Sometimes things work out as planned, and you’re left almost wishing plan B had been needed. You know how it goes – you make the best plans with the best of intentions, knowing full well something is going to go wrong along the way that will probably diminish or change the responsibilities you thought you were going to have. Everyone does this kind of planning, because it’s part of the dance we do…after a couple drinks, you’d absolutely love to sing kareoke all night with your old friend (later this week), but when the time comes to plan the night, you find yourself less interested than you were the night before.
In my case, everything worked out and now I’m mostly responsible for an aged child, a grown human that had a full life and now is never hungry or interested in going anywhere. It’s not unexpected, but it’s been a wholesale change in the life I thought I’d be leading a few years ago. You can go back and read some of that in previous posts, btw, but a long chain of misadventures has left me unencumbered with other responsibility and, somehow, as the best candidate to care for someone with dimensia. I’m learning new things about my grandfather, things like maybe we could have been friends, while working through the reality of having not just a human, but also his house and things, to take care of. This time last year I was technically homeless and #vanlife by choice, so you might call it a ‘big change’.
One of the ways I will deal with this new stress is by drinking beer at all the local places. I’ve already talked about La Cumbre Westside, where I’m at currently, but I’m excited by the proliferation of other beer-centric spots I’ve seen already, without even trying to explore. There’s a burger place around the corner that carries more than a dozen local craft beers, and sells them in 22 oz mugs, and I had lunch yesterday at a mediocre strip-mall place called Neighbors that carried a ton of local brew alongside the usual bud lite and coors. It’s hard to gauge the ratio of sales, but most places that aren’t owned by a brewery still carry plenty of domestic beers from the big guys. It’s not subtle, the fact that even though craft beer has gotten more popular, it’s still just a bit player in the market overall.
When I go to the taprooms, they’ve all got 4-packs of ‘tallboy’ cans, but it’s rare to find them anywhere else. Coming from the Portland area, I’m left disappointed. I saw the market there readily accept the tall-format locally-brewed cans, sometimes taking up an entire door of the local 7-eleven, right next to big cans of (xx)Lite. I haven’t had the chance to explore many corner-store doors here, but they’re mostly filled with domestics and Voo-Doo ranger variants, which may or may not count as actual craft beer, I havent decided yet. A quick search of google reveals a small handful of places that list as ‘bottle shops’ and most of those are not anything of the sort. I’ll have to dig deeper for Albuquerque’s craft beer nerd scene than I have had to anywhere else, but it must exist – just look at the number of breweries!
There’s a bunch, basically
Way back in 2010 I was living in Albuquerque, after a string of unfortunate events, and found myself talking to someone putting together a craft beer festival at the state fair grounds, with some buy-in from the city and plenty of interest from the young breweries in the region. It hadn’t really been done at that scale before, and the inclusion of several Colorado-based breweries really complicated things, but we had a great day and turnout. I learned a lot about the local scene that day, and some of the really stifling laws and regulations around beer in New Mexico, and it’s helped flesh out my understanding of the different challenges of the brew scene in different places. And now I’m back in New Mexico, looking at things with a different lens that I did last time I was here, but a lot of things have remained the same here – unnecessarily complicated.
Going Bananas
A few weeks ago, my family got invited to a baseball game at Isotopes stadium by a friend that said she had ‘VIP’ tickets. I’m not a huge sports fan, though, so I didn’t put the pieces together and figure out what kind of event I was going to; it’s still April at this point, and the AAA baseball season either hasn’t started or is still in early season pre-game BS. As we approach the stadium, I’m shocked to see the entry line stretch around and down the block, with hoards of people joining every moment. We paid the $15 for parking, used our handicapped plates strategically, and made our way to the back of the blocks-long line.
At this point, I’ve realized that I missed something, some vital detail, about the night’s event. Bananas t-shirts and hats were everywhere, with kids decked out, head to toe, in merch. It was everything you’d want from a local fanbase if you were in the head office of, say…the Isotopes, the local team. I was confused.
WHO THE FUCK ARE THE BANANAS?
The something that eluded me was the concept of the ‘exposition’ baseball team. I will spare you any other explanation than “The Harlem Globetrotters of Baseball”. This team called the Savannah Bananas were a travelling ‘baseball as an actual show’ sort of team, with rival team in tow. It was surreal, and fun, and it cost a fortune to get a warm-ass beer. It was prohibitively expensive to get adult drinks at this venue, borderline criminal. I’ll get into that in a minute though, because I had fun despite this.
There were silly antics from the teams and a weird set of rules, but the night passed quickly, with dozens of skits of dance ensembles on the field. If you’re looking to get your kids interested in baseball, this is the kind of game you take them too – and let me tell ya, the stadium was sold-out full of kids and families. There’s a reason these folks sell out wherever they go, and if you’ve got the cash, it’s worth trying to get tickets to take the family to a Bananas game. All the old rules about eating and/or drinking beforehand apply.
*grumble*
I assisted my father at the bar when we ordered drinks for our little group, and it exceeded $120 for 5 basic drinks or beers. I almost stopped him from paying, I was so horrified. The insult continued as the drinks came, and they were not anywhere near the size I would hope for the cost. Then a significant number of my party went to find food, coming back a half hour later with a food-like burger. What was left of my small beer was warm by that point, and I’d been eyeing my friend’s ‘margarita’ for several minutes by that point. The whole time, I’m trying to calm myself by understanding the need to not get fans drunk and whatever. Maybe I’m wrong, but they’ve gone too far at this venue – I’ll try to go to another game later this season, a local game, and see what gives.
I’m trying to quantify the way that NM is different with the beer scene, but I know this tactic has been used in many stadiums around the country – raise prices for beer and liqour, pour tiny amounts, and hope people can’t afford to get too shitty drunk while they’re at your game or concert. The problem is that it really impacts the average event-goer that isn’t trying to get smashed but wants to unwind a little – without spending another $xx on top of the $xxx you spent to visit their little venue.
But this is how things operate in the U.S. One of the principal reasons it’s hard to find New Mexican beers anywhere outside of their brewery is that it costs extra money for them to distribute to different kinds of businesses. Instead of paying one fee to own, operate and distribute, there are additional costs to sell products in different kinds of outlets. I spoke with co-owner of Flock of Moons ‘Jay’ (off the record and informally) at some length about the costs and structure they’re working within, and in their case, it’s not worth the extra thousands of dollars to try to get cans and tap handles anywhere but their taproom. To get into any other taproom, bar or grocery store, it all costs extra. These small working breweries have to carefully consider the cost/gain ratio of spending that capital on getting into an under-developed retail market that will offer plenty of roadblocks and challenges to the travelling beer salesmen without much chance of moving the needle much.
WHERE DO I GO NOW?
There are no bottle shops here worth talking about – there just isn’t a place for me to go and grab a selection of different beers from nearby, and I explained some of that reason above. It costs money for the small local brewery to sell their products outside of the taproom, and it’s hard math that determines that outcome. There just isn’t a ‘beer bar’ or ‘bottle shop’ in ABQ that I’ve been able to find. It’s almost painful, because I don’t want to have to drive all over town to grab some brews. I’m not going to NOT drive around town to visit these places, but it’s hard to get a real fix on how the beers are locally when you have to work so hard to compare them.
You can feel a little something special in the air, though, when you do go out to the breweries and have some dinner or just a pint. The people I’ve met have been friendly and open, happy to talk about beer and why they’re into it or what they like or how they find it. I feel like Albuquerque has the momentum to become a destination for beer lovers if the distribution laws were just that little bit more open, allowing for any ambitious brewer to get their beer onto the shelf at any store in the state without extra fees and bullshit. I feel like the hardworking brewers in this state could use a break.