Terrible Beer: A Love Story

UPDATE: I was on Charlotte Today to discuss my encyclopedic knowledge of crap beer. Nice to know there will always be video footage of me holding a bottle of malt liquor on the internet.

In honor of Charlotte Craft Beer Week, I feel compelled to say this: a year and a half ago, I had three sips of Trappist Westvleteren 12. At the time, fewer than 100 people in North Carolina had ever had it. Monks in Belgium brew it only when they run short on cash. You can only buy it directly from the abbey, a case or two at a time. You have to call ahead with the license place number of the car you'll use to pick it up.

Somebody got a bottle. Seven of us split it. My three sips represented the pinnacle of my beer drinking career.

I hit bottom during the summer of 2001. I rented an apartment in the attic of a house a few blocks away from Ohio State University. The only air conditioner was a window unit that spit out a 70 degree breeze. My roommate Matt and I were short on cash. To stay cool in the Columbus heat, we bought beer. Terrible, cheap, skunky beer. Here, then, is a user's guide to the worst swill we could get our grubby hands on:

On Being Hit By A Car

A car hit me this morning. It was only a matter of time.

I was riding my bike up Selwyn Avenue in Charlotte. I crossed over Woodlawn, heading toward the Little Sugar Creek Greenway. I needed to turn left. This is a tough spot for a bicyclist on a four-lane road like Selwyn. You need to be away from the curb, in the left lane, in the domain of cars. Nobody was ahead of me. Several cars were behind. I was getting ready to extend my left arm when it happened.

I felt it first. Something brushed my elbow. Then my left handlebar buckled. There was the thunk of plastic snapping into plastic. I saw a silver hood out of the corner of my eye. My front wheel shuddered right.

Shit.

Paper Lanterns In The Night

I was at a wedding last night on a rooftop in downtown Greensboro. The bride and groom chose a string quartet version of the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" as their processional. They projected the Duke-UNC game on the wall at the reception. The father-daughter dance was at halftime. The matron of honor, a teacher, asked her second grade students to come up with marital advice for the newlyweds. One suggested that the husband should always protect his wife. Specifically, from black widow spiders and reptiles.

Toward the end of the evening, after the game was over and everyone had their fill of rooftop dancing, someone showed up with paper lanterns and a lighter. The bride and groom lit the flame. The paper bulged with hot air. They nudged it upward. It wasn't quite ready to lift off. It softly floated back down. They tried it a few times. At last, after everybody had grown a bit antsy, the lantern gently rose into the sky and floated up above the rooftops into the night.

There were more lanterns. We all got a try. One drifted dangerously close to the American flag at the top of a flagpole. Another bobbed up and down just inches from the top of the thick plastic tent that covered the altar. One rose straight up over the assembled crowd, the fuel dripping down dangerously close to the expensive suits and flammable hair. We gasped when there was trouble. We cooed once a lantern was safely adrift.

When it was over, a dozen lanterns were glowing in the sky, wobbling and burning, blue and white, flickering and fading. Nobody asked when they might go out. How long they would last. Where they might land. The only place they could go was up.