Glory Days

On March 6, at around 5:11 pm, in the presence of Fox 29 and it's lovely reporter Nefertiti Jaquez, a large thirsty crowd watched as the Hammer Of Glory was presented to William Reed of the Standard Tap by the Philadelphia Roller Girls. It was a moment to behold in more ways than one.

Thus Philly Beer Week had begun for us.

Just a few seconds later, the first cask of Standard Ale was tapped and yours truly got the first glass of one of my favorite beers from 2008. The results: Standard Ale is still so damn good! It was so good in fact, that it was gone exactly one hour later as we were walking out the door to catch a cab to go to the Opening Tap ceremonies at the Comcast Center. Mr. Big Brother Big Sister himself, Steve Rubeo, was able to quickly hail one, cause he is a city boy at heart and knows how to do all that kind of important city stuff. So myself, and Mr. Steve were joined by the the brains behind the Sly Fox, Mr. Tim Ohst and the beer press darling of the moment, Suzanne "Kathleen Turner" Woods for a quick cab ride over.

Once we arrived, we all knew why our cable and Internet bills are so high. This place has one hell of a impressive lobby, not to mention the rest of the building itself. When your food court down on the lower level contains DiBruno Brothers and Susanne Foo, well, that makes the local pizza shop at your mall a little passe. The other thought I had was this, here we were, all of us crazy beer folks, who were now going to take over this place for a couple of hours, it just made me want to laugh just a little. We've come a long way baby to get where we got to today don't you think? Then to top it off, to see Nodding Head's Mike Fava pedaling a bike into the building with Ben Franklin and the Hammer Of Glory, how in the hell could you not laugh?

The amount of the local press corp that showed up for this was pretty substantial, as was the beer press, which seem to come from just about everywhere for this event, well, except one person who couldn't quite make it. As for the beer, it was your everyday event. The debut of Exit 4 from Flying Fish, a nice session spring ale from Nodding Head and a couple of others nice brews. Not a whole lot of special stuff, just a right smart bit of special people for one hell of an opening night.