Overturned Potato Truck

With my do everything attitude I thought I could go to Dallas Oktoberfest and swing down to the Lucette tour in Menomonie.  I’d be able to churn out two radio shows on one day.  I’m friends with the Lucette guys so it’s kinda wired for me to interview them.  They do tours on Saturdays and tours are full of people asking the types of questions people have about beer that I no longer have.  I not a beer genius, I’ve just been on way too many brewery tours.

Everything was timed out perfect. Then overturned potato truck.  An overturned potato truck was blocking the road.  How often does this happen?  There was no sharp turn, no steep grade, and it was the middle of the day.  There were potatoes all over main street Ridgeland on Saturday, October first twenty eleven.

An overturned potato truck is the perfect metaphor for me interviewing people about beer.  It is obvious you make beer and the only real question is “How did this happen?”

Always having a camera came in handy again.  I took some snaps got back in my car and showed up too late to pull any audio from the Lucette tour….again.  Oh well, Brewers won and I got to hang out with some friends.

Dallas Oktoberfest

I’m twenty five.  It was too long ago that my parents were dragging me to stuff I didn’t want to go to.  Mainly because from ages eight to fourteen I was really, really into video games and any family activity that pulled me away from them was immediately treated with scorn.  Dallas Oktoberfest would have been a perfect example of such event that would piss of an angst ridden preteen/teenager if they were in attendance.

Why?

Like every Oktoberfest ever, drinking beer is the number one goal.  In our Puritan American Society in which we live in, drinking beer in public is reserved for people over twenty one.  Since I’m over twenty one, Dallas Oktoberfest is the quintessential Northern Wisconsin Event for me.

The whole town, albeit less than four hundred people, comes together to make this event a reality.  There is no need for snow fences, security, or drink tickets.  It does have the World’s Longest Brat, Polka, and Kubb.  Beer is cheap.  For five bucks you get a mug and for one dollar you get to fill it with delicious Valkyrie Beer.

I’m not going to get into it here, but Valkyrie was Five Start was Viking.  I don’t really know the story and everyone I talk to says something else.  Bottom-line here: it is beer made in a town of less than five hundred people.  I don’t care what legal shit storm happened.

Now Kubb was the highlight of the event.  The Keg-A-Pelt, a homemade trebuchet built to launch empty kegs of beer, the mini cannon that was randomly firing off rounds throughout the day, the soccer style game the area firefighters were playing next to the bar and human scarecrow contest were are cool.  But the more people were occupied for longer with Kubb.  Kubb is throwing wood blocks at wood blocks.  If you’re like me, it takes damn near an hour to play.  If you’re like the people playing at Dallas Oktoberfest, you can crank out a match in fifteen minutes.

This was my third Dallas Oktoberfest and every year it is the same thing: a Damn Good Time.

Review: The Livery

A few years back I went to The Livery and had lunch.  It seemed then that they were trying too hard to tie together shit that shouldn’t be associated with each other: Used game tables, a fire pit, cowboy paraphernalia, and numerous African big game mounts.

There are no rules in the Service Industry.  Just pick a subculture to exploit, and you’ll do just fine with that subculture.  The Livery does this with cowboys.  Relax, Texas Roadhouse pulls the same shit.  All this doesn’t change the fact that Eau Claire was never part of the Wild West. But there is a major country music festival that rolls through town for a weekend in the summer.  So  who doesn’t like throwing on a big hat and saying “Yeaa-Haw”?

Don’t think I want any changes here.  The decor is done well and makes a positive impression.

My budget for this review was twenty bucks.  I got a Belgo, an IPA, from New Belgium Brewery (Fort Collins, Colorado), a ten dollar entrée, and left a five dollar tip.  The entrée was meatloaf presented on a bed of mashed potatoes with a simple sauce and green garnish.  There was plenty of taste to be had and all the elements worked together.

I was there at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday.  Next to me was a pilot pounding Jack and Cokes.  Turns out he used to fly around my boss’s boss’s boss to and from Pennsylvania every few days.  During the course of our conversation the owner appeared to put some dishes away.  He looked at us and said, “Great day for Drinking.”

Indeed it was.  Then again what day isn’t?