A beer for my people
If you write "LEFT HAND" on anything, I may buy it. If you write "LEFT HAND" on beer, I'm bound to buy and drink the beer with my left hand. Laura, Amy, Shakti, and I tried the beer garden at Arlington's Westover Market yesterday afternoon, and we had a good but confused time.
We had lunch, had a round and left with many questions. For instance, was there a keg somewhere? Some people had plastic cups. T. Table seemed to indicate as much. But, after wandering, looking for signage and trying to determine who worked there and who did not, we were referred to a wall of single bottles in the grocery store, at the opposite end from the beer garden. We then bought the bottles at the registers and then took them outside. Shakti had her bottle opener, fortunately.
The beers were tasty, but the process felt like a lot of work. Maybe, in our process-related jobs, we were biased toward confusion. Or maybe the garden was staffed differently at night when bigger crowds came.
Don't get me wrong. I'd go back for more. I'd never visited the market before, but it was friendly, bigger than I expected and had a good mix of the ordinary and the unexpected. The food we got the deli counter was tasty, and the butcher was a nice guy. While the garden itself was just off Washington Boulevard, adjoined a post office and backed up to a parking lot, the space worked. Some trees, some tents, some fans that were inactive in yesterday's beautiful weather, some comfortable chairs. I love sitting down in a chair that looks metal and finding it has strong plastic with some give and sway to it. Just a chair, yes, but still.
Previous beer garden visits:
-August 2009. Pix: America wants to see Salzburg rap.
-August 2009. Pix: Prague, part three places for no respectable man.
August 29th, 2010 at 5:56 PM
Lots of guys I play/have played with like to play music in this space. The Weathervanes, Brother Shamus, the Stylemasters…they all have players that I've shared the stage with at one time or another. But have I booked my own band there? NOOOOOOOOO.