By request: Karl and the keg club.

Flashback: Letting the pints speak ... in 1994.

In the beginning, when the Public House had only two or three taps and we were seeking ways to encourage consumption, we had a "keg club."

The idea was to record the number of pints consumed overall, and when these pints totalled a keg, the drinker would get a prize of some sort (I can't remember what) and have his or her name recorded on a keg, which would be mounted somewhere inside the pub for viewing.

It was well intentioned, and for a while it was quite popular, and this in part came eventually to doom the project. No one had time any longer to keep track, and we became busier (perhaps I should say, became a real business") far sooner than any of us expected. Evenings stopped being intimate gatherings of friends, and became Mecca instead. There are good and bad aspects of both, I suppose. I'm happy that we the pub became successful, but I miss those times.

Karl was one of our earliest and most vocal advocates, and he fancied Guinness above all else. There'd been scattered murmurings about who could drink the most pints of Guinness, and after a trial run or three, and a "record" somewhere around 13 or 14, Karl announced that the end-all, beat-all, record-breaking day had arrived.

We took his car keys and arranged a ride home, and he proceeded to drink 18 pints in roughly 12 hours. I verified the count. A legend was born. A photo was taken.

Soon thereafter we began soft-pedaling the notion of drinking contests, although the tradition lives on in the form of periodic efforts to "run the gauntlet" during Gravity Head. Officially, the practive is discouraged ... but it's your hangover. Deposit car keys first, them do what you will.