Temporary beer activation of the space once intended to lead to Museum Plaza.

As usual, a wee bit of local history is in order.

In Louisville, there was to have been a game-changing, 62-story skyscraper. It was to be called the Museum Plaza.

It was not built, and the plan has been officially "dead" for three years.

In the run-up to Museum Plaza, several infrastructure improvement projects were completed by the city. One of them was on the 600 block of West Main Street, where four buildings were demolished, but their historic facades buttressed and kept intact. This was slated to be developed as the entrance to Museum Plaza from the Main Street corridor.

The space has remained vacant since 2007. The hollow cavity is shown here:

Now the city of Louisville is interested in using the space as a pop-up beer/food/fun garden during four autumn weekends -- and the beer would be entirely locally brewed. The plan was discussed during recent meetings of a committee to advise Mayor Greg Fisher on what the city might do with respect to supporting local breweries.

This could be interesting, so stay tuned.

Experimental ‘space activation’ to bring a pop-up lounge to former Museum Plaza site, by Melissa Chipman (Insider Louisville)

Remember Museum Plaza? Hard to forget the doomed 62-story project, isn’t it. What was supposed to be one of the most innovative spaces in the city is now a vacant lot across from 21c.

But for four weeks this fall it will once again be a space for innovation, culture and fun.

Children in pubs ... and beer gardens.

My travels have taken me to Central Europe more often than England, and more often than not, there is a fairly clear delineation between "family friendly" and "boozer." Certainly most beer gardens one visits in a place like Bavaria includes the equivalent of a children's playground.

On children in pubs, Katharine Whitehorn (Guardian/Observer)

Historically pubs wouldn't allow children on the premises; now they have family-friendly menus and positively welcome toddlers.

Note that we speak not of 21-year-olds behaving like children. My point simply is that maturity applies to adults as well as children, in the sense of positive reinforcement. If the atmosphere is good, with beer, food, music and fun, why wouldn't we want kids to learn about it, sans the prohibitionist idiocy that inevitably colors any such discussion in the United States?

In 1985, the Augustiner in Salzburg was my first genuine German-style beer garden experience. Although I didn't mention younger children specifically in my recollection, they certainly were there, too, carving up sausages and acting as part of the scene. Why not?

But it was out in the leafy beer garden that I fell in love with a way of life, one experienced for the very first time. At midday, hundreds of beer lovers were seated at tables, shaded by towering chestnut trees, surrounded by stone walls and stucco, virtually all of them drinking malty Marzen-style lager brewed and aged only yards away.
It was entirely self-service, or so I remember. You went back inside for sausages, salads and loaves of crusty bread, and then joined the line for beer. A cashier took Austrian schillings, as plastic was not negotiable and Euros didn’t exist, and handed back a receipt. Upon choosing a liter (33.8 ounces) ceramic mug from the freshly washed public stack, you ritualistically rinsed it in a fountain of cold water, handed it and the receipt over to aproned men who were pouring the deep golden beer from a tap embedded in a wooden barrel, and prepared for nirvana.

Teens drank alongside elderly men. There were playing cards, songs for singing, chicken bones and carts filled with emptied mugs. Strangers shared tables and bought rounds. Worldwide languages were spoken. I ate, drank, used the WC, drank some more, and returned the following two nights to do it again, each time walking 25 minutes back to my lodging, feeling perfectly safe and wishing we could do the same back home.

The classic layout of the Hofbrauhaus beer garden in Newport, Kentucky.

Recently we spent a rainy Saturday afternoon in Newport at the Hofbrauhaus. The Schwarzbier and Leberkase were fine, indeed, and there always is food for thought at places like this.

Specifically, because the blustery weather precluded use of the biergarten, it was a rare opportunity to take photos of the layout sans human bodies. The HB's outdoor area contains most of the design elements of a genuine Old World article, down to the benches, tables and pea gravel.

As we inch forward toward initiating the "beer garden" project at Bank Street Brewhouse, there are plenty of ideas in these photos. Whether we can afford to implement them is another matter ...