What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (unless you blog about it)

I've known about the magic of Vegas since Sinatra was crooning at the Sahara and George Burns was cracking one-liners at the Riviera, but not being much of a gambler coupled with relative poverty meant it never once entered my travel plans.

Now that I'm old, I have some disposable income and I have friends who rave about the place, I decided to give it a shot.

So I did a thing. I went to Vegas.

I had my reservations about going, namely my pandemic weight gain and my still not-officially-diagnosed lung disease leaving me short of breath after short walks, but I was tired of listening to the negative side of my brain (and there would always be time for "I told you so" from that annoying little voice later) so I pressed ahead and made the reservations.

My friend and colleague Don was a massive fan of the place and he recommended the LINQ Hotel as it was in the middle of the strip and would therefore cut back on my walking by carving up the strip into more manageble chunks.

The LINQ Promenade

Always thinking of my welfare, that Don.

And the best craft beer bar in Las Vegas - the Yardhouse - was located at one end of the LINQ Promenade outside the hotel, in a sort of mini-strip of bars, restaurants and shops, some of which were accessible directly from my hotel. So win-win.

My flight was very early - 6:30 a.m. - and on the last night I admit I was getting pretty excited about the trip. I packed and repacked my bag twice and decided at the last minute to go out and put some gas in my car so my Dad wouldn't have to during the week I was gone and pick up some masks, as I had lost my good Speahead Big Kahuna mask and my back-up was too small.

And that's how I ended up at a Dollarama outside Sheridan Mall shortly before closing on a Saturday night and that's where I left my phone behind at the self-checkout counter.

The Night Before and the First Morning

A couple of hours after I came home from my errands I noticed my phone wasn't with me and I experienced this overwhelming feeling of panic. My vaccination information is on that phone. My Air Canada check-in stuff is there. It's my alarm; my camera.

I made a frantic drive back to the plaza where I retraced my steps. Dollarama was, of course, closed, and there were no cleaning staff there. I was straight up fucked.

All I could do at this point was leave even earlier for the airport and try to explain my case (I had, at least, my negative COVID test paper) while making do with a borrowed mini-camera. That, and a half-litre of hope was all I had.

I don't sleep much at the best of times and I don't know if I slept at all this night. I know I woke just after 4 and went upstairs to rouse my father. "Let's go now," I told him. "The earlier the better."

With me trying my best to keep the panic at bay, I managed to get my baggage checked before being sent on a journey of many miles - some of which involved walking (ugh) and the rest with the Terminal Link, an actual train that ferries passengers between Terminals 1 and 3, to a nearby hotel so I could upload and print the vaccination information I needed.

And then back to the departure gate - just in time - to join the very long line at U.S. Customs to make my flight.

I Definitely could have used a 
Yardhouse litre of beer Sunday morning

I made it. Hot damn.

I had just one scare left, and that's when I tried to check-in at the LINQ and the self-help machine wouldn't accept my Debit VISA and the first clerk I asked said my card wouldn't be good because my name wasn't on it. I told her I had my laptop with me and gosh darn it, I will prove I am who I say I am.

Of course, once I got set up at the empty counter I realized I needed the Wi-Fi, so back I go to find the clerk, who was now gone. Her replacement, once she heard my story of what I was doing, just smiled and said my card was fine and she'd set me up straight away, no worries.

I went up to my room, got into my Vegas wear and had a nap. It had been a day and it was barely noon.

The Yardhouse

I had heard so many stories about this bar and all of them good. Their craft beer selection was on point, the staff was knowledgeable and super friendly and did I mention the beer? And it was damn near connected to my hotel, though with hotels in Vegas really being malls with rooms on top, it was still a whole 10-minute walk from my quarters.

The place really lived up to its billing. Plenty of beers right up my wheelhouse on tap and when the house beers are made by Stone Brewing - the Brewery that Could Do No Wrong (until they started suing everybody) - you know the selection was going to be good.

Besides a much anticipated pint of Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Milk Stout on nitro (which I enjoyed on my second visit), I decided to stick to local Nevada beers and with Tony and Sarah guiding my choices on those first two visits, sampled a pale ale from Tenaya Creek, IPAs from Bad Beat and Craft Haus and a Rye IPA from Astronomy Ale Works before getting down to business with a litre of Able Baker Brewing's Atomic Duck IPA in the Yardhouse's iconic Yard Glass.

All the while the sounds of Rush Closer to the Heart were heard pumping through the bar's sound system.

All I can say is "aaahhhh"

I think I like it here.

The Food

Las Vegas is expensive, at least the tourist areas near the strip are. Five bucks for coffee! We're talking crappy Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which is almost as ubiquitous as Tim Horton's down here. Almost.

Fast food is pricey - a shake at Johnny Rockets in the Flamingo's food court will run you $10, double or even triple the price of a standard milkshake in the GTA. (But oh, what a shake - probably the best strawberry milkshake I have ever had!) Restaurant prices are comparable, though the quality varies. Vegas parties late, so a decent breakfast is hard to find and my one meal at Moxie's on the Promenade left me wanting something better.

But the brekkie at Hash House, located right in my hotel, was spectacular, with a sausage gravy to die for (I put that shit on everything), and the shrimp and fish tacos at the Yardhouse were amazing. I even tried fast-food sushi at Sushi Burrito and came away impressed.

And with a Guy Fieri restaurant right in my hotel, I couldn't leave Vegas without one meal there. I had the Kobe burger (really good) with an eclectic mix of fries (waffle fries!) and left stuffed and in need of another nap.

The Walking

I mentioned already how much walking there is in Vegas and how I am no longer cut out for it. The vast majority of my hikes were on the Promenade or inside the mall-like casinos. I ventured out on the strip just once to make the hike from my hotel up to Sands Avenue where the garish architecture of the Venetian dominates the streetscape. I don't remember if I had plans to go further, but I know I was determined to find the one brewery - Trustworthy - that the GPS on my laptop said was within walking distance.

There's a brewery in the fancy-pants shoppes
in this here fancy-pants Venetian Hotel

What I remember is dropping my exhaused ass on the steps leading up to the Grand Canal Shoppes, not knowing exactly where the brewery was - "It's around here somewhere," I said to myself - and not having a phone to confirm that fact.

Good thing a couple of Vegas bicycle cops happened by, no doubt wondering what the old homeless guy was doing on the steps leading to the fanciest shopping mall in town. Fortunately one took pity on me and pulled out his phone to direct me up the stairs to the second floor, where I eventually found Trustworthy, smack-dab between a rare and vintage book shop and a store exclusively selling Coach handbags and the like.

"What is a brewery doing in such a fancy place," I asked at woman at the front of the house. "What, you don't think we're fancy?" she responded, clearly a little offended.

It was really more like a classy sports bar, but the beer - I had their Showroom Ready Hazy IPA - was excellent, so no complaining here.

One more place I did way too much walking: airports, especially Pearson. My poor legs are still sore and it's been nearly three weeks.

The People

You meet all kinds in Vegas, they say, though my experiences were almost all positive. I did get shanghaied by a couple of Latina vixens - showgirls of all sorts, some wearing sequins, others feather headwear and others still, like the ladies I ran into where the Promenade meets the strip, very little at all, are everywhere on the strip. The majority are nicely trying to extract cash from horny tourists. Most (I hope) are not as brazen as mine, who whipped me (literally) before engaging me in increasingly provocative poses while her friend snapped some pics.

All right, fair is fair. I didn't exactly protest too much. But she wasn't a happy camper when I gave them each $5 for their troubles and she tried to snatch a $50 right out of my hands. Live and learn, I guess.

The folks at Nevada Beer Workd were as sweet
as the beer in the flights

The people in the service business down here were almost all awesome. Even the fast food employees, making god knows what the minimum wage is in Nevada, were cheerful and pleased to be of service. And my fellow travellers were all happy to be there and even happier to share a drink with a thirsty soul from Canada.

The Really Bad Day

Nothing could match the tragedy that was the journey to get here, at least as far as sheer panic (not even when I lost my wallet on The Really Good Day - more on that in a bit), but when it comes to just feeling like my world had come crashing down on my shoulders, Tuesday was that day.

I had booked a day trip into the desert the afternoon before and awoke to learn they had cancelled on me - actually, I was told I had cancelled and they wanted to know why - and spent the entire morning arguing via laptop with a tour operator from Germany that I had not, in fact cancelled at all and was extremely disappointed that my trip - or a back-up trip they had suggested before cancelling that too - would not happen.

The culprit, of course, was my missing phone. Despite telling the local operator my phone wasn't with me they tried to call it to confirm and then gave my spot to someone else when I didn't.

I eventually gave up and went for my walk up the strip and came home exhausted and frustrated and a trip to the pool to cool off only made things worse. In my sad state it was too easy to feel judged as I lay on a lounge chair like a beached whale, desperately grasping at the last rays of sunshine as they disappeared behind the buildings.

You meet all kinds on the Vegas 
strip. You really do

I gathered up my stuff and made my way upstairs to my room. It was an early night.

The Really Good Day

Wednesday was a better day. I cabbed over to the Orleans Hotel & Casino to see Batman on the big screen and then walked over to the adjoining arena to where the World Men's Curling Championships was being held and snuck in at the very end of a USA vs Germany match.

I caught a free shuttle almost all the way back to my hotel - I cabbed the rest of the way; I'd done enough walking - and after wimping out on getting my first tattoo I headed up to my room. I felt better but I still couldn't entirely shake my depression.

The solution to my woes came in a suggestion from Don when we chatted on Slack in the morning. "Uber up to the Arts District dude. There are three breweries there just minutes apart."

Beer is the answer my friends.

My first stop Thursday was Nevada Brew Works and it really does. Awesome space with a huge patio that reminded me of the beauty of breweries in warm climates where patio season is 12 months of the year. Friendly staff and a nice beer selection, so naturally I ordered a flight: a Raspberry Sour, a Lemon Drop Saison, a Hefeweizen and a Hazy IPA and enjoyed a chat-up with Will, a computer sales rep from LA who travelled the world on business, sampling craft beer everywhere he went.

The worries of the previous couple of days were already melting away. Next up was (literally) next door and HUDL Brewing, where I found the lovely Carly and continued my exploration of Vegas beers with another flight.

The Atomic Duck was the star of the show
at Abel Baker Brewing

I enjoyed a flight of five beers here with Postie Racing, an Australian Pale Ale; Liquid Pink Eye, another Raspberry Sour; Chocolate Sprocket Brown Ale (super sweet with a super strong chocolate aroma); Nac Nac, a West Coast IPA (very piney with a dry finish) and Salty Swabber Imperial Pale Ale, the only miss in the bunch.

I had a nice chat with Carly, who had lived in Australia for a spell (her son was born there) about mutual experiences in the land Down Under and I left for my final stop in wonderful spirits. I won't say I had a spring in my step (not sure if those days will ever return) but damn! The sun was shining and it felt wonderful to be enjoying good beer with good company once again.

My final stop on my mini-tour through Las Vegas' Arts Brewery District was Able Baker, the brewery that made Atomic Duck IPA, the beer that graced my litre glass back on Sunday at the Yardhouse.

The place was hopping and it clearly was the spot the cool kids hung out so I felt right at home as I sidled up the bar right by the open front window. For the uninitiated, Able Baker is military jargon for A and B and represents the first two nuclear missiles fired back when Nevada was a testing site in the early 1950s. Legend has it that the only animal to survive the blast was a duck, who then waddled off into history.

Atomic Duck was naturally on my sample list, but I started with a bang with an 11 per cent Peanut Butter Banana Barrel-aged Stout that was more bourbon than banana and peanut butter. I followed that with a Pineapple K-Pow Pow Sour (tart, very citrusy) while watching Tiger Woods finish his first round at the Masters. Ducky Trail, a mild American Pale Ale, came next, followed by the tried and true Atomic Duck.

I finished with a proper pint of Waddle, a Session IPA that looked fantastic in the glass and tasted of orange and love, all washed down with my first ever Po Boy sammy.

The Flamingo Hotel. Right across the 
Promenade from the LINQ

This place really rocks.

I also popped into the Horse Trailer Hideout next door just to try a Vegas As Fuck IPA from Revision Brewing - because why wouldn't you? - before getting on my high horse for what turned out to a very long walk to a taxi stand at the Strat Hotel.

I was beat by the time I arrived so I cooled my heels at a Starbucks, where, me being me, my wallet (with most of my ID and about $400 US inside) stayed behind when I went back outside to hail a cab for home. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I didn't have enough cash to pay my driver.

Now imagine his suprise.

No panic, says I - it's been too good of a day. Instead I rushed through the mall casino to the LINQ front desk and asked if they could pretty please call the Starbucks at the Strat and enquire if my wallet was there.

It was. Thank all the gods and my guardian angels, it was there. So I grabbed another cab and headed back, asking my new driver to wait while I found the coffee shop and reclaimed my wallet. Fifty bucks later - the best $50 I ever spent - I was back at the hotel, where I treated myself to dinner and returned to the Yardhouse, where I spent the rest of the evening getting pleasantly drunk and feeling like someone was smiling at me.

Or maybe I was just smiling at myself. In any event, it was a Really Good Day.

The Gambling

I am not much of a gambler, I'll say that right now. I used to love playing cards but since the obsession with Texas Hold 'Em I lost interest in poker (I'm always up for a game of Euchre. Anybody? Bueller?) and I am frankly a little intimidated by table games at casinos. Stakes are too rich for my blood.

So I plunk down a few bucks on the slots whenever I'm walking by one and me dogs need a rest. Which is frequently, because, as I mentioned, I get tired easily and I'm in a casino - there are slot machines EVERYWHERE!

Curling? In Vegas? You betcha. World 
Championships to boot

It's real easy to lose $20 in 20 minutes here and $10 in ten minutes there and all those losses add up quickly. I walked away from a machine up more than $45 twice in the entire week and overall I probably dropped a couple hundred total, so it wasn't the end of the world. 

But it is really boring.

I do have a gambling story, though. Before I left I was in my favourite comic store - Red Nails 2 in North York Sheridan Mall - when Danny, my friendly neighbourhood purveyor of pop art, had a favour to ask. "Sure," says I, "what is it? "Put $5 on #19."

One can't say no to such a request, but for the life of me, I never saw a single roulette wheel in all my casino travels. It was mid-week when I wandered into Harrah's off the strip and spotted a roulette slot machine. That would have to do, I thought. But I chose that particular time to get all practical and decided I wasn't going to waste $5 on a 38-1 shot, so I put the cash on 13-24 and damn if the machine didn't pay out. A whole $15 to be exact.

And then I looked at where the ball had stopped. Of course.

19.

Okay. I'll come back

That was $180 I didn't win. Sorry Danny. But I won a few more times on the machine and walked away with nearly $50, so that was good.

A couple of days later I found the same machine in the same casino and decided to see if lightning would strike twice. It didn't. I lost $40 in less than 15 minutes.

Odds on Returning

Will I go back to Vegas? Probably better than 50-50. Despite my troubles, I had a great trip but next time I think I'll hit Fremont Street downtown. More interesting people, more breweries and more compact, so less walking.

This time I will definitely take that day trip into the desert, almost definitely get that tattoo, possibly put my wallet on a chain so it doesn't fall out of my shorts and 100 per cent not leave my phone in a Dollarama back home.

But even if I find new ways to screw up, I'm still going to have a blast. It's Vegas. The odds are always in my favour.

Cheers!

 

 

Good breweries, good beer with good friends is the super tonic we all need

Confidence is a fragile thing for most of us, I think. Easily shattered and often not so easy to put back together. But confidence, or lack of same, is not why I only wrote three original beer blogs last year.

In some fashion I felt a bit like a phony as a beer writer; a charlatan, if you will. I rarely wrote about it and I didn't have a whole lot to say about the subject on social media either. The kicker for me, though, was the fact I hardly drank at all. I might have a beer a night for a couple of days and then not drink at all for three. Meanwhile I still made the occasional brewery run or had it delivered and my full beer fridge would stare at me, taunting me to ease its load.

David, Don and Robert at Clifford Brewing

It's not that I have lost interest in drinking good beer. More like I realized the attraction to me about craft beer - as I'm sure it is for most of us - was always about the people I was drinking it with. I miss those brewery tours with friends, or just popping down to the local for a pint with a pal.

The latter is possible again and has been a thing for brief perids throughout the pandemic, but it hasn't been the same, especially with me still living in Downsview and my family and most of my people back in Oshawa and other parts of Durham Region.

That's why the first-Saturday-in-February excursion to Hamilton and Clifford Brewing to meet up with friends over a couple of pints was such a beautiful thing. My pal Don (also my work colleague) was there, as were Rob & Kat (Polk and Lady Polk), Greg and artist extraordinaire David. 

It was just like the old days - we hung out, had a few beers and a few laughs and even had time for some serious chats about the state of the industry. Whether it inspires me to write on the regular is doubtful, but it was partly responsible for this blog, so there's that.

The other spark lately was a feature I wrote for InSauga, the online newspaper Don and I work for, on the subject of abuse, descrimination and sexual assault in the beer industry. To be more specific, the story was about my friend Erin, who owns Little Beasts Brewing in Whitby, and her Instagram campaign that invited people to share stories about abuse in the industry.

Erin did the heavy lifting and those who shared their tales were the courageous ones. I just re-arranged their words. But I am proud of the story I wrote (and of the follow-ups - Threats made against Whitby Whistleblower and Safety Network) and I sincerely hope it helps spread the word on how toxic working in craft beer can be.

The stories Erin shared was also the subject of the "serious chats" we had at Clifford. We all know some of the breweries named in Erin's stories and we know some of the people called out for their behaviour in those stories.

Some of those people are our friends. Not easy conversations.

The lovely Candice at Second Wedge

The next weekend the conversations on the subject continued as I took my friend Candice out for a mini-tour of north Durham breweries. She had been having a bit of a tough go lately and had been looking forward to joining us in Hamilton but her truck decided - at the last minute, of course, leaving no time for other arrangements - that it wasn't going to start.

So I promised her I would pick her up on Saturday and we would visit Second Wedge in Uxbridge and Old Flame in Port Perry, two breweries in my home turf  I have never visited. And drop in on an under-construction brewery in Brooklin, Banter & Co., just to have a look and maybe say hi if anyone was around. (They weren't. Next time.)

Another pal, Adam, was supposed to come along as well but he begged off with a sore throat so we met him outside his swanky downtown Oshawa condo to present him with a couple of cans from @spearhead beer and then headed north to Old Flame.

(After a brief stop at White Feather Country Store in Raglan where I bought a giant strawberry rhubarb pie, a loaf of cheese bread and the heaviest apple fritter I have ever seen; but only because Candice promised it was all calorie-free.)

I always found Old Flame beers a bit pedestrian, but my flight - two pale ales and a couple of flavoured stouts -  were quite intriguing. The stouts didn't really pack the advertrtised orange and peppermint flavours but the two ales - one dry-hopped, the other wet-hopped - lived up to their billings.

The ambience was amazing. Huge crowd for a Saturday afternoon. And the place was filled with dogs, especially in our little corner.

We headed west after that to Second Wedge (who championed the call to allow dogs in brewery taprooms) and enjoyed a few more flights. Nothing fancy for me with two pales ales and a couple of solid IPAs, but I made sure to go home with a few Fat Bikes, an Imperial IPA made with locally grown hops.

Flight at Midtown Brewery

Like Old Flame, Second Wedge was very pup friendly, which is super conducive to melting away anxiety and putting oneself at ease.

And that's the beauty of breweries for me. Good friends, good beer and a welcoming vibe.

I made a couple of trips to Little Beasts and one to Town Brewery - by myself and with pals - over the next couple of months, along with several trips to Bellwoods' Hafis location, which is the closest brewery to my Downsview digs. Each time the pressures of the day or even any general depression I had been feeling would slowly disipate into the ether.

I even made the long drive into Prince Edward County this weekend just to visit a couple of breweries that had long been on my must-see lists: Midtown and Matron.

Midtown was right in the heart of Wellington, a beach community on the county's west side, and offered a super cool tap room, delicious fish and chips (the fries were smothered in garlic aoli and covered in parmesan cheese - so good) and some unique brews, including a UK-style IPA that may be the best I've had in years and a delicious Apricot Sour.

The wild Lake Ontario surf at Wellington Beach

Matron was in the next village over - Bloomfield - and was a little harder to get to as it was at the end of a muddy, pothole-filled wagon road. No flights, unfortunately, but I had a tried-and-true Janky IPA and filled my to-go bag with familiar favourites - Janky, Bobo - and some new beers in Link Up IIPA, Candor (Belgian IPA) and Flightless, a Cold IPA (?) collaboration with Willibald.

Very hipster-friendly, this place, with more Blundstone boots (and a couple of old school Doc Martens to boot) per square ... foot ... than perhaps anywhere else in the world.

I'm tempted to buy a pair.

I was back east the next day seeing the J Man in Bowmanville and on the way home I rang up Candice and we met for a beer or two at 5 Paddles in Whitby and I was reminded again about the magic of breweries, especially when you're with good friends.

Breweries: Good for what ales ya. (I'll show myself out.)

Cheers!