As the last drops of beer are served here at the tail end of Beer Week in Philadelphia it is time to give Ye Olde Liver a break for a bit. It was a hurricane of manliness here in Philly as both beer week and the CRC Collegiate National Sevens Tournament converged on the are last weekend.
Festivities began at nine AM with the Hammer of the gods beginning it's route through the city, an appearance by the mayor and a photo shoot for calendar girls. The hammer is used to knock the cork out of the inaugural first keg of firkin or whatever, just stop talking and let's toast already. The hammer is then transported through the city by various modes of transportation to do the honors at other high level beer week festivities. The various modes of transportation are certainly worth mentioning, but I wasn't that interested in tools. Unfortunately this was just the first of many tools I had to endure to insure that the story got out. Tools with legs. A hardware stores worth
The Rugby guys recruited Fast Eddy Rendell to be the speaker for their opening ceremonies. He said all the right things about rugby and sounded a lot less like a nerd than poor Mayor Nutter. His name is bad enough, but then he starts talking and he sounds like Steve Urkel? Anyway, temps were in the 90's and what better way to spend it than running at top speed tackling and kicking other elite and not so elite athletes in the heat?
That was the bright idea of the Florida Mastergators Rugby team, They played an old boys team from Blackthorn and Schuykill exiles B side in a "friendly" match across the street from that Bermuda Triangle of diets, ninth and Wharton where you can choose between Pats,and Geno's 24 hours a day. At kickoff it was 89 degrees. Last year they played in the middle of a thunderstorm. This year it was stifling heat. It wasn't that "friendly" either. Something about being forced to run around in the heat seemed to bring the nasty out of both sides. the attitude out there was clearly "if I'm going to collapse from heat prostration then I'm hurting someone before I succumb, much as last years motto was basically the same with the substitution of "Drown" in the sentence.
The Blackthorn old boys (who didn't really seem as old as the Florida guys) took care of Florida in the opening match, but Florida got the better of a thrown together Schuykill Exiles squad who were missing key players due to the beginning of sevens season. The Exiles finished second in the country last year. So what do three thirsty and sweaty teams do at the end of a brutal rugby game? JC Dobbs where the host of the Gator's team and Florida Alumnus Guiseppi Pulizzi bought four kegs for the boys to enjoy which rapidly became five then six. If Blackthorn is known for one thing it is their legendary consumption of fermented malt beverages. That's the way to get their old boys team out on the road, promise never ending beer and make it a game where you aren't checking too many ID cards. Blackthorns guys have jobs now, there are all millionaires or 350 pounds. If you let them play their a-side, and it's not too far away you may get to see them!
There was some lovely live music pumping at the Legendary Dobbs that evening and a great time was had by all.
DATELINE Saturday, June 1,2013. It's day 2 of Philadelphia beer week and I'm standing in front of Lorenzo and Sons Pizzeria at third and south and watching a dude put letters up on the sign welcoming Philadelphia to The Swamp on the sign at Dobbs and talking about kegs and eggs with the rugby boys and the bus trip which the sign says starts at 7 am. The mammoth security guard turned bartender yells at the sign guy that it starts at nine and the sign guy tells him to fuck off. The bartender stopped last night on the way home to help someone who had an accident and he in turn got rammed by a drunk . We were lucky he got out of bed on no sleep and I would thank him by name if I could but I'm not that good of a reporter.
So it's beer week in Philadelphia and it's just me and the band and the buffet and Kevin from Blackthorn who also is taking the free bus trip to be a sign from go that we won't be getting a DUI today. What beer are we drinking? A rare and wonderful craft beer from Milwaukee that has gotten a lot of underground support from artists and people in the know in the beer world. A beer so wonderful that it won a Blue Ribbon. PBR. Can Beer week get any sweeter than a free buffet, free PBR til 10;30 and live music? I challenge you to describe a better time. The band was a couple fellas with guitars that were doing pitch perfect capably strummed rock and roll covers. Five times Famous is their moniker and they have what it takes from four previous blog entries about them. they decided that the fifth time someone was going to blog about them that they were going to BLOW up. BOOM! These guys sing all the cool sing-along songs that alcoholics love to help with. Nothing like bellowing Born to run at 10 am with a bar full of swamp people and half a load on. See the free beer was running out in 30 minutes, so we had to take an aggressive approach.
1130 rolls around and we get the got on the bus in their neon orange shirts that serve two purposes. Beyond the visual specatacle of a section of "so bright it almost hurts your eyes" supporters, these are also great for picking "lost sheep" out of a crowd. Sheep tend to get lost on you when you mix the high temps and copious quantities of beer. When the bus stopped for the road beers of course I went in a repped PBC by picking up a few cases of Kenzinger for the VIP section in the back and some Beast Ice for the rest of the crew, They're from Florida. Busch is big there. Some of the old heads in the back had actually had craft beer before and I wanted to make sure they had some of what is my favorite beer in the city. Beast Ice was fine for the young guys in the front of the bus who were busily writing their names on their tee shirts with marker and asking the bus driver if we were there yet and complaining about needing to go potty and so forth. The temporary tattoos were a big hit with the crew from the front of the bus even though they had trouble pronouncing "Lorenzo's" they DID know the word pizza and were very pleased with themselves when they saw a word they knew and clapped and high fived and "yay-ed" the whole trip to Chester, where the rugby was.
Festivities began at nine AM with the Hammer of the gods beginning it's route through the city, an appearance by the mayor and a photo shoot for calendar girls. The hammer is used to knock the cork out of the inaugural first keg of firkin or whatever, just stop talking and let's toast already. The hammer is then transported through the city by various modes of transportation to do the honors at other high level beer week festivities. The various modes of transportation are certainly worth mentioning, but I wasn't that interested in tools. Unfortunately this was just the first of many tools I had to endure to insure that the story got out. Tools with legs. A hardware stores worth
The Rugby guys recruited Fast Eddy Rendell to be the speaker for their opening ceremonies. He said all the right things about rugby and sounded a lot less like a nerd than poor Mayor Nutter. His name is bad enough, but then he starts talking and he sounds like Steve Urkel? Anyway, temps were in the 90's and what better way to spend it than running at top speed tackling and kicking other elite and not so elite athletes in the heat?
That was the bright idea of the Florida Mastergators Rugby team, They played an old boys team from Blackthorn and Schuykill exiles B side in a "friendly" match across the street from that Bermuda Triangle of diets, ninth and Wharton where you can choose between Pats,and Geno's 24 hours a day. At kickoff it was 89 degrees. Last year they played in the middle of a thunderstorm. This year it was stifling heat. It wasn't that "friendly" either. Something about being forced to run around in the heat seemed to bring the nasty out of both sides. the attitude out there was clearly "if I'm going to collapse from heat prostration then I'm hurting someone before I succumb, much as last years motto was basically the same with the substitution of "Drown" in the sentence.
The Blackthorn old boys (who didn't really seem as old as the Florida guys) took care of Florida in the opening match, but Florida got the better of a thrown together Schuykill Exiles squad who were missing key players due to the beginning of sevens season. The Exiles finished second in the country last year. So what do three thirsty and sweaty teams do at the end of a brutal rugby game? JC Dobbs where the host of the Gator's team and Florida Alumnus Guiseppi Pulizzi bought four kegs for the boys to enjoy which rapidly became five then six. If Blackthorn is known for one thing it is their legendary consumption of fermented malt beverages. That's the way to get their old boys team out on the road, promise never ending beer and make it a game where you aren't checking too many ID cards. Blackthorns guys have jobs now, there are all millionaires or 350 pounds. If you let them play their a-side, and it's not too far away you may get to see them!
There was some lovely live music pumping at the Legendary Dobbs that evening and a great time was had by all.
DATELINE Saturday, June 1,2013. It's day 2 of Philadelphia beer week and I'm standing in front of Lorenzo and Sons Pizzeria at third and south and watching a dude put letters up on the sign welcoming Philadelphia to The Swamp on the sign at Dobbs and talking about kegs and eggs with the rugby boys and the bus trip which the sign says starts at 7 am. The mammoth security guard turned bartender yells at the sign guy that it starts at nine and the sign guy tells him to fuck off. The bartender stopped last night on the way home to help someone who had an accident and he in turn got rammed by a drunk . We were lucky he got out of bed on no sleep and I would thank him by name if I could but I'm not that good of a reporter.
So it's beer week in Philadelphia and it's just me and the band and the buffet and Kevin from Blackthorn who also is taking the free bus trip to be a sign from go that we won't be getting a DUI today. What beer are we drinking? A rare and wonderful craft beer from Milwaukee that has gotten a lot of underground support from artists and people in the know in the beer world. A beer so wonderful that it won a Blue Ribbon. PBR. Can Beer week get any sweeter than a free buffet, free PBR til 10;30 and live music? I challenge you to describe a better time. The band was a couple fellas with guitars that were doing pitch perfect capably strummed rock and roll covers. Five times Famous is their moniker and they have what it takes from four previous blog entries about them. they decided that the fifth time someone was going to blog about them that they were going to BLOW up. BOOM! These guys sing all the cool sing-along songs that alcoholics love to help with. Nothing like bellowing Born to run at 10 am with a bar full of swamp people and half a load on. See the free beer was running out in 30 minutes, so we had to take an aggressive approach.
1130 rolls around and we get the got on the bus in their neon orange shirts that serve two purposes. Beyond the visual specatacle of a section of "so bright it almost hurts your eyes" supporters, these are also great for picking "lost sheep" out of a crowd. Sheep tend to get lost on you when you mix the high temps and copious quantities of beer. When the bus stopped for the road beers of course I went in a repped PBC by picking up a few cases of Kenzinger for the VIP section in the back and some Beast Ice for the rest of the crew, They're from Florida. Busch is big there. Some of the old heads in the back had actually had craft beer before and I wanted to make sure they had some of what is my favorite beer in the city. Beast Ice was fine for the young guys in the front of the bus who were busily writing their names on their tee shirts with marker and asking the bus driver if we were there yet and complaining about needing to go potty and so forth. The temporary tattoos were a big hit with the crew from the front of the bus even though they had trouble pronouncing "Lorenzo's" they DID know the word pizza and were very pleased with themselves when they saw a word they knew and clapped and high fived and "yay-ed" the whole trip to Chester, where the rugby was.
