Friday is the gateway to the weekend. It inspires us to face the week and its challenges. However, if you read last week’s post, you’ll know this was no average Friday. Only the most established alcoholics would rise to the challenge presented by this Friday. We are those men, and these are the stories we have to share. GABF day 2 was upon us, and we were ready for glorious debauchery.
Surprising to all of us, we woke with no hangovers. This proved fortuitous since we were supposed to attend a beer release event held by Magic Hat. I mean, yeah we could have gone to the Sam Adams brunch like 90% of the rest of the media but I didn’t make a reservation for the Sam Adams thing. So Magic Hat it was. Whatever. It was an intimate event, we drank a bunch of coffee IPA (Mixed feelings personally) and got to meet several people from the brewery including one of the head brewers. It was rad. I’m not upset about the decision.
Fast forward to 5:30 that night, and we were getting ready to walk through the doors to the convention center. This time around it was fun to be on the crowd’s end of the cheer tidal wave. I finally realized people weren’t fist-pumping Jersey Shore fuckstick fans when they walked in with their arms up, they were actually showing off their wristbands so they didn’t have to keep their ID out the whole time. One more way the festival has figured out how to mainstream the entrance of 13,000 people.
Our plan was to head right to Three Floyds to try and catch some of their beers early on in the night since they closed down their booth after about an hour and a half on Thursday. That plan proved to be fucked. We headed directly to the booth and by the time we got there, the line was already at least 50 people long. The same could be said for New Glarus. We didn’t even try to look at Russian River or any other hot spot.
Observing the crowd, I noticed the hall was substantially more crowded within the first hour than the previous session. I was kind of disappointed by the lack of costumes in the crowd though. To be perfectly honest, I was dead tired already and unsure how much I was going to be able to enjoy the festivities. Then, out of nowhere, a tiny hurricane arrived. Cups were slapped out of hands immediately followed by dick punches; everyone was put on red alert.
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My favorite moment came when a couple guys with video cameras decided to interview him about his necklace comprised purely of cheese and cracker dipping sticks. He was astonishingly well behaved. They seemed like nice guys putting together a family friendly video and I was on pins and needles waiting for what I knew was coming. They, however, did not see anything coming and were completely blindsided when Doctoberfest shouted his answer to their final question, “BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING CHEESE AND FUCKING CRACKERS!” The camera was off and pointed to the ground before he could even finish his sentence and I was gasping for air.
The rest of the night was basically one big fucking struggle to try and keep as much of our 12 person group together for more than 10 minutes at a time. At its peak, the Friday session was WAY more crowded than Thursday night. That said, as long as you didn’t care about getting a fancy pants beer from one of the super popular breweries, you could very easily get around to plenty of smaller breweries and try their beers.
I was actually cool with this premonition because really, if I’m going to go through a fuckton of trouble to try a big ol #whalezbro beer, I’d rather get more than an ounce. Plus, plenty of the breweries were in places I doubt I’ll visit any time soon. Sorry, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, and several other states, you aren’t high on my vacation plans anytime soon, so our quick little affair at GABF will have to do. We actually spent considerable time in the “Great Lakes” and “Pacific Northwest” regions, which was very cool with me.
Around 9:45, we started hearing rumblings of last call. I looked around and realized that we had lost just about everyone we came with outside of the BnL crew. Long story short, we partied again. This time we classed up Beauty Bar, an old salon-turned-bar-and-dance-club. Once Pete and I managed to get back to my apartment, we feasted on the food in my apartment, which consisted of tortilla chips and spicy brown mustard.
Another Friday in the books, albeit a slightly different Friday than we were used to. The good news was after two days of festival we were still enjoying the beers and trying plenty of new things. The vast selection beers and breweries truly lived up to the hype. Would it sustain for one more day? We were going to have to wait and see. Tomorrow would be the slow sprint to the finish line. Would we cross that line limping, hunched over or crawling, or will the promise of another day inspire us to reach for greatness?
