L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Pt. 4: Free Beer

August 25, 2008 on 5:21 am | In General Musing, Travel |

I don’t mean free as in, you don’t have to pay for it, but free in the sense of roaming wild and unfettered. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Madison, Wisconsin was totally hitting on me today. The weather was transplendant; clear, sunny, low-70s, light breeze, low humidity, no bugs. A music festival beneath the leafy canopy of Orton Park directly across the street from where I’m staying rang with really excellent jazz all day, capped off with an amazing set by a band with arguably the best name ever: Garaj Mahal. (Do check them out.)

The houses of Madison are quaint, old and colorful (There are two purple houses across the park). The residents may or may not be quaint or old, but they are certainly the whitest bunch I’ve seen in a long, long time. And I live in Redmond, Washington which is pretty relentlessly white. Politically, Madisonians run the gamut from Obama supporters representing the far right and moving left from there. And all those babies that aren’t getting born in Seattle? Madison is picking up the slack. Sticky blond toddlers swarmed the park in scampering hordes. Every third belly was festooned with bump or a Snugli. I was hesitant to drink the water.

As you may have guessed, if you’ve been following this thread, I finally did escape from Detroit. I was a bit confused about the length of the flight. Looking at the schedule it appeared to be an 18 minute flight. Eighteen minutes? I could have walked! (Looking at a map, it became clear that Madison is WEST of Detroit across a time zone and walking would entitle me to start a religion, since Lake Michigan is on the route.)

About the free beer. In Seattle, if you want to have a beer at a public festival you must do so penned up in a corral euphemistically called a “beer garden.” It’s hard to imagine any place less like a garden. It is drinker’s purgatory. To get into a beer garden you must present a photo ID or no beer for you. Queen Elizabeth II recently tried to snag a brewski at the hemp fest, but they weren’t buying the “left my driver’s license in my other palace” line. Make no mistake: This has nothing to do with preventing underage drinking. It is a shakedown. The City can come in any time and check for IDs. If they anyone in the beer garden without, whatever their age, they fine the vendor. Easy revenue. We’ve gotten so used to the indignity of having to sit in time out with our beers that we’ve started to think it’s normal.

But in Madison, beer roams free. You step up to the booth, slap your three bucks down and ask for a beer. If you look like you might be a grown up, they hand over the beer! I felt oddly naughty, walking around with my beer open. In front of the kids!

Tomorrow, Madison might show a different face. But for today, I am a stressball that was compressed into a small ugly wad suddenly released to slowly unfold to its original shape. If the city is hitting on me, I am totally falling for its lines.

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