Finally made it in to Beveridge Place Pub to celebrate Hoptoberfest, their annual IPA jubilee. Fourteen hoppy Washington taps. Voting for the 2010 “house” IPA. Fellowship.
Darkness.
The power went out Wednesday night as soon as the wife and I sat down. The trivia night crowd cheered the sudden darkness. We squinted at the food we’d brought for dinner—a Subway/Zeeks combo—and thought maybe we’d have to down our beers quick and eat at home. (I require light to eat.) But before I could fret too much, BPP’s generator keyed an emergency light close to our table. The pub’s staff hit the darkest tables with candles a few minutes later.
“What’s the word?” I asked one of the candle-carrying bartenders.
IPA keeps the darkness at bay
She took a stool beside us and grinned. She dismissed the blackout with a wave, said Seattle City Light was working on a downed telephone pole and would have a fix in “45 minutes to an hour.” “But we’ll never fucking close,” she said. “We never close. Remember the windstorm in 2006? The snow last year?” We made it in for the latter debacle, I said. She got animated talking about how people came to the dark pub with sleeping bags and lanterns. How they enjoyed beer despite nature’s wrath. “The generator goes to the beer first,” she said, assuaging fears that the IPA could go warm. “It’s covered.”
The bar line was long half an hour later, and not just because every transaction was done on a napkin or old-school credit card slip. The place was filling up despite its dimness. I followed the Schooner Exact 3-Grid IPA (my choice for BPP house brew since the beer’s inception) with a wonderfully yellow-bitter (and limited-release) Lupulin Fresh Hop from Full Sail Brewing. Rena stuck with Whistling Pig. (Bo-ring.)
I got back to our table to find my wife eyeballing a yellow lab puppy across the room. The little dog was flopping on an admirer’s lap, flashing a fat pink belly and teeny sharp teeth. “I’m going to kick those people and steal their puppy,” she said. Her smirk belied the jealousy of a dramatic squint.
Rena wants a dog. She wants to be one of the people who bring their cute dogs to BPP, to Lincoln Park, to everywhere they go. As do I. But who wants to raise a dog—or a child, for that matter?—in a crappy little apartment? The little lab, twisting in someone else’s arms now, gets us talking about a house again. Can’t have two pints without discussing it.
Twenty minutes later, the power’s still out. The puppy is spread-eagle on the floor, tuckered out. I’m wondering how we’ll cash out without any cash.
The bartender who said BPP would never fucking close comes by as I drain my glass. I hand it over and ask about using a debit card. She says not to worry, they’ll take a rubbing of my card if need be. She picks up a half-empty pitcher from a vacant table beside ours. “Who would do this?” Waste good beer, she means. She sticks her nose in the pitcher and takes a deep breath. “Smells like 3-Grid.” She puts the pitcher on our table and walks away.
The lights pop back on then, eliciting a collective groan. The puppy lifts its head and locks tired eyes with Rena for a moment. She looks to me to see that I witnessed the brief, across-the-room gaze, then dons that pissed-off, jealous squint again. And we both laugh.
The pitcher isn’t 3-Grid. It’s some kind of amber. But it’s another two pints. Ten bucks we can say we saved, that we can add to our down-payment, dog-and-a-family-someday kitty.
