Highland Brewing Trip in Asheville

The first place I stopped when I got to Asheville was Table, where my good friend Connie Coady works as a manger. It's a great restaurant with great cocktails. I missed Connie Coady a lot. It is one of the great tragedies of living a peripatetic life that one rarely gets to spend time with the he people he loves. But it's also, then, even more wonderful seeing long-lost friends across chasms of time.

Minouche is kind of lady in charge over at Highland Brewing Company. She's a wonderful person who is a credit to the industry. She gave Connie Coady and me a tour of the brewery. We'll get to that later. First we tried a bunch of wonderful beer. I love this brewery. They're the best-selling craft beer in North Carolina, and I'd really like to see them do more up here in Virginia.

Asheville is filled with breweries. You can just wander around the town and find something cool to check out if beer is one of things you find cool, and why wouldn't you? Above is a picture of Lexington Avenue Brewery (LAB). LAB makes some good beers, but what I like about their brewery the most is their streetside outdoor eating area. I met some new friends out there, and they drove me to the next brewery--people are really nice in the south.

The next brewery we I went to was Asheville Brewing Company. They had a firkin going. I'm always trying to get more spots to do firkins. It is a one-of-a-kind beer every time, and it's the perfect reason for a person to go out and visit a bar or restaurant instead of sitting at home. If you're looking to give your guests a special experience and get more folks to pay attention to your beer program, talk to your vaeagle rep about firkins today!

Then a friend from Staunton, VA came to meet me there. Nuit is a person who's full of awesome energy, so she was up for continuing my adventure with me. . . after a few drinks, of course.

More beers need to get ninja.

After hitting a drum circle and a couple more breweries, we made it back to Table. We hung out with Coady's S.O., Alex Matisse, and he took a picture of me with his friends from Texas. Upstairs, there's a great cocktail bar. We closed the bar.

Ornate entrance to the brewery.

Taps at Highland.

Giant Papier Mâché Scottish Highland mascot.

Master brewer on a lift.

Even the coffee bars have craft draft in Asheville. Fantastic. I hate it when people tell me they don't have the space for draft beer. This is a tight space pictured, and it works fine.

A cup of coffee was the last thing I drank with Conn Coady and Alex Matisse. I wish it were in one of his incredible cups.

If you haven't been to Asheville yet, go. It's a lovely town filled with lovely people and lovely beer. There are great restaurants, cool bars, and even a store that only sells belt buckles. I bought one that says JACK because I was told that was a thing in the south back in the 70's or something.

I can't wait to go back.

Reading Anyone?

Tonight is the open mic for writers night at the Darjeeling Café. I like this event a lot because I get to share what I'm working on with the people in my community and also to hear what everyone else is doing. It's mostly fiction writers, which gets a little monotonous if a lot go one after another, but most everyone is pretty good, so there's always something to come back to if you daze off.

To sex things up a bit, here's a picture of Danica Patrick, a photo yielded by google when I searched "sexy fiction writer who loves to fuck poets"

I'm glad there is a scene here, such that it is, but it also makes me miss my writer friends in big cities. I wish sometimes that I was back in a big city that had a monthly reading series or ten. I want to maybe start a reading series with poets from the east coast, but it's difficult to convince anyone to come to a backwater. Hmm. I'm thinking it would be fun to try. If anyone wants to come to Staunton and read at my restaurant to people who like literature and "edgy stuff," too, please email me. We'll get something started.

Share Something with an American You Love

I've been thinking a lot about tea in America. I've been thinking a lot about how Americans drink and maybe just how Americans are.
Before beer and wine and spirits and tea and cola, there was water. Just like animals, the only thing we drank was water, and it was by far the most important thing humans did. The first non-water drinks people got hold of was considered magical or to at least possess supernatural powers and a connection to gods and the cosmos.
Ancient people drank from shared vessels with long straws, and rituals were built around drinks. The vessels were held aloft in a gesture of thanks or offering to the supernatural. Then people shared drinks.
Unlike food, drinks can actually be truly shared. When everything is coming out of the same pot, it's not like cutting up pieces of bread or pizza, where everything is unequal and maybe you got an extra mushroom on yours and I didn't get as much onion on mine. Everything in the pot is the same when it comes to liquid, and when we're drinking from straws, we are literally drinking the same thing.
Eventually ceramics and glass and silver became more readily accessible, and people were all able to afford to drink from their very own cups. When people drank, though, they did it together and when they had their own cups, they raised them up like they did shared vessels and then clinked them together as gesture representing that what they were drinking came from a single vessel.

Drinking is a magical necessity of life. And it's something that we build our cultures around. Everything else can be put on hold as long as you keep drinking. Without drinking, you're dead.

Tea, is still drunk today–for the most part–out of a shared vessel that is displayed on or around the table. If you drink alone, it's still great, but not the same. And this brings me to Americans...
Americans like things in their OWN cups that they pour THEMSELVES. Approximately 85% of tea drunk in America is iced. They drink it in bottles from 7-11and big cups from Hardy's. This separates them from an important part of their humanity because it turns them into islands separated by liquid rather than members of a community that's connected by drink. Drink brings us together, don't let big businesses and corporations and politicians and other interests keep us from that. Share a bottle of something today. Share a pot of tea. Share a carafe. Whatever it is, do it with someone else and have an experience.

A Cartoon Elephant for Darjeeling Café

I drew an elephant girl for the Darjeeling Café. I wanted it to look very non-digital—what the kids call analogue these days. I think it's funny.

Floor Plan of the New Darjeeling Café

The Darjeeling Café is moving, in case you haven't heard. It's going to be bigger, better, and cozier than ever before. You are going to love it more than you have ever loved anything. You need a café to call your own, after all.
These are the preliminary floor plans, how we're laying out the space. Get ready for a full kitchen, people. It's going to be the best food you've ever put past your lips!

I made these at floorplanner.com if you're interested. It's a really good tool.

Tonight at the Darjeeling Café

There's a Mad Hatter's Tea Party going on at the Darjeeling Café tonight. The idea is that you come drink some tea and hang out a bit, then go to the Visulite, where they're showing a midnight matinee of the new ALICE IN WONDERLAND movie in 3D. MAD!