Has anyone ever wondered why the drink options are so sucky at all the festivals? In Austin it seems like there are a dozen festivals every month, and the abundance of festivals coincides with a directly proportional sucky festival drink selection.
Here is a micro-sample snapshot of recent festival drinks in Austin:
Last weekend there was the Austin Ice Cream Festival. Drink options consisted of Bud Light, Budweiser, Shiner Bock (in a can, warm in our case) or some frozen dacquiris of the bottled mix/cheap well rum (or maybe even wine, not sure) variety. $4 for a warm can of Shiner, and that was the best offering.
This past weekend we had the Red Bull Flugtag on Saturday, where people make up some flimsy flying contraption and run it off a ramp into the lake. Though I was initially very excited about this, it was one of the most hateful events I can remember in my long a critical history of Austin festivals. Too many f*cking people, where they came from I can't even imagine. After advertising heavily for this event, the turnout was so great that they were turning people away at the gate. The gate was part of the problem--the only reason why they needed to have a gate around a very spacious public park was so that they could profit off of beer sales, and so our draconian Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission could have its way regarding venue boundaries. After being turned away at the gate, a few determined festivalgoers decided to bound over the fence. A more determined Robin Hood of festival equality decided to tear down the fence altogether, and the crowd flooded in. At the beer tent, about 15 minutes after the event started, they announced that their awesome selection (of Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Lone Star) had already been depleted: All that would be available was 12 oz. cans of Lone Star, for $4. For readers outside the Lone Star distribution area, it is the "National Beer of Texas", which is only slightly more flavorful than the bigger national beers (which is to say not flavorful at all) and sells for $7.99/12 pack or thereabouts. For as much as I detest it, there was not even a Vodka Red Bull available at the Red Bull event.
What happened to Austin as the City of Ideas? What about Austin as one-of-the-best-cities-in-the-country-to-live-in? What about the Austin that cared about supporting local independent businesses and their products? Here's an idea--how about a good drink at one of our countless festivals? How about better-cocktails-for-better-living? Why hasn't City Council acted on this? (Probably because they only respond to the developers, but that is another story...maybe if we concerned cocktailians created a Better Beverage Bureau we could get somewhere.) Kidding aside, it is silly that with all the great local breweries in this area we have to put up with Anheuser Busch crap at every event we go to, with only a few exceptions (Eeyore's Birthday being a notable one, where the locals dominate.)