VACATIONS FROM HOME: STEALING MEMORIES

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

STEALING MEMORIES

MARKING TIME WITH BEER STEINS

Come on… admit it… you’ve stolen a glass or two from a bar. What citizen of Montgomery County Pennsylvania DOESN”T have a Trappe Tavern glass, or one from the Railroad Street Bar in Linfield? If they didn’t want you to steal it, then WHY would they put their logo on the pint? Why should you try to impress guests with fancy beer glasses purchased in some department store when you could pour a brew into a glass filched from Sly Fox or Crooked Hammock in Lewes, Delaware?

RAILROAD STREET BAR

Afraid you’ll get caught? It’s a science and I’ll give you some tried and true tips later on.

THE TRAPPE TAVERN

COLLECTING OVER THE YEARS

I’ve been a cheap S.O.B. for years and have traveled quite extensively around the world, for work and pleasure, stealing shit to take home. For a while it was actual beer cans, which proved unwieldy and though I once partied with a guy in Chicago with similar aspirations, the look of all those beer cans ringing his apartment displayed on little shelves, seemed like overkill. While admiring the fellow roadie’s collection he had nudged me with his elbow and proudly said, “I drank every one of those beers.”

As a young father with young children the collecting of beer cans was not plausible and the cans I had gathered from all over the world were collected in boxes and kept in the garage before I gave them all to the Appalachian Brewing Company in Collegeville to add to their collection mounted on the wall of their pub.

For a time it was beer labels too, but I kept tearing them when I tried to remove them from the bottles.

Then it was bottle caps. Consider the artwork on such a small space! Some bottle caps are the only identifying mark of the beer like the Westvleteren Trappist beers from the Saint Sixtus Abbey in Belgium. Some, like Ballantine Ale, had little puzzles to solve printed on the underside of the cap.

WESTYS

Beer caps proved to be easier to horde and I could drop them in a specially designated drawer in my office to open and admire whenever I got thirsty. For a while I tried to put them in plastic sheets usually used for slides or coins, but this soon proved ludicrous.

PRACTICAL STEALING

Stealing beer glasses seemed like the most natural progression. Heck, I didn’t just have to look at them, I could use them. I have glasses from Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Australia, and from joints all across the U.S.

Also, I have a number of commemorative glasses from different events I’ve attended over the years. Before they got too big for their britches and moved out of Lambertville River Horse Brewery hosted a beer garden at the annual Shad Fest in Lambertville and sold glasses to go with their beer at this very well attended weekend excuse to party. When they pulled up stakes and moved to Ewing, the party left town and there were no more excuses to wade through the crowds of tourists that descend on Lambertville every last weekend in April..

River Horse also hosted Oktoberfest events at their brewery along the canal and a very well attended chili cook-off with area restaurants vying for your vote as the best chili. Plenty of beer to wash down the fiery concoctions served in commemorative glasses.

Stoudt’s in Adamstown outside of Reading also has glasses given out at their Oktoberfest and different charity events like, Pour For Pups held in Phoenixville wait patiently for us to fetch them from our shelves for a beer, and if you join the Iron Hill Brewery Mug Club you get a massive ceramic mug to take with you. Yeah, we got a bunch of those too.

Don’t let Janet’s prissy goody-too-shoes ways influence you. She loves to filch a glass as much as I do. We’re quite a pair.

Here’s the way to do it:

SLEIGHT OF HAND and A BIG POCKETBOOK

Make sure no one is watching! They probably won’t care.

GO TO THE BATHROOM WITH YOUR GLASS

Just make sure you leave the bathroom “without it”. From Paris to Lewes this works the best for me… Just make sure you zip up your fly.

TELL THE BARTENDER YOU’RE GOING TO STEAL THE GLASS

Make sure you leave them a good tip.

OUGHTEN DO IT

Seriously though, we’ve been to places in Belgium where they will NOT serve you a beer if they did not have the proper glass for it. The beer label must be prominently displayed on the glass and when poured both the bottle and the label on the glass must be placed so you can readily see them. The beer culture is so sophisticated in Belgium it would be sacrilegious to steal a glass where beer is ambrosia

Now, it you really want a Westmalle Tripel glass that badly, go to the store and buy one, or GO TO THE ABBEY and steal it there. There it is advertising just like the Trappe!