Anger Burger

The night that I turned 21 was a bit of a blur – my dad helped throw a party at a local diner/bar that I could be in until midnight and my upgrade to legally drunk.  After midnight a group of friends took me over to a bar/bar where I vaguely recall a cascade of free drinks, being yelled at by my ex-boyfriend, crying, and then going home.  Adulthood!

The next day, hung-over and miserable, a different ex spotted me at the local coffee shop at around 3 in the afternoon – a.k.a., my morning – and insisted that I accompany him to the dingiest, sketchiest tavern in town.  I resisted.  He put his foot down.  Off we went.

The Brotherhood Tavern (not to be confused with the current occupants of the same space, The Brotherhood Lounge) was a location-scout’s dream; old men sat permanently glued to ancient, sticky vinyl barstools.  The bartenderess had the same amount of teeth she entered this world with.  There was a standing offer to fry a steak for you, if you brought your own steak in.  The bar itself was literally disintegrating from years of beer saturation and was held together with carpet samples¹ stapled into place.   And my primary point: it served Brew 66.

The legend of Brew 66 (which turns out to be merely quasi-true) was that Brew 66 – a beer only available by the keg – was the “second run” of Rainier, a beer already not known for its palatability.  Now, there’s obviously no such thing as a “second run” of beer, like a second, inferior pressing of olive oil, but it was an apt enough conclusion based on the especially foul nature of Brew 66.  Over the years, descriptions of Vietnam’s infamous 33 beer rumored to be brewed with everything from urine to formaldehyde (now called 333 and a standard, Budweiser-type rice-based tipple) made me immediately think of the dread Brew 66.  The other rumor was that it was so bad, they couldn’t sell it as a canned beer and instead sold it as kegs to the cheapest, poorest bars in town who were then free to mis-label it as they pleased.  Whatever the case, it didn’t matter: The Brotherhood Tavern sold pitchers of Brew 66 for $3 at a time when even the cheapest pitcher ran about $6 or $7.

That afternoon at the Tavern we played pool, went through a few pitchers of Brew 66, then ordered the legendary “broasted” chicken, a delicacy still found at some backwoods taverns (the Littlerock Tavern out in Littlerock, Washington still broasts, for example).  Broasting, if you can wrap your brain around it, is a pressurized deep fryer.  A more horrific-sounding kitchen accident waiting to happen I can’t imagine.  Basically, it’s a large pressure-cooker with a screw-on lid like a submarine door, filled with hot oil.  Chicken pieces cook in minutes and come out more tender and less greasy than traditionally deep-fried chicken.  After a few pitchers of beer, its pretty much fucking ambrosia. Both the Brotherhood Tavern and Brew 66 are now gone, and for the best.  Nostalgia on that kind of thing doesn’t age well.

Anyway, last night as I watched an episode of Supernatural, the camera panned across the Winchester boys in a dive bar somewhere in the “Midwest” I shrieked and pointed and shrieked.  Authenticity be damned; the scene is supposed to be in the Midwest, though a decade-old Brew 66 neon could only be found in the good old Pacific Northwest, where the show is actually shot (if Vancouver, Canada counts as the Pacific Northwest, anyway).  But a bunch of classic-rock loving demon-hunters?  That IS Brew 66.

¹I swear this is true.