Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Brewer Under the Bridge

Whenever I step foot in Wisconsin I tend toward gluttony. It happened several years ago when I had to go tend to management red flags at a Dells location the photo company I worked for operated. During the initial 9 days there to turn things around my colleague Matt and I would work a long day, forgetting to eat and pool our per diem into heavy food and drink. This would leave us lethargic, sitting in the hotel jacuzzi like beached whales. We'd soon call such spells of lethargy and ill ease with digestion "Dells Mode."

My girlfriend and I on occasion take a long weekend. We've done a trip to the Dunes, camping somewhere outside of Sandwich, IL, the Dells, and this weekend past, Milwaukee. The highlight of the trip was the Lakefront Brewery tour, located under a bridge by the river, usually a locale for some seedy concoctions, but the beverages here were a delight. And an economical venture into day drinking. For $7 you get the tour, 4 tokens for samples, and a coupon for a free beer at a local restaurant. And a pint sized glass. The tour guide had a Rollie Fingers mustache, and issued a dynamic comedic performance. After the tour we crossed the tiered bridge, looking as though it was left over from old days of carting product from the mills, and strolled down the Historic Brady Street to find a place on the list to eat and cash in on our free drink coupon. The street didn't look all that historic. We settled on a place called Crisp Pizza Bar and I tried macaroni and cheese pizza for the first time. After several beers and heavy pizza, I was hit with a dusting of "Dells Mode" and was ready for bed at the hour of 9pm. 

Deep hotel sleep was interrupted at some wee hour from some family shouting at each other down the hall. And some guy, we're not sure if he was part of it, shouting "shut the fuck up!"

Hotel brunch was good. We tried the hotel jaccuzzi and pool the next morning at the Radisson but they were on the cold side. We attended a Brewers game at Miller Park, and hot damn, that is a nice stadium. There was carpet on the upper deck corridor, the bathroom was clean, I could have pooped in it if I had to, and no troughs, so I didn't get pee shy when I went to relieve myself. And fireworks going off at an inside ballpark! They were done safely, no one was hurt, they must know what they were doing. And home runs were hit! I saw a batter get on base from bunting! No shit, that never happens, bunting usually seems such a weird move, like asking for an out, but I'm by no means an expert on baseball. When we left the stadium, I noticed everyone had the same body shape, stocky. Not to be cruel and point out such a thing, but Milwaukee being a beer-centric city (if you took beer out of its sphere of daily action, it would collapse economically) the vast majority of the inhabitants will probably accumulate a little beer fat. I wonder if they ever proclaim themselves suffering from "Dells Mode" or whatever label they may have for it.

We picked up some local Wisconsin beers to take back to the hotel later that night, and I made the mistake the day before of taking off my bottle opener key chain to organize my apartment keys to give to the cat sitter. I charmed the hotel bartender to let me borrow her's so I could pop open all the beers, run it back, and proceed to drink them all while playing the board game Betrayal on House on the Hill with some friends of ours that met us up for the weekend. It was an exhilarating game, yet complex, glad we had experienced friends explain it to us, and once again I felt my stomach blood vessels hog all the attention and send me into "Dells Mode." 

2 comments:

Radioactive Tori said...

That game is one of my favorites!

The Igloo Oven said...

Glad to know others know of this! It was rad good one!