The Beer-Hall Putsch
I was gonna wait until I was able to put up some pictures we took of this, but figured I may as well get this one over & done with, & deal with the fancy stuff later. It's old news now anyways, but what the hell.
10/24/05:
We spent Saturday gardening. Beer-gardening! Down at Alpine Village, where they hold Oktoberfest. I really can't say enough good things about it. Oktoberfest, that is...Alpine Village is so-so, I guess. The Alpine Inn is pretty cool, but the Village part is basically a few dusty souvenir shops, & a driving school, & a dentist's office. But we were there for the celebration going on in the big tent in the parking lot. Actually we got there early, so were were among the first few people inside. Who would've thought it's that much fun to sit & listen to oom-pah-pah? I must admit they had a rockin' band. These dudes in leiderhosen were chugging beer & running through the crowd & jumping up on the bench tables & basically earning their money during their 8-hour set.
I'm gonna try to post some of the pictures my girlyfriend too, especially one of the beer-garden safety guide, which, the security guards assured me when they saw me reading it closely, were not hard-&-fast rules. In the meantime, lemme tell ya:
The next day I was actually a little sore from waving my damn stein around like a drunken fool. At first I was just being campy & ironic or whatever, but after the third stein of the house brew I was really into it. It helped that the band kept playing songs which, they explained, you had to drink when the sang the chorus. Whew! Lotsa beer. The steins we bought at the gate (losta people brought their own freakin' beer-steins) got broken in pretty quickly. When we took them to the counter, theold guy working the taps saw that they were new & rinsed 'em out with beer. The first stein-full of Alpine Lager took a little while to get through, but the rest started disappearing pretty damn quick.
Almost as much of a spectacle as the beer-garden was the port-a-potty garden! The proverbial sea of humanity: as the night wore on, people were a little less concerned with keeping up appearances, & a little more concerned with finding somewhere to take a leak before they had an accident. I'm one to talk; I had to pull over on the way home to, uh, relieve myself. Jeez, I just realized...I took my beer into the john with me on one of the bathroom breaks. Eew. Was I really peeing with a half-full stein of beer tucked under my arm? Well, that must be the German way; after all, they're supposed to be super-efficient, right?
One of the funniest moments of the night, oddly enough, happened when we were first walking in. The guy behind us in line saw the coupons I had printed out off of the Alpine Village website, & asked in a booming baritone: "Ah, I see you haff a coupon zat you fotocopied!" When I handed my lady friend hers, he laughed, "Do you haff enough copies? I hope you haff von for your vife!" Before I could make with any kind of comeback, they opened the doors to the beer-garden, & he loped away towards the entrance like a Panzer rushing the Polish border.
Post script:
You can buy Alpine Lager at Cap'n'Cork in Los Feliz...that place with the Captain Morgan statue out front. It probably won't be the same unless you have a bunch of German roomates though.
10/24/05:
We spent Saturday gardening. Beer-gardening! Down at Alpine Village, where they hold Oktoberfest. I really can't say enough good things about it. Oktoberfest, that is...Alpine Village is so-so, I guess. The Alpine Inn is pretty cool, but the Village part is basically a few dusty souvenir shops, & a driving school, & a dentist's office. But we were there for the celebration going on in the big tent in the parking lot. Actually we got there early, so were were among the first few people inside. Who would've thought it's that much fun to sit & listen to oom-pah-pah? I must admit they had a rockin' band. These dudes in leiderhosen were chugging beer & running through the crowd & jumping up on the bench tables & basically earning their money during their 8-hour set.
I'm gonna try to post some of the pictures my girlyfriend too, especially one of the beer-garden safety guide, which, the security guards assured me when they saw me reading it closely, were not hard-&-fast rules. In the meantime, lemme tell ya:
The next day I was actually a little sore from waving my damn stein around like a drunken fool. At first I was just being campy & ironic or whatever, but after the third stein of the house brew I was really into it. It helped that the band kept playing songs which, they explained, you had to drink when the sang the chorus. Whew! Lotsa beer. The steins we bought at the gate (losta people brought their own freakin' beer-steins) got broken in pretty quickly. When we took them to the counter, theold guy working the taps saw that they were new & rinsed 'em out with beer. The first stein-full of Alpine Lager took a little while to get through, but the rest started disappearing pretty damn quick.
Almost as much of a spectacle as the beer-garden was the port-a-potty garden! The proverbial sea of humanity: as the night wore on, people were a little less concerned with keeping up appearances, & a little more concerned with finding somewhere to take a leak before they had an accident. I'm one to talk; I had to pull over on the way home to, uh, relieve myself. Jeez, I just realized...I took my beer into the john with me on one of the bathroom breaks. Eew. Was I really peeing with a half-full stein of beer tucked under my arm? Well, that must be the German way; after all, they're supposed to be super-efficient, right?
One of the funniest moments of the night, oddly enough, happened when we were first walking in. The guy behind us in line saw the coupons I had printed out off of the Alpine Village website, & asked in a booming baritone: "Ah, I see you haff a coupon zat you fotocopied!" When I handed my lady friend hers, he laughed, "Do you haff enough copies? I hope you haff von for your vife!" Before I could make with any kind of comeback, they opened the doors to the beer-garden, & he loped away towards the entrance like a Panzer rushing the Polish border.
Post script:
You can buy Alpine Lager at Cap'n'Cork in Los Feliz...that place with the Captain Morgan statue out front. It probably won't be the same unless you have a bunch of German roomates though.
posted by I. P. Frehley at 1:34 PM
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