Two Months
I last set foot in a pub on Friday, March 13. That was the week our understanding of the pandemic underwent radical change, and most of us puny humans were having a hard time keeping up with the pace of change in our realities.
That was the week Tom Hanks announced he’d contracted the virus; when the NBA cancelled the rest of its season. Those were clearly the right decisions, but some of us were still not registering what had become of our new world. That day I listened to an interview with New York mayor Bill de Blasio as he vehemently defended his decision to keep schools open (he would change his mind two days later). Most states hadn’t issued shutdown orders yet, as they, like me, remained still in denial phase of the crisis. Tellingly, organizers of the Olympics were still charging ahead with plans to light the torch in Tokyo on July 24th. It was typical of the way we were thinking about things at the time—four months seemed like an inconceivably long time for the world to be dealing with such a major interruption. For the IOC and many of us at the time, such a scenario was literally unimaginable.
My own thinking at the time was similarly misplaced: we must support local business. Over the course of that week (March 9-13), people stopped going to pubs and restaurants, and it was clear this was going to be a crisis for them. Sally and I were in the mood for pizza, so we headed to Old Town, which was predictably empty. I remember joking with our server about Vienna lager. Old Town had a great example I loved, and we chuckled at how few people pine for the style. Owner Adam Milne arrived just as we were leaving and I reflexively hugged him. We stood a couple feet away and spoke for a long time. I left with the warm glow one receives for helping out.
My last pint of draft beer—an exceptional Vienna lager.
That night a tiny scratch developed at the back of my throat. When I woke up sick on Saturday, the new reality was finally tangibly real. It turned out I just had a mild cold, but I thought about Adam, my server, and realized I might have literally been endangering their lives. The warm glow transformed into shame and embarrassment over my stupidity. There were 2,825 cases in the US that morning, and 59 dead. In a way, I was lucky—that realization stopped me from doing more harm and contributing to the 1.4 million confirmed cases that followed.
One of the challenges of this moment is uncertainty: we have no idea—we can’t know—how long this will last. It’s impossible to guess when I’ll be able to sit down for my next pint of draft beer. Those two months feel simultaneously like ten years and also ten minutes. It’s a disorienting time, made all the more so because we don’t know how long it will last.
Nevertheless, breweries are adapting. In one delightfully symbolic example, Old Town announced an event that will take me back to the brewery this Saturday:
Old Town Brewing is joining forces with pFriem, Gigantic Brewing, Buoy Beer Company, Stormbreaker Brewing, Reuben’s Brews, and Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider on a drive-through brewers market. The weekly pop-up event is designed to promote local small craft breweries during a time where regular taproom service is not possible.
Old Town Brewing will convert their parking lot into the Old Town Brewers Market every Saturday from 11am to 4pm. Each brewery and cidery will setup in pop-up tents and bring a rotating selection of bottled and canned beers each week for purchase via a touchless no contact system.
The pace of change is slowing and we’re entering this uncomfortable stasis. Breweries have implemented changes to adapt to a market without pubs and draft beer. Drinkers are cautious, even in places that have reopened. We now know this crisis, which like all things will be marked by change, is going to be a long one. Two months ago, it was unimaginable to think disruptions could last until July; now we can easily imagine them lasting until July—July 2021.
Back in March, I was fully in denial. Since then I’ve managed to get through anger, depression, and bargaining (mostly), and am now starting to accept this thing isn’t going anywhere. If things are much worse than we imagined, at least we’re starting to face things as they are, rather than as we’d wish them to be.*
Be well and be safe. We’ll get through this together.
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*Not everyone, of course, but that’s a different post.