A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
Lately my Twitter feed has been invaded on a daily basis by sponsored tweets touting the city of Louisville’s Centennial Festival of Riverboats in October.
Obviously, the prominent player in this celebration is the birthday girl herself, the 100-year-old Belle of Louisville, a steamboat locally owned and operated by none other than the city of Louisville itself.
Before I return to this historic event, it’s useful to recall that earlier this summer, Mayor Greg Fischer commissioned a study group of local beer industry people, of whom I was one, to meet and discuss ways the city of Louisville might help promote locally brewed “craft” beer.
(As a side note, I was (and remain) genuinely flattered to be included in the group. Owing to the state line, NABC both is and isn’t a part of Louisville, depending on the definition used to determine such judgments. We’re here, and then we aren’t. It’s just the way it’s always been, and I appreciate Fischer’s team being broad-minded about it)
After three substantive meetings, the study group emerged with a document containing five points, with recommendations:
1. Develop an official beer trail/beer map/website/video combination
2. Change ABC laws to be more beer friendly
3. Represent local breweries in more city events, functions and venues
4. Create a bourbon-barrel event that will be recognized nationally or internationally
5. Reconnect Louisville with its brewing heritage
My committee assignment was Number Three, and here is our recommendation. You might even be able to tell who wrote it.
Louisville Metro Breweries in local city owned venues
The mayors work group recommends that more local breweries be included in city-sponsored events and on city owned property. Louisville Metro breweries would like the opportunity to sell beer at such events like Waterfront Wednesday, Slugger Field, Iroquois Park, Yum! Center. Also noted, Louisville Metro breweries like to be included in city sponsored events or festivals such as Hike, Bike, and Paddle, Worldfest, and Blues, Brews, and BBQ.
Details for Recommendations
It is widely understood and accepted that Metro Louisville government is an equal opportunity employer, one that seeks to utilize minority, female and handicapped employees, whether when hired directly, or indirectly through contractors, suppliers and vendors. The importance of these precepts extends far beyond beer and brewing, to government’s fundamental aim of providing conditions for the improvement of daily life.
In like fashion, metro Louisville government understands the critical importance of the local economy in a sustainable future, as well as the key position that locally generated food and drink businesses occupy in the city’s outreach, whether within the community itself, or directed toward visitors from elsewhere. Alongside urban bourbon heritage and an explosion in innovative dining, Louisville’s breweries serve as exemplars of this new economy.
Aspects of pre-existing “older” economic systems sometimes must be modified to fit new and evolving realities. As an example, it has remained the case that customary concessions practices in venues for sports and music have evolved from the three-tier alcoholic beverage distribution system at state and federal levels, and to a certain degree, reflect private commercial matters between concessionaires and wholesalers.
And yet, there is nothing fundamentally ‘Louisville” about concessions choices emanating solely from contractual arrangements that the general public never sees. For native and tourist alike, viewing a baseball game at a venue such as Louisville Slugger Field should present the opportunity to inform and offer choices that pertain to the community which laid for the venue’s construction – that speak to Louisville itself.
Reflecting the reality that private for-profit businesses entities and drinks vendors utilize publicly financed venues and facilities, Metro Louisville government seeks to be a positive force in encouraging these entities and vendors to provide equal opportunities for local brewers, precisely because public financing of these venues implies acceptance of the merits of equal opportunity, as well as providing the ideal forum to educate attendees as to the merits of local, sustainable economies.
Metro Louisville government supports the creation of branded, destination concessions areas unique to the venues its taxpayers have financed. It works to educate concessionaires as to the benefits of a contemporary local economy as it pertains to beer and brewing, safe in the knowledge that profit margins for handcrafted beers can be equal to or greater than those for products supplied by multinational breweries.
In short, Metro Louisville government enthusiastically greets the chance to expand local brewing consciousness by use of the landlord’s bully pulpit in venues/events that include, but are not limited to, Slugger Field; Waterfront Wednesday; Iroquois Amphitheater; YUM! Center and Hike, Bike and Paddle.
It figures, doesn’t it? The one city-owned venue/property/object we forgot the mention was the Belle of Louisville, and this morning’s sponsored tweet reveals the reason why the omission rankles.
That’s right. For a once-in-a-lifetime event purporting to exalt all things metaphorically Louisvillian, there’ll be a special Belle of Louisville cruise featuring beers from … Atlanta, and yes, of course I understand that Sweetwater and River City Distributing are helping to sponsor the shindig by paying for whatever expedient combination of program ads and titles were up for grabs, but you see, it’s just that the idea itself sounds so very much like something emanating from the brain of a small-time marketer (“Georgia, Schmorgia – the beer’s got WATER in the name, and it’s a BOAT!) that my gag factor is heightened another notch or two.
I’ve got nothing against Sweetwater, and in fact, if I were to be marooned in Atlanta any time soon, I’d seek out the beers – you know, localism and all that.
It’s just to me, and I’m probably in the minority like always, there is no substantive difference between AB InBev’s ability to alter the marketplace with cash from very far away, and Sweetwater’s.
Look, I’m sure the sweetsteamwaterboat event was planned long before the advent of the study committee and its recommendations. At the same time, the study committee’s recommendations specifically pertain to a situation like this, even if we didn’t think to refer to it by name. And so, I will, because someone’s got to do it.
Perhaps by the time the Belle of Louisville’s bicentennial hits the Ohio River in 2114, there’ll be firm and abiding localist beer principles in place, although it’s far more likely that by then, we’ll have reverted to the brewery population distribution of 1980, and will require a “craft” brewing revolution all over again.
Too bad I’ll miss it. They’re fun, at least until they aren’t.
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