Our night did not start out hopefully. Four of us got out of a hybrid Civic in a dark commuter rail parking lot and tried to board the wrong Metra train. Then we saw the right one across the street on another line and had to run to catch it, which just about did in my asthmatic sister-in-law. Once in downtown Chicago, we stood outside what counts for a sidewalk at Lasalle Street Station and watched the GPS as our Uber driver missed the turn to pick us up. Several times.
Picture four adults in party dress shouting at a phone, “Okay, now turn! Turn!”
The event was Brew Year’s Eve, a craft beer part put on by Lou Dog Events (the same guys who do the Chicago and Naperville Ale fests).
It was held at Salvage One, a space in an area of West Town with no other obvious commercial businesses—shoot, there were hardly any street lights. We started joking about something awful happening to the friend who was supposed to meet us outside the building.
Really, we were already laying the ironic groundwork to have a good time at fate’s expense should this turn out to be a bust.
But then we saw a line of people extending back from a doorway maybe about half a block—generally a good sign when you’re going to a party.
And a good party it was, despite everything it had going against it.
Not a Party Guy
For me, personally, that is. I’m just not a party guy. I don’t care for 80’s pop covers, even ironically. I don’t like to go “Whooooo!” I don’t drink cocktails made with cheap liquor just for the buzz. Maybe that makes me pretentious, but I’m just as impatient with pretentious hipsters cultivate an aesthetic more than real character.
What I generally want from a part is good food and drink and pleasant company. Music and location are relatively indifferent matters to me as long as they aren’t irritating.
Given all this, a part of me was very unsure about attending what looked like big party at an archly hip event space where we’d be pressed about by crowds of skinny-jeaned mustached men and girls with thick-rimmed glasses.
Honestly, I would have gotten over myself if that’s what this was—it wouldn’t be worth letting it ruin my evening—but, fortunately, that is not what Brew Year’s Eve was.
It was kind of hard to describe. Think small craft beer festival held during a party in a kind of junk shop arranged as an art space/playground/rummage fair for grown-ups. That’s a thing, right?
I’d never been to Salvage One, and it was actually a fun setting for a party. The first floor is mostly a kind of museum of rummaged statuary, lamps, and furniture, all arranged to make little spaces that open up to one another so the overall effect is of a vast room with cozy nooks in the middle of it.
The second floor had more tables and a main stage and felt more like a hall, but it also had a more intimate space tucked away through a doorway.
The program indicated we could find the photobooth on the third floor, but it turned out the third floor was the photobooth. It was packed out with scrounged oddities like old factory molds and the metal and plastic light-up letters from store signs. One section had several old claw-foot bathtubs just lying about, and you can imagine how irresistible it was for folks to jump in for selfies.
The music on the first two floors were cover acts doing lots of radio hits. I’m always interested to hear new acts and original compositions, but I get that on New Year’s Eve folks might want some amount of familiarity to assure them they are still themselves as they prepare for a new year of uncertainties.
And the people? Well, there were fewer skinny jeans than I’d anticipated. And many of the women were in tighter, skimpier dresses than I’d expected. They were a pretty chill crowd, though, by which I mean there wasn’t a lot of senseless screaming and “whooo-ing” nor any real sense that anyone was showing off or thinking highly of themselves for coming to a cool event.
Folks were there to have a pleasant time enjoying one another’s company, exploring a fun space, and drinking Chicago-land craft beer.
So, then, what about the beer?
There were eight breweries and two cideries represented, including newer or smaller breweries like Soundgrowler and Pollyanna. Most breweries had a flagship or two there, which is good for folks who either don’t know craft or are casual craft drinkers. It made it easy to make recommendations to my out-of-town family, at least.
Several pulled out something a little rarer or fancier, such as Two Brothers, who offered their Northwind Imperial Stout, or Pollyanna, whose Fun Size Stout was like drinking a Butterfinger. Goose Island had their Bourbon County Barleywine, which I made sure to get early even though it ruined my tastebuds for the next half hour.
The pours were liberal, so between the tried and true and the couple new offerings here and there, no one could complain there wasn’t enough beer or adequate choices.
That said, I don’t know if I made any real beer discoveries that evening, as much as I generally enjoyed it. I will say I’d like to try Goose’s Hombre again, which was a kind of peppery Belgian pale. I wasn’t sure what I thought, at first, but over the course of the night I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and when I went back for more it was gone.
So, like, now it’s virtually a given that I’ll convince myself it was really quite amazing and make it a personal mission to find it anywhere in the city.
The bars were scattered throughout the first two floors, so we spent much of the evening just casually making our way from one interesting space to another, chatting and people watching and generally feeling like it was a better time than having to put the kids to bed again.
I toasted the New Year with a Solemn Oath Death by Viking, a citrusy IPA with a little honey sweetness to round it out. I suppose that means I went to some kind of Valhalla at the beginning of 2017. Here’s hoping we will have more reasons to raise a glass in victory this year than to drown our miseries in drink.
