I’ve heard it called Beer Oriented Development. The concept is simple enough. There’s a strong demand for gathering places where people can come together and enjoy being part of the larger community and feel welcomed. It’s a bit like church. A beer hall has the potential to do a disproportionate amount of heavy lifting for a town that lacks a proper center or older neighborhoods in need of reinvention. It seems like brewpubs and taprooms are sprouting up everywhere these days. The Woodburn Brewery is about to open in Cincinnati’s East Walnut Hills across from Myrtle’s Punch House.
I stepped in to Rhinegeist in Over-The-Rhine and the church analogy was reinforced by the monumental architecture. The gleaming brew tanks mimicked a pipe organ and the rows of tables were reminiscent of pews. Natural light streamed in from industrial sized windows. The DJ station supplied the chorus. An official guide appeared in a robe (fresh from his graduation from Xavier University) and his vestments finished off the ecclesiastical imagery. Our Lady of the Hops.
You might not find casserole hot dish in the basement at Rhinegeist, but the beer and the company are genuinely good. It’s the kind of atmosphere where many levels of society come together to schmooze and cross pollinate. Construction workers arrive after a long day of highway resurfacing and sit next to white collar types fresh from the office. College students mingle while extended families gather for celebrations. Very few other establishments do this sort of thing well. Let’s just say it’s a lot better than the Panda Express at the mall food court.
But the grand daddy of all beer churches is Taft’s Ale House which is an actual historic church building that is now the happy home to a brew pub suitable for weddings. Really. Who wouldn’t want to be married in a place like this? All the dignity of church. All the playfulness of an extravagant bar and restaurant.
Not every town has Cincinnati’s wealth of magnificent old buildings and pre-war urban fabric. And not every town has so many incredible locals willing to put their heart and soul into such endeavors. But if your town is looking to foster genuine community spirit and a hometown gathering place you could do worse than follow Cincy’s lead. Did I mention these places are wildly profitable?
And just for the record… Williamsburg, Wrigleyville, and the Mission – you’re not the only cool spots in North America. Just sayin’.
Well written. Nice pics. The Great Good Place rules!
On a partially related topic, I was reading some long-forms on a phenomenon that interests me from its statistical properties: assortative mating, and all other intricacies of this age (positive, must I stress) of women being almost fully integrated in the workforce.
Some of the discussions are on implications for understanding of modern society (in Western developed countries), such as how ‘marrying out’ of one social class was indeed a way for social mobility of women that, by being of the wrong ‘gender’, were more equalized (in relate to men) among prospective life partners outside the very upper echelons. In other words, in small- and medium-town America up to the 1960s, you had many inter-social class marriages because women were somehow limited in their own professional/income-generational abilities and thus less restricted by it if they were otherwise ‘good prospective wives and mothers’. Now, thankfully, women have been liberated, and now more than ever couples are formed by people with similar educational and professional backgrounds.
Anyway, what I found pertaining to the ‘Beer Church’ is the discussion of how assortative mating has also expanded well beyond life partners to other sort of social associates. Some authors (whom I generally don’t like in terms of their praise for some Golden Age that never was but for males and whites, if much) were pointing out how even Church attendance has become more self-selected in the way people pick and choose where to worship (if at all) based on their preferences, instead of just sticking to the nearest house of worship of their faith. All this would be, according to them, part of a process whereby people from different social-economic backgrounds barely talk or interact with each other outside the context of business/work.
I wonder if this (people from different social-economic backgrounds not having casual spaces to meet without being engaged in some specific business activity) is indeed a real problem, or not. Communication is so easy these days, I in particularly never felt the need or urge to meet neighbors other when I could always get to people I preferred to be in company with – and I’ve lived so far in 3 different continents in very different cultural contexts. Most of my friends (age cohort 26-35) behave more or less the same, I think. We are not socially isolated at all, there are all sorts of gatherings, social events, sports (for those who like), day outs at musea or parks, but certainly more than 90% of them are university graduates hushing around, some with so far better or worse outcomes in our career paths.
Short version: it’s good when people of different backgrounds have a venue in the neighborhood to physically and casually mix on equal footing. Beer Church does that very well.
There are lots of breweries in Northeast Minneapolis where I live now. And in the twin cities area in general. It Northeast Minneapolis it has helped transform old schoolhouses and warehouses.
Richmond, VA is another city where a bunch of breweries have sprung up and seem to have improved the local fabric. I fully support this development strategy!
There’s a risk that beer halls will become the next premium outlet mall, casino, convention center, build-it-and-they-will-come thing. I remember fondue restaurants in the in 70’s. Fashions come and go. There will inevitably come a saturation point and some bad beer along the way. But the increment of development is small enough that these places can be reinvented over and over again in the future.
Very true. I’d guess that as medium-scale developments go, these places keep a lot more money in the community than most of the other neighborhood anchors.
Beer oriented development is one that absolutely has to have alternatives to the automobile, more than any other! In San Diego, I’ve seen chartered buses come from the beach districts into town on weekends. (The beach neighborhoods are not on the light rail.) worth a story.
Sacramento now has a Beer Bike in which hipsters pedal around Midtown on a multiseat bicycle, sampling local microbrew wares!
True about Cincy and its wealth of historical fabric. Also, are you planning on attending CNU 24 in Detroit next month? If so I’d love to connect and say hello.
Yep. I’ll be in Detroit for CNU. See you there.
Pretty spectacular. One interesting (and completely unoriginal) idea I had relates to the High Church aspects of modern art museums, like SF MOMA. Since we can’t have an established church any more we have temples of “art”.
The art museum has in fact taken the role Che church used to play for most of the upper and upper middle class.
There’s a church currently being renovated into an event center in my town: http://www.sanctuaryevents.com/#about. One of the groups involved has been fixing up a lot of old buildings downtown and doing a pretty good job; there aren’t too many buildings left that haven’t been renovated. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.