I've always believed that certain places are like magnets and draw you towards them should you happen to walk within their radius. And this occurs imperceptibly, without you even suspecting. All it takes is a sloping street, a sunny sidewalk, or maybe a shady one. Or perhaps a downpour. And this leads you straight there, to the exact spot you're meant to wash up.I still feel drawn to brewery tasting rooms, even as I get older and customers in tasting rooms get younger. Ocean Beach and Point Loma have numerous tasting rooms, and I am not going to critique each, but the one, for me, that closest matches the imperceptible lure, like certain Parisian Left Bank cafes had for Modiano, is Culture Brewing's tasting room on Newport Avenue. I don't find Culture's beers the best, its staff, while pleasant enough, is not nicer or ruder than the staff in other tasting rooms, the standard whiff of ageism is there like in other tasting rooms, and the ever presence of dogs annoys me. Still, Culture's tasting room is the spot where I am "meant to wash up." Maybe it is because there is always local art on the walls. Maybe it is because of the dark interior and the racks of beer aging in barrels that somehow seem to exude a calm on the room. Maybe it is because the crowd is always mixed, whether it is groups of friends or someone having a beer alone. Maybe it is because no one bothers anyone. Maybe it is because it rarely feels hectic even when there is a large crowd. Maybe it is because at Culture it is not uncommon to see someone reading a book or writing in a journal or notebook, and not lost in a phone screen. I like that I can't exactly define why I find Culture's tasting room so inviting, and that is part of the inexplicable mystery of craft beer.
Separately, In The Cafe Of Lost Youth opens discussing the cafes on and around Carrefour de l'Odeon in Paris, so, for me, the book had immediate resonance. There used to be a rustic beer-centric cafe / bar on this small plaza, and I stopped there for a beer in the early '90s. I didn't know much about beer then and I am sure I must have been intimidated by the selection. I imagine now that the beer list was full of Belgian beers, then strange and unknown to me. I ordered a Newcastle Brown Ale, a safe beer I had heard of, which, looking back, is about as big a beer own goal as I have ever committed. Modiano wrote about lost youth, but my Newkie Brown choice proved wasted youth.
