I'll drink to that...

Beer, it’s what’s for breakfast, at least in Colorado, where I recently was told by a guy on a ski lift that he had a Maple Bacon Beer for breakfast.  “It was so good, I had a second,” he proclaimed.  Colorado has a booming Micro Brewery scene with close to 150 breweries; it was also ranked number one in gross beer production in 2006.  Colorado Springs is holding its own with several popular breweries dotting the cityscape.   Some could even fit into the ‘new’ category of nano-breweries, which focus on using local produce and products and only producing beer for the local economy.  Along with that local focus, many of them are also heavily involved in community events and support local causes. 

 

One example is Bristol Brewery, which holds a Karma night on Tuesdays.  Instead of discount beers, like a normal Happy Hour, this event donates a dollar from every pint sold to a local non-profit or charity.  I’ll drink to a cause any day, and to no cause at all on every other day of the week.  So on a recent Tuesday night, I wondered down to the brew-pub to support the ‘Incline Friends’ cause.  You might be inclined to ask: what are the ‘Incline Friends,’ and their cause?  And all I can say is, get with the times man, because even President Obama is a friend of The Incline. 

 

The Incline is a local ‘attraction’ -- an abandoned cable car track that climbs straight up a mountain towards Pike Peak from the tourist town of Manitou Springs. The cable car route was closed in 1990 when yet another rock-slide damaged the tracks for the last time, and the owners decided to abandon the track for their more profitable Cog Railroad. Despite ‘No Trespassing’ signs, rusted and cracked pipes, precarious old spikes, loose railroad ties and other hazards, the local community and tourists alike have been hiking the trail illegally for years.  But in January the President of the United States stepped in and signed a law clearing the way for legal hiking and the local community began enacting their plan to clean up and maintain the trail for safer hiking, climbing and in some cases crawling (the trail gains nearly 2,000 feet of elevation along the 4,000-foot long trail).  However, no sooner did the trail officially open for legal use, than a hiker was medevac’d with cardiac arrest, highlighting the ‘hike at your own risk’ nature of the climb. The total cost of the repair and maintenance plan is a million dollars, or about $250 per foot.

And so I found myself at Bristol Brewery’s Karma Hour, humbled by this mighty fund-raising task. The beers I drank didn’t even cover an inch of the cause, but I did what I could and met some characters along the way.  The first was Randall, an outgoing guy with shaggy curly hair and a full mountain beard.  He looked to be in his fifties and, after he introduced himself, I asked what he was drinking. 

 

“The Nitro Compass IPA.  It tastes better than the carbonated version and they pour it in a larger glass; and I make sure they top it up too.”

His response led me to two conclusions:  1) this guy drinks here often, and 2) he probably drinks a lot for the Karma causes.  He then continued to confirm my conclusions by telling me he drinks at Bristol almost every night, and after some banter about where I lived he noted he is in the same area and rattles off a few other drinking holes in the area, but none measure up to Bristol in his opinion. 

 

At that point another philanthropic drinker noted his woolen pants, which look like they had walked off the set of an old movie about climbers in the Alps circa the late 1800s.  They were an olive-drab-green cargo pant made of heavy wool.

 

“These are my Norwegian Army pants,” he proudly proclaimed, and then in the process of expanding on his Norwegian Army service he came around the to the point that he was only one generation further separated from the last King Harald of Norway than Prince William of the UK.  This strange and somewhat irrelevant fact led me to question anything that might come out of this guy’s mouth, but he continued his history of the region and said that all Scandinavians can actually trace their roots back to Norway. 

 

I, being Finnish, asked him if that included the Finns.  He said, no and that they actually were an Arian trans-European migrant group with ties to Hungary.  This had me intrigued because I knew that the Hungarian and Finish languages were on the same linguistic branch of Uralic.  The topic of language then led to a discussion of the Laplanders, or Sami.  They are also known as Finn by the Norse people of Norway (however the two groups are not the same), a Nomadic people of northern Scandinavia and Russia that are considered to be indigenous to the region.  He said they still don’t recognize the current national borders of Scandinavia as they continue to follow the game herds across the region, much like the nomadic Indian tribes once did in the US. 

 

Randall explained, “Border forces will stop them and tell them, ‘You cannot enter Sweden, go back to Norway.’  ‘What is Sweden?’ they’ll ask.  ‘This is Sweden.’ The guards will reply. ‘What is Norway?’ ‘Back there is Norway.  Where you came from.’ And the Laplanders will turn around and return, only to come back across somewhere else.”

The things you learn in a bar.  I had assumed this guy was just a local lush, but instead he was turning out to be a Professor of Hops and History.  He then transitioned to the modern male bar banter of women.  “You see that girl with the long black hair over there? I’ve been eyeing her all night. I think I’ll introduce myself.” 

 

I wished him luck and just as he was about to head over, she turned our way and he said, “Oh, wrong one,” and with a quick glance around the bar, he re-established target ID and headed off in the opposite direction.

Next I began chatting with Paula, and learned that the small, tightly packed space the Brewery currently occupied was about to close.  The Brewery will be moving and expanding into an old school building across the street.  I’d parked next to the old school and thought it was a good looking old stone/Neoclassical building, and it was a shame it was vacant.  Now it turns out the building is going to be put to good use by the Brewery, and I was excited about the move.  

Paula went on to say that the move was almost stopped by the city council, who felt that the brewery wasn’t paying enough to occupy the building.  I found this a bit outrageous because the Brewery was practically doing the city a favor revitalizing the old building.  Apparently the community agreed and petitioned on behalf of the Brewery, noting how much the brewery does for the city and local causes, in addition to providing great beer.  The council ceded and the Brewery is scheduled to open in the new location in March.  I look forward to continuing to support local causes in the new location, when it opens, and attending another class with Professor Randall, the Nordic historian.