Sunday, August 03, 2008

Vacation round up #2: Brewfest



Last Friday Morgan's sister Katie took us to the 21st Annual Oregon Brewers Festival while grandma and grandpa Bird babysat for little Elliott. It takes place right along the riverfront and is huge. It must have really boomed in recent years because I remember walking by it back in 2000 when it was taking place at Pioneer Square and I really wasn't that impressed. But now it's crazy, there must have been at least 6000 people there.


Morgan and I partook in plenty of fine beverages laden with hoppy goodness. Then there were some that weren't so fine, like the one that tasted like chai tea. Whatever brew master that came up with that crap needs to give his license to be a man back, the girls really liked it so there ya go.

The Brewfest stopped serving at 9pm (so you don't have 6000 people drinking until 2am in the heart of downtown Portland) so we went to a bar down the way with Katie, her husband, and a couple of her friends. We went to this place called The Rock Bottom Brewery and all I have to say is, not my scene, not my scene, not my scene. The place is a chain restaurant and it's like Applebees had sex with T.G.I Fridays and this was their alcoholic bastard love child. I tend to like my bars looking like bars, a little on the divey side preferably, by no means a dump, just a place that actually looks like a bar, not a family style restaurant. We walked in and the place was packed and there was this band playing, we'll I guess you could say they were playing. They looked like a bunch of pretty boy models out of a Gap ad and they were completely butchering the Doors song Love Me Two Times. I'd later come to find out (about 10 minutes ago) that the chai beer at the beerfest was a concoction made by this brewery, had I known that at the time I might never have even walked through the door.

We got a booth but it barley fit the 6 of us and Morgan and I both had a friend coming to join us. So Morgan and I decided to leave and head over to one of our favorite Portland haunts, a pool hall called The Rialto. Our friends Virgina and Marshal joined us there for drinks.


It was great to see Marshal. I haven't seen him in years. We used to work together at the first television station that I worked at in Medford and we were roommates when he first moved to Portland back in 2001.

Marshal sometimes makes short films with Alden, another former co-worker from my Medford days. You can check them out on the NealHam website.

We all just hung out talking and catching up for a while and at the end of the night Morgan and I hopped a cab back to her folks' place. It's much easier to get a cab in Portland than it is in Spokane. So we had a really fun time, except for that God awful band and that God awful Chai tea beer.

Later,
CS

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