It's A Relatively Decent World

I can't exactly remember when I first went to the Brickskeller in Dupont, perhaps five or six years ago, but at the time it seemed really great. There were so many beers to chose from, it seemed. Flash forward to last year. We went there on a friend's birthday and it took an hour and a half to get a beer of any sort. The service was sub-worthless and I realized that I was completely done with the dingy establishment. To be fair, there are times where I've drank there and had decent experiences (I think I had my first Bellhaven there), but at a certain point the joke about having to select three or four beers from their menu just to find one that was available became less funny and more annoying.

But here we are in 2010, and the world is pretty great. There is such an embarrassment of riches right now that the slow death of the Brickskeller has no bearing at all on the selection of good beer in our city. Yesterday I was at Church Key on 14th street which has 40 or 50 really good beers on tap. Plus I now live walking distance from Mussel Bar in Bethesda, which has an amazing selection of Belgian beers. And next time I'm at a show at Rock and Roll Hotel I can go next door to the Biergarten Haus for one of their many different German beers.

This is all just to say that there are times when I get frustrated about capitalism and globalization and the way the world is going. But right now it's nice to live in a world of such choices.