Tag: “MacLeod Ale”

Intoxicated Minds

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So I have been on a month long hiatus from most alcohol including beer and wine. I wanted to see how staying away from drinking made me feel and so far it’s been good. My pants fit easier and I don’t wake up in the morning with a headache of regret.

But I still went to the 3rd Anniversary Party at MacLeod Ale. Which, as I said for a few years now, is the best thing to happen in Van Nuys since maybe 1960.

Friends and near friends were there. I went back and hung out with some people and we drank and laughed and everything was fun.

There was one eccentric, older woman with red hair. I decided in my intoxication that she should join our group and I pulled her over.

She immediately asked everyone where “they were from.” She didn’t mean Reseda or Santa Monica, she was inquiring about the ethnicities of all the people.

And the usual bragging rights afforded to the mediocre came out. “I’m from old Norwegian stock and on my mom’s side her father was a ship captain from Ireland and we also have some pirates who we trace back to Crete, and then on my grandmother’s side she had a distant relative who was a first cousin with the Rockefellers.”

When her finger pointed to me, I knew what was in store so I dodged the bullet. When you are around drunk people you don’t say your last name is Jewish. You say Russian. So I did. That seemed to satisfy her, and she related my background to something noble that helped elect her leader who was making America great again.

Around the hops the discussions continued. This time the drunken brother of a regular customer was making fun of another person who he said was “a fake boyfriend of my sister and definitely gay.” The chuckles and the chortles of the regular dudes continued and they made fun of the man they pegged as gay.

It reminded me, in a strange way, of those days, long ago, in Lincolnwood, IL when I was friends with the Clarke Family and good old Pete, Dave’s older brother would greet me at the front door with “Hello Fruit!” or “The Fruit is here!” There was always a laugh on that one, the calling out of that which is not normal or regular.

I think I was 10 at the time so I didn’t understand what he was saying. But my father, schooled in Chicago manliness, honed on the ball field, said, “My son is not a fruit!” and so I learned I better not ever be one.

It is now 2017 but you wonder if those sober vows of tolerance are really just ready to burst especially when the intoxicated gather. There is public tolerance for almost everything that once set teeth on edge: gay people, pot smokers and growers and sellers, mixed race couples, trans people, obese people with tattoos, homeless people. We think it’s OK for people to walk around mentally ill and sleep in the street, and we are quite “cool” also with two dads for Sarah, and if Sarah wants to become Sam, that is “cool” too.

Everything that once made us uptight is “cool” just as everything else is “amazing.”

And maybe when we are sober, and rational, we decry the hate speech, but get a few beers in us, and we revert to our old ethnicities, our old tribal thinking, or old dumbness, really.

And somewhere there are little kids playing well together and everyone gets along great until one little kid learns he is a Unitarian, or a Ukranian or a Uruguayan and then the trouble starts.

All the Great Plans…

Posted in Architecture, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, we were gathered at MacLeod Ale to celebrate Quirino’s birthday. We sat along a wooden table in the back, near the bags of hops. People were playing darts. The front door was closed, the air conditioning was on, we ate BBQ tri-tip beef (marinated in MacLeod). And we were discussing Van Nuys over warm and cold beer.

A young guy named Daniel sat across from me. He had worked under Former Councilman (Congressman!) Tony Cardenas and is now in the city planning department. Andreas asked him if he thought Van Nuys might be the new Highland Park.

“Not now, maybe not ever,” Daniel said.

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“Highland Park Market” Photo by Lance Leong / Flickr

Daniel was versed, in the somnambulistic and arcane zoning laws of Los Angeles, the kind that mandate how much parking is needed and what height a building can be, if additional units of housing can go up if some rents come down. And how many feet away from a school is permissible for a liquor store? And who can put up a 1200 sf granny flat in their backyard (the answer is you).

His generalized, and probably correct assertion is that Highland Park has an active and engaged group of residents and Van Nuys does not. The same is true of more affluent and contentious areas like Studio City or Woodland Hills. In those places, where planters and trees now line the boulevards, bike lanes are carved out, and revitalized shops, apartments, housing are going in. Much of the credit goes to the people who live there.

Van Nuys complains. But it never unites to fight for its betterment. Much easier to bicker on the Next Door app.

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Construction of the Santa Monica Freeway 1961. (USC)

Also at our table was white-haired, impassioned, articulate Howard who is on the VNNC. He is smart, accomplished, a lifelong resident of Los Angeles who grew up near Venice and Fairfax and watched the demolition of housing during the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway in the early 1960s. At that time, thousands of old houses, many architecturally notable, were bulldozed.

Howard recalled the dirt berm that extended for fifteen miles after the houses came down. “At night you could hear the rats, there were millions of them, and they ran and scurried and made noise.”

The Santa Monica Freeway was part of the big plan for Los Angeles. As was the Van Nuys Civic Center, Dodger Stadium, Bunker Hill, and the Federal Building in Westwood. In all these cases the results were less than stellar. Walkable, vibrant, historic, human scaled places were obliterated. And what remains today are acres of baked asphalt and mute modernism.

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Howard said that the planned redevelopment of Van Nuys Boulevard, to make it a transit hub, to put a light rail down the center, to install bike lanes, to increase the allowable height of apartments, all of these progressive ideas, pushed by everyone from New Urbanists to developers and transit advocates, would be a “disaster for Van Nuys.” Many small businesses would close and the area would turn into something worse than even the hellish condition it currently is in.

So simultaneously, he decried the automobile oriented era of the Santa Monica Freeway and mimicked the impending one of density and pedestrian oriented development.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald

And yet his views do make sense if you consider that every time big ideas come to Los Angeles, they are somehow, like a good-looking wannabe actor/model from the hinterlands, deflated and defeated by this city.

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Renderings by Gensler Courtesy of Psomas
Renderings by Gensler Courtesy of Psomas

The daily assassination of youthful idealism is the oldest tradition in our city.

In the built environment there is also something here that abhors a unifying concept of planning and harmony. If a building can be built to stick out and look freaky and out-of-place it is deserving of praise.

In architecture, as in politics and entertainment, the bigger the carnival and the louder the wreck, the more applause, the more profits. That’s what we are aiming to create.

When we do get together under some banner like Mayor Villaraigosa’s “Million Trees” or Mayor Garcetti’s “Great Streets” the gods start to laugh at us. We are best at half-hearted, half-completed projects.

And perhaps that negative is a good thing. One must give Los Angeles credit, not only for attempting to build massive public works, but for making sure that once the great works go up, small indignities, like homeless encampments along the Orange Line Bike Path, will sober up dreamers and urban fantasists.

All the Great Plans are like those coffee-house conferences with laptops, planning to produce and cast and finance something, someday….

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The Agence Ter plan. (Pershing Square Renew)

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On the drawing board now is a new park in Pershing Square.

Two years ago, I went with a group of photographers to shoot the city on a Sunday afternoon and was told I could not put my camera on a tripod. This was in the same park where mattresses were laid out and people sprawled down stairs drunk and asleep.

A public park where public photography is regulated by private security.

What you should be able to do in public you cannot, and what you should NOT do, is allowable.

And then there is MacLeod Ale, a private venture, started by two people over 50, using family money and retirement funds to make great beer.

That one small incubator of beer seems to produce more ideas for the betterment of Van Nuys than any political slogan coming out of City Hall.

Throw out all the great plans for Van Nuys.

Start small, dream big, pursue your own venture. Maybe that is the key to change.

 

 

Decline Press, a new short story

Posted in Short Stories, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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Those of you who follow me on this blog may also know I write short stories.

“Decline Press” is my latest.

It is a work of fiction based upon some of the most ominpresent issues of our time: economic hardship, race relations and law enforcement, and the struggle of an Iraq War vet, Derek Moss, who builds his life anew only to see everything pulled out from under him. Whether Mr. Moss is self-destructive or merely the author of his own self-destruction is up for interpretation.  As his world unravels he is pursued by an admirer, Conner Loh, who is also the narrator of this story.

It all takes place right here in Van Nuys and is set in such glamorous locations as Lido Pizza, MacLeod Ale, LA Fitness, Fatburger, Bevmo and Galpin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evangelizing Cask Ale.

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Yesterday was the two-year anniversary party at MacLeod Ale, here in Van Nuys, held at the brewery on Calvert St.

It coincided with one of the hottest days of the year.

A hot wind baked the concrete front yard set with white tents for ticket sales, another tent housing a barbecue preparation area.

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A black cook loaded meats into a black steel smoker under a cloudless blue sky.

Inside MacLeod, workers, guest workers and guests hunkered down in dimness, air-conditioned. 30 or more firkins from various breweries were built into groups of six, laid down on inclined, mobile lumber units on wheels. Each cask was plugged on top with cork. And at the bottom each one employed a white plastic faucet for pours.

The Pasadena Scots Bagpipers warmed up in preparation for their opening march through the brewery.

Owner Alastair W. Boase made a last minute run in a small Mini Cooper and came back with bags of ice unloaded by the guest workers and brought in and laid on top of each cask to keep them cool. The drooping, dripping ice kept the beer coldish with the weak efficacy of wet towels on the sweaty heads of Indonesian soccer players on the field at halftime.

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Last year, MacLeod held its one-year anniversary.

To me, hyped up on IPA, a lover of Full Sail and Lagunitas, MacLeod served a weak, warm, sweet, low alcohol malty authenticity called British Style Ale.

To my uninformed palate and to my unschooled-in-beer mind, the brews were something new but not always enjoyable.

The ideology of MacLeod Ale was firmly entrenched by a young and serious head brewer who rigidly and strictly obeyed his self-imposed dogma of what constituted proper British beer. Dour and dressed in leather braces and a tweed-driving cap, he affected a uniform of anti-social seriousness. He was obstinate, at times argumentative, sometimes on the warpath with owners. Others respected and admired his fastidiousness, commitment and exactitude. The truth of his tenure at MacLeod is subjective.

At 27, he was the head brewer of a new brewery. So that alone made him an object of envy. And maybe some of an element of Schadenfreude popped up when he fell down and was thrown out.

There was an upheaval within the brewery in late 2015 and the young cultist was fired and replaced with a new brewer.

The happy result, seen in profits and popularity, has been an artistic renovation melding historic beverage preservation with robust technological innovation.

New Head Brewer Josiah Blomquist came from an engineering background but he also had made his own alcoholic beverages, including beer, whisky and other exotic intoxicants. With investment in new equipment, and a new investor named Jerry Cohen, MacLeod now has advanced water purification, new tanks, and new filters to remove impurities. But there is also a fervent energy and openness to allow for colder, stronger, more aggressively flavored beers to come into the fold.

 

Last year, the one-year anniversary seemed to revel in presenting discussions, where brewers sat on a podium and talked in a panel about their various beers. There were two or three of these, lasting several hours.

This year, there was just one set up and it was dismantled after an hour. Afterward came a variety of jazz performers, including one terrific, 1920s inspired trio of musicians. The choice of music: individual, idiosyncratic, whimsical, embodies MacLeod.

MacLeod Ale today is no longer the ingénue. It occupies sort of a higher ledge above the goofiness of American, macho-man, craft beer. If it were a fragrance house it might be Diptyque or Le Labo where whispers of greatness spread quietly among the cognoscenti, and the scent of cultivated, curated success enters the room confidently without shouting.

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Yesterday afternoon, I met one gentleman, Ryan Bell, who worked as a sales rep for a downtown brewery,  Iron Triangle. He was dressed in a dark black shirt with company logo and a straw hat over his bearded face.

We walked over to try his company’s ale which was rich, deep, malty and reminded me of Old Rasputin. He said (if I remember correctly) it was somewhere between a porter and a stout and had an ABV of about 9%.

I expected the discussion to continue about beer.

But after I asked him what he did before he was a beer rep he told me he had been a 7th Day Adventist Pastor. And he was now, fully, committedly, devoutly, an atheist.

He said he wrote a blog, “Year Without God” and was the founder of “Life After God” where he wrote, spoke and consulted the happily godless on their journey of self-enlightened rationality un-poisoned by the imagery of the all mighty.

I was in the company, once more, of an evangelist, another hybrid in the spiritual community of Los Angeles whose own self-awakening constituted a new reality and a new philosophy for explaining and understanding existence. That it might be done by imbibing beer and abandoning faith seemed utterly logical to me, especially inside that hot, crowded brewery party after six or more ales.

My mind wandered from the packed brewery to the national scene and back again to the heat wave.

I was thinking of God and God’s successor, Nothingness. I was looking at Men and their Gods: beers and beards. I was wondering about intelligence and stupidity and how they were so often interchangeable. I was uncertain about what I should believe in or fear: Donald Trump, Radical Islamic Terrorism, certain atheism or certain faith, the NRA or Orlando, porter, ale or IPA.

Lubricated by alcohol, surrounded by many flavors of casks, some beers flavored with chiles, vanilla and rosemary, nothing seemed wrong or right, just there for the taking. I was elated by the possibilities of dropping long held beliefs, and flying into new consciousness by picking up new flavors, guided unintentionally by the atheist pastor beer salesman.

On that Sunday summer sirocco I was on the verge of a breakthrough. Or I might just collapse from alcoholic dehydration.

Fortunately, outside, there was Amy Crook, in a peach pleated skirt, whose hyena laugh and flirtatious giggle danced around the driveway as I recorded her. I joined her under the hot tent and helped check in guests. I tore off tickets, and peeled sticky armbands onto arms gleefully carrying glasses into a raucously animated party, one I knew I would later misinterpret truthfully.

Last Night at MacLeod Ale.

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During the day, I transacted business at Starbucks in Toluca Lake, and then, at night, I went, in denim shirt and pomaded hair, to MacLeod Ale, where all the whirlwind connections of my present life gathered, on the concrete floor of the brewery where the front door was raised up to the cold night air and smoky tacos were grilling outside on open-flamed ovens.

There was an RV trailer parked on the tarmac filled with knitting materials, and hanging knitwear, and, nearby, at the brewery tables, some people knitting. The urge to make something other than digital swipes propels a new generation.

Next door to the brewery, at the open door of Joe’s Auto Body, the acrid daytime odor of wet, chemical, sprayed car paint was yielding to roasting chickens and tamales on the griddle. Joe slouched on a milk crate, his face covered in white paint, phone in hand.

Dapper music collector Victor Torres, Jr. was spinning LPs on the record player, and his little brother Cesar was drawing illustrations and advising me on logos and creative visuals.

At the bar, Andreas and his friend Marcus, fresh off their bikes, had just pedaled here from Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank. I sat down at a stool to talk to Marcus and Andreas. Somewhere in his future, the former has plans to leave Echo Park and open a bakery in San Luis Obispo because it reminds him of his hometown, Gloucester, MA. He lost his job at Trader Joes after 15 years and told me he had grown up dyslexic and went to private school on scholarship.

I sipped a bourbon-aged beer, and spoke to another man, Mr. McReady, who was very happy. He was just fired, but had collected a great severance package, after 22-years-at-a Burbank cleaning empire. He has great, expensive, bendable eyeglasses and lives with his wife, who never comes to MacLeod Ale, on Calvert St. near Hazeltine.

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Roderick

Roderick Abercrombie Smith, the handsome, bearded, prodigiously talented, blue-eyed Scottish born painter, currently, happily, living in a van, was at the other end chatting it up with gregarious Ian Wright, the British born carpenter. I waved to both men as I ordered a beer from the always cordial manager Steve.

That beer was called Heather Bell [Scottish Gruit]. MacLeod describes it this way:

“An ale traditionally made without hops, but bitter herbs instead. Ours has heather tips, marsh rosemary, and red clover, and a few hops thrown in to keep it legal. Made in collaboration with our friends at Solarc Brewing.”

In the back, a table was set up for the LA County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC). Kelly Martin, Development Director, introduced herself. She was there with others from her organization discussing an upcoming 5-Day Long Climate Ride from Eureka to San Francisco whose sponsored riders will donate their money to the LACBC. Someone handed me a beautiful, scenic calendar with color photographs, but I left it on the table and wandered off.

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Anita

Anita of Orion Avenue, articulate and lovely friend and neighbor, came in and we hung out. She is married, and a mom, and an engineer, and savvy, and concerned about Van Nuys. We love it and agree it is confounding.  We love the picket fences and houses on one acres– surrounded by prostitutes and discarded sofas.

As I drank, she complimented my “fantastic” hair and told me I had good-looking friends on Facebook. And then (unintentionally) ruined the moment when she asked me what I did for work.

Then the beautiful Pinay, Stephanie Chan, walked in her with her long-haired Belarusian born roommate, a woman who reminded me of Ali McGraw in “Love Story”. Ms. Chan just bought a condo on Sherman Way between Kester and Van Nuys Boulevard.

Andy, the tall Texan brew worker in tight jeans, who exudes lily white, baptized, boyish machismo, and demonstrates affection for hops and hugs, came over and talked about his “Leaving for El Paso” beer. Hud would have played pool with him.

I steered myself into the room where darts were throwing, and I walked around, lightly intoxicated, past all those crowded tables of young men and woman rolling dice and moving objects over game boards.

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Stacey

Back outside, I went to order tacos, and bumped into burly actor Stacey Hinnen, here at the brewery with his two little girls, and he regaled me with his story of his latest acting job, down in Cuba, working with Don Cheadle on “House of Lies”.

Mr. Hinnen played a Koch brothers type character who was down in the communist country to regain property stolen from his family when Castro came to power. The actor said he had a scene throwing fists at his brother in the middle of a courtyard.

If Mr. Hinnen agrees, and Mr. Hurvitz (me) can get his shit together, the actor will one day play a character I wrote, Shane Davis, in a web series about my street in Van Nuys.

Jennifer, the owner, came into the brewery and hugged me and I introduced her to Anita and they both realized they knew some mutual people connected to former Van Nuys resident Donnie Wahlberg.

And then one of the best young characters to emerge in the MacLeod firmament came over, boyish and lanky beer poet, Sam Wagner, native of Manhattan, here in Los Angeles to put his great imagination and large intellect to work in that industry which despises and wastes both of those attributes.

Lizzie, the tall, dark, Scottish niece, only 22 years old, was hanging with Sam. They both had met working at the brewery. She is smart and thinking she might stay a while in Los Angeles, a decision that has proven the undoing of many before her.

They were selling beer last night at MacLeod Ale, or so it seemed on the surface. But what they were selling were stories: intoxicating, delusional, impossible, and possibly real.

If MacLeod Ale’s chemical and financial alchemy survives, we, who wandered into here, and drank the spirits, may share in the dream.