by now.

The Daily Pint is a real low key place separated into two parts. One side being a long bar filled with plenty of taps and a fine array of scotch on the top of it. The other side was isolated from the bar, with some seats to get your food on. Not one , but two pool tables, and the center piece of the joint, the Shuffle Board. Thats right, Shuffle Board. If this does not appeal to you now, maybe after some of their fine selection of draughts, you will be raging to get some shuffling on.

The Daily Pint has around 20 beers on draught, mostly domestic, but well maintained. It was the first time in a while I've heard the Bartender say they couldn't serve somebody a beer because it wasn't fresh enough, something that NYC really needs to start picking up on. There's a good mix of lights and heavies for any mood your in. For my 200th I was looking for something pretty dark to savour. Sadly most of the dark ones on the list I already had, with the exception of one, Deschutes Black Butte Porter.

It hit the spot but seemed awfully familiar, then I realized that I've already had it. So officially, it was my 200th beer according to the list, but in terms of known chronology, I probably had this one about 130 beers ago. This is the problem with the list, even though from now on I am making sure to keep track of what I've had, anything prior to the list being made that wasn't that great fell through the cracks of my memory. Which is why its always great to keep a list. If Wilt Chamberlain made one maybe his case for sleeping with 20,000 women would be more believable. I on the other hand will never have to worry about keeping track of that, the five fingers on my hand will be more than enough to help me remember.  Ok that last sentence may have come off wrong.

The Long and Winding Road to 200

So this past weekend I drank my 200th beer. How would anybody know that you ask? Well since last summer I have been recording a list of every different type of beer I've had. You're now asking why would anybody do that? Well since the dawn of man, people have made records of things. To chart progress, to remember the past, to set down goals for the future, and thus, The Beer List was created. It serves as a reminder for what I've had, what I plan to have, and whenever I wonder, "Where did this extra 20 pounds of weight and a fat belly come from?" I can look at the list and go, Oh yes, from that.

Don't worry, this blog will not be a review of every single beer that i have, it will be more about the fun experiences, thoughts and observations that come along the way on this journey of self...stupidity? It's all about the interesting Bars that are out there, the great(and no so great) people you meet along the way, and the fun thoughts and conversations that arise after you have a pint or two in you. If it weren't for People, Pubs and Pints, where else would I find a forum to speak about my longing desire to grow a handlebar mustache? Even though I know that I can't grow facial hair. Or be in a situation where your guard is down long enough to turn to your friend(or the bartender, whoever is nearer) and ask something that has been bugging you as of late, like, what the hell is a Satsuma orange anyway?

Well consider this blog the sober extension of those train of thoughts. Some entries will surely be concise and to the point, but then some will be those little thoughts that lay in the back of your head, that seem to just gain more relevance after you become, well..lets call a spade a spade here; Drunk. And for all the people out there who have a hobby or passion, I urge you to not disregard it just because it may seem petty, or may make you end up looking like an Alcoholic. Write a list down, jot what you've accomplished with that interest of yours, and what you still wish to. Trust me, a List comes in Handy, it has other values than just having a manifest ready to hand to my Doctor once he starts asking me why my Liver is all messed up.

So just like this Pint, we are at an end. Look forward to more posts down the line, and feel free to leave any messages behind, if there are dumb questions you have as well but forgot to get it in before the last call, or if you actually enjoy beer as well, feel free to let me know about your favorite one, or a bar you think I should check out. And I hope you enjoy my documented journey to quench that seemingly never ending, perishing thirst.