Pic(k) of the Week: Bruegel in the brewpub

While recently searching among older images, I discovered this photograph from a time not long ago (yet seeming far gone) when social distancing was not a thing.

It's a portrait of a bustling brewpub, its patrons and servers all gesturing this way and that, all enjoying the moment —some perhaps already lubricated by the in-house-brewed libations— all watched over by a large mural of a tilting beer glass, and all washed with a warm indoor tint. If you can forgive me, I think it a bit 'Pieter Bruegel goes to the city.'

I took the photo in March 2013. [See that: here.] For today, I've done a bit of touch-up: straightening the mural, adjusting shadows and brights, and cropping extranea.

In this time of coronavirus, most breweries and brewpubs have been closed to drinking on-the-premises. Some face extinction. Some are hanging on, still brewing and selling via a stretched supply chain, some are offering packaged beer takeout on-site, and some even providing home delivery.

The point of today's post is not of any particular brewpub but of the multitude of breweries and brewpubs nationwide...and a photo expressing the experiential joy they brought us, now missing.

So, please! Buy their beer. Drink their beer (not much of a hardship, there). Support them now so that they may survive later: zymur-agents of our great good places.

-----more-----

• I took this photo at the Navy Yard Gordon Biersch in Washington, D.C. during its March, 2013 grand opening. Unfortunately, it closed for business in early March 2020, before the full impact of coronavirus was felt in the U.S.
• I may have had the temerity to compare my photo to a Bruegel painting —even if tongue-in-cheek (or would that be brush-on-easel?)— because beer-writer/blogger/historian/curmudgeon Alan McLeod once said of another photo of mine, "It's like a Vermeer," but with which he then followed, "Quite certain Tom thought none of that." My 1/2 second of fame.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of images posted on Saturdays, and occasionally —as is the case today— with a good fermentable as the subject.
• Photo 13 of 52, for year 2020. See it on Flickr: here.
• Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
  • Lens: Lumix G Vario 45-200/F4.0-5.6.
  • Settings: 61 mm | 1/40 | ISO 1600 | f/4.1
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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