This text appeared on ‘the back page’ of our most recent issue, written by Ryan Allan of @socalsessions… Please celebrate and appreciate National Beer Day responsibly!
Dear Craft Beer Lovers & Beer Festival Goers,
The following was provoked by my recent experience a beer festival in San Diego. It isn’t like I didn’t know that things got a little crazy at the end of a beer fest. I just never really saw it up close and without rose-colored glasses.
There were two sessions of the festival. One started at noon & the other at 5. We showed up for the late session around 4, and wow. Normal beer fest attendance involves a bunch of sober(ish) people gathering, forming a line, entering and collectively imbibing great beer likely upping their levels of intoxication as the evening goes. Sometimes some people get drunk. It happens, but usually we’re all on the same respective path. We all start sober and end up less than.
By offering two sessions those attending the evening sessions were given a special opportunity to see the aftermath of a beer fest while still waiting to get in to what we assumed would be a lovely evening of consuming great beer while watching the sunset over Coronado from the embarcadero in downtown San Diego. There is only one word I can use to describe it: carnage.
Walking up we passed through the aisle of food trucks near the exit. It was packed with drunked up fools. We watched people shove their way to the front of lines, scream for or at friends and strangers. One guy was literally passed out standing up in front of a pizza stand. It was almost mesmerizing to watch him sway back and forth with his eyes closed, arms overlapped and no one taking care of him. The men’s bathroom at the end of the food truck lane was destroyed. Beer fest debris and piss was everywhere. Two drunken girls were squatting and peeing over the urinals asking obviously uncomfortable dudes, “Are you mad? No, are you mad? Seriously, we do this all the time, but are you mad that we’re here? Are you mad?” They may still be there.
We were at the front of the evening session line at about 4:15 PM. Unfortunately, the entrance was also the exit. The drunkest who hadn’t exited calmly & respectfully when the announcement was made were still stumbling out. There were people falling on the ground in front of the entrance and attempting to go to sleep. People were shouting in the faces of the volunteer gate-keepers or screaming through the gate at friends who’d left them behind because they were acting a-fool. Idiots were hollering racist comments to their buddies about the Rent-a-Cop who was trying to make sure they wouldn’t get in trouble for breaking the law by sneaking beer out. Drunken buffoons were getting angry when the sober people in line wouldn’t hi-five them? People shouldn’t do those things. Trying to slap a brewery sticker on the chest of some girl with her boyfriend or husband? Definitely don’t do that.
The list of shitty behavior goes on and on. It was overwhelming. Do all beer festivals end this way? One or two idiots are always a risk, but this wasn’t just one or two. It was dozens, maybe hundreds. For the 30 minutes we were in line we watched people acting truly shitty as human beings. Have I acted that way after over-imbibing at past festivals? I hope not. If I have I am truly sorry.
Ultimately, beer festivals serve three purposes.
1. It’s an opportunity for breweries to promote their products directly to the end consumer.
2. It’s a chance for beer lovers to celebrate beer & community together.
3. Often, it is an opportunity to use our love of beer to raise money for a good cause.
Nothing about experiencing the end of the beer festival’s first session felt like a celebration of beer or made me feel good about supporting a good cause in College for Cancer. If anything, it made me reconsider wanting to attend the festival or be associated with other beer lovers. As someone who works with, writes about and is involved in the beer community on a number of levels I was embarrassed. As drinkers we need to be more aware of our impact. Southern California is truly a glorious place to be beer lover. We have great breweries, great festivals and great weather to enjoy them in. As a community need to be better than we were that day.
Instead of looking at a festival as an opportunity to drink as much as possible let’s consider that it is more an opportunity to try new beers, and raise a glass as a community to how lucky we are. We will be at another festival, and hope you are too. Let’s represent beer drinkers as the Champions we are.
In the end we still went to festival, and put that rough start out of our minds enough to have a good time. When things started to to take a turn to Crazydrunktown, we headed out early. In the spirit of all things craft beer, stay classy.
Arriano says
I don’t know why anyone bothers with beer festivals any more. These days you can have your own little beer festival at just about any of a thousand or more local bars, restaurants, brewpubs or brewery tasting rooms in San Diego. Just the other day I was in a Round Table Pizza and there were 10 craft beers on tap. At a Round Table! Beer festivals are over-priced, over crowded, and a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather save money and enjoy beer at Toronado, Hamilton’s, or any of the many, many other local establishments in town.
Brian says
It’s pretty apparent which festival is being called into question here. I, too, was at the 5pm session and can vouch that it was quite a disaster. Everyone, from the author of the initial article to the commenters, has brought up fair points but there’s a couple more that still irk me which haven’t been mentioned.
1) I attend a lot of festivals and have noticed that most tend to last about 3 hours (or 4 with VIP). This one had two general sessions that lasted 4 hours a piece and a VIP session that allowed you to attend both - that’s 8 hours of drinking! Yes, there was an hour in between sessions where no one was supposed to drink but, from varied accounts, it sounds like this wasn’t strictly enforced. No one needs 8 hours of unlimited beer. Whoever thought this was a good idea probably only had one thing on their mind - money. Those VIP tickets were outrageously overpriced and a generally bad idea overall. 4 hours is more than enough for anyone. You’re only inviting chaos by allowing more than that.
2) I know it’s common for some breweries to run out of a particular beer at a festival but we saw many breweries run out of *all* their beer and shut down their tents by 7pm. This was only halfway into the second session and, for those of use who showed up a little late, was quite a disappointment. We missed out on a lot of beers due to this and I know I’m not alone with this complaint as many others I talked to shared the same sentiment. People pay a lot of money to attend these festivals. You would think breweries would be better prepared for a longer festival like this one.
I don’t want to sound completely negative here either. There were many great things about this festival - the location, the weather, the breweries, etc - but it’s glaringly obvious how poorly planned and executed this was that I just can’t get this bad taste out of my mouth.
Ron says
Dear WC and Ryan,
Thanks for taking the time to write-up what strikes me as an unfortunate experience. We have all been at those festivals. I believe I was even at the first session of the festival in question and was pleased my friends and I departed when we did.
And although I don’t think the behavior you describe of fest-goers should be excused or tolerated, a small percentage of the issues experienced may have been resolved by a better organized festival - given the location.
Indulge me for a moment, please.
Both Embarcadero Marina Parks, South and North are fantastic venues for food and beverage festivals. Historically two of my favorites within the City of San Diego. And comparing each location against each other, with two separate festivals approximately six months apart, Sierra got it right in late summer/early fall at Embarcadero Park North and this “stay classy” event just barely missed.
Rather than spiral out of control down the rabbit hole as I fear I may, I will bullet point what I would have liked to better experience at the fest in question.
- Entrance/Exit. I would have liked more organization around the queue process for gaining access to the event. at 11:50AM like many folks before and after our arrival, we were queued for a good 20-30 minutes to enter the fest. Perhaps more signage for open lanes would be useful or more staff.
- Place the food trucks within the boundary of the festival. For goodness sake. By placing the alcohol soaking food outside of the venue, you limit sales for small businesses and perpetuate a mindset of, “I am not leaving a time-limited tasting to get food”. Note - perhaps some of the beer being poured and the food might go well together. Mind you, upon noticing the location of the trucks while waiting in the obscenely long entrance line, folks in my group swapped turns fueling up on grub.
- Water. Water. Water. Water. Please. Bavarians will argue that beer is water - and they have a point - but especially at an outdoor festival along the water, please make it more available and not staffed by sales reps trying to hook you up with their home delivery service.
- Shade. I don’t know where the fault of responsibility resides for positioning of the event, but little use was made of the trees that line the sidewalk of the venue. As a matter of fact, the sidewalk (with lovely access to shade), was outside the boundary of the festival.
Perhaps it would be more fair of me to have written the organizers with the points identified above. But, your contribution triggered memory and an unstoppable string of words.
Ryan, you are spot on, all festivals should promote the greater good, from the small community beer fest to Munich’s Oktoberfest. The responsibility lies within each of us, festival goers and organizers to do our part. A lot of the time, we are all in sync. When we are not, well…
Cheers,
Ron
Michael Puente says
You ask, “Have I acted that way after over-imbibing at past festivals?” It’s safe to say the answer is no.
At risk of sounding like an old fart reminiscing about the good old days, I do remember just a few short years ago when craft breweries were for craft beer lovers. There were never any beefs, just friendly, nice people enjoying great beer and meeting new friends. But it seems like the drunken masses recently discovered craft beer and have brought their problems to our once peaceful scene.
I am a webmaster and marketer for a San Diego limo company that provides brewery tours, A Plus Limos 858-650-0557. Back in 2013, I took a few buddies to Green Flash and noticed they had a bouncer at the door. A bouncer! At a craft brewery?!
We developed a brewery tour policy to help promote good relations with local breweries stating restrictions such as prohibiting hard alcohol in transit, and limiting the number of brewery stops. This policy worked well for us until recently things got so bad that we received a letter from a local top five brewery telling us they were now prohibiting brewery tours. This brewery cited examples of drunkenness, sneaking beers for friends that had been cut off and loud, obnoxious behavior.
The drunken jerks were hold up in bars, but now they’re polluting our beloved craft beer scene and it sucks.
Thank you for writing this long overdue article.
Cheers!
Ryan says
Cheers to you Ron, and Michael. Thanks for reading. FYI: the organizers of that particular fest reached out to me shortly after and admitted to making a lot of the mistakes you brought up Ron. Hopefully, they learn from it and make adjustments.
Craft beer, like all things that find success will have it’s share of growing pains. I think in general “good old days” are still here. We just might have to navigate through a crappy hour every now and again to get there. And being that this is SoCal when those crap moments come there is probably another great craft beer bar, brewery or festival nearby.
Ryan