Taste Police Target Beer Room with Selective Enforcement
Can Downtown Survive Red-Tape Fetish?
The last time I wrote about the city’s Sign Committee, I think the Berlin Wall was just falling down. I remember wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. I didn’t have a good answer then. I still don’t.
Sometimes when reality overwhelms — as it is so loudly now — I seek refuge on top of mole hills rather than the mountain tops. The views aren’t as nice, but I’m less likely to sustain bodily harm if I trip and fall.
Such is the case now with City Hall’s narrowly defensible but utterly unfortunate decision to pick a fight about the neon sign hanging on the wall inside Institution Ale, which opened up shop on the 500 block of State Street just a few months ago. Institution Ale comes from Camarillo, where its mother ship launched about six years ago right next to the former Camarillo Psychiatric Hospital, which inspired its name and that of many of its drinks, to the consternation of some. It’s famous for brewing classic, in-your-face West Coast IPAs, the sort of over-amped fare that make my eyeballs seize in their sockets after half a glass. Personally, I’m not big a fan of beer that tastes how old basements smell. I’d rather chew a wrung-out bar rag. Give me a crisp lager or a pilsner instead — both of which, it turns out, Institution Ale serves — something superficially breezy and pleasant but still neurotic enough to be interesting.
