Your Local Park Should Sell Beer and Wine on Nice Summer Nights

Why don't more communites encourage park use & raise revenue by letting people buy a drink at parks on select days?

There are plenty of successful examples like Washington's National Sculpture Garden's wildly popular Jazz Fridays. Now Philadelphia is looking to expand its experiment with letting food trucks sell drinks at parks:

The city wants to schedule 12 to 18 consecutive weeks from June through October.

The venues identified include Aviator Park/Logan Square; Paine’s Park (Franklin’s Paine Skatepark); Schuylkill Banks (between Walnut & Market); Water Works / Lloyd Hall, lawn area between the two along the Schuylkill; Lemon Hill Mansion (park also available if desired); Playing Angels (Kelly Drive); Sedgley Woods Disc Golf Course; Mount Pleasant; Clark Park; Belmont Plateau; Japanese House & Gardens (Shofuso); Horticulture Center; Smith Memorial Arch/Whispering Wall; FDR Park; Jefferson Square Park; Hawthorne Park; Penn Treaty Park; and Powers Park.

Applicants must have a minimum of three years of experience operating a successful food and beverage venue that is currently in business and must hold a current Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board liquor license in good standing and be capable of securing a PLCB Off-Premises Catering Permit.

There are some obvious, common-sense limitations you want to follow: You wouldn't want to do this in troubled neighborhoods and you don't want to serve drinks long enough or late enough to cause problems.

I've lived in many places and the park closest to me is rarely the one I've used the most. I usually go to destination parks - the ones with the best trails, best basketball courts, or best views. The closest park is usually a barren patch of grass that I walk briskly past to a more fun place.

But there's no reason you can't take a bland park and cheaply & easily encourage its use. Summer movie nights in the park are a staple across America, and some communities like my own Fairhaven offer things like yoga in the park.

Why not also encourage people to picnic by selling wine & beer? If you're feeling really Big Governmenty, you could even pay a local band a couple of hundred bucks to play some music.

Green Summer Choices: Boxed Wine and Canned Beer

Why are boxed wine and canned beer better for the environment, more economical, more convenient?

• They have much lower carbon footprints thanks to the reduced weight of the packaging (glass bottles make up 35% of the weight of a full bottle of beer & 40% of a full the weight of a full bottle of wine). That also makes them much lighter to carry to the party or picnic.
• They're more affordable - a box of wine hold four bottles worth of wine but may cost about the same as one mid-range bottle, and unless you're a hardcore oenophile you won't taste much difference. For beer, a 24-pack of cans usually costs the same as an 18-pack of bottles.
• Don't drink that much wine in one sitting? All the more reason to go with a box, which keeps the wine fresh up to 45 days compared with just a day or two for an opened bottle and also avoids cork taint. Similarly, beer cans block the sunlight that can skunk bottled beer.

Check out the New York Times' in-depth review of higher-end boxed wines and CraftCans.com for reviews of canned beer.

From That Day On, If I Was Ever Needing Beer, I WAS RUNNING

I was in the beer aisle of Harris Teeter last night when a guy next to me in his 20s shook his head ruefully and said, "Man, I'd kill for some good, strong beer. Any chance you know anywhere like that around here?"

"Absolutely," I said. "Go to Westover Market up on Washington Boulevard. Three of the four walls are packed with beer."

His eyes lit up. "Is that far?"

"Nah, about two miles from here," I told him.

"Thanks!" he said, then spun around - and I am not making this up - and RAN DOWN THE BEER AISLE AND OUT OF THE STORE. Hey, when you need good beer, you need good beer.

I tell this story only as an excuse to link to this ArlNow.com story updating the progress of Westover Market Beer Garden in clearing Arlington's regulatory hurdles. So far, so good!

Fat Tire Rolling Into DC Area

Until just a few years ago, New Belgium Brewing's beer wasn't available east of the Mississippi River. It's been creeping slowly towards Virginia for several years, but now New Belgium is making a big move, expanding into the entire DC region:

New Belgium Brewing, maker of Fat Tire Amber Ale, announced plans today to expand their market territory along the eastern seaboard. The Colorado brewer will open Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. in September of 2011. The added territory will bring the nation’s third-largest craft brewer to 29 states.

But New Belgium isn't just coming to DC to sell beer. It'll also be pushing for clean energy & climate action:

New Belgium Brewing, the nation’s third largest craft brewery, today announced it is joining the fast-growing Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) coalition, a group of major American businesses pushing for passage of comprehensive energy and climate legislation in the U.S.

“New Belgium has long strived to be a sustainable business role model, but we also recognize that legislative advocacy is vital to creating the conditions for widespread sustainable business practices,” said Jenn Orgolini, Sustainability Director at New Belgium. “We view BICEP as our ally in D.C., giving us the opportunity to join other business voices in advocating for aggressive energy and climate policies that address the tremendous challenges and opportunities facing our country.”

New Belgium Brewing, based in Fort Collins, CO, is considered a leader in sustainable business practices in the craft beer industry. In 1998, New Belgium became the first brewery in America to subscribe to wind energy for its electrical needs. The brewery currently produces 15 percent of its electricity onsite, by harvesting methane from its process water treatment facility to fire a co-generation engine. New Belgium recently installed the largest private solar array in Colorado at 200kW and boasts one of the lowest water-to-beer production rates in the industry.

New Belgium may not focus on using organic ingredients, but their clean energy leadership is far more critical. And don't discount the water factor out West, where the climate crisis is worsening droughts just as it is here in the Southeast.

The Green Miles has been rooting for New Belgium's Fat Tire to come to DC since he first tried a pint more than three years ago in California. It's as tasty as a craft brew, but drinkable enough that on a hot summer night you could have a couple and not feel like Mr. Creosote.

A Quick Green Beer Guide for St. Patrick's Day

The Green Miles will be at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Clarendon tonight. But what to drink? Here are a few quick tips for enjoying the holiday sustainably no matter where you are:

Drink Sustainably. Choose a beer from a Brooklyn Brewing & New Belgium Brewing get 100% of their power from renewable energy. California-based Anderson Valley Brewing & Sierra Nevada get significant chunks of their energy from solar power. Bison Brewing, Peak Organic & Wolaver brew organic beer. Among the heavyweights, Anheuser-Busch InBev got the top score in the most recent ClimateCounts.org assessment, making Bud & Bud Light the top big brand choices. Local Options: You can't go wrong at Restaurant Nora, America's first certified organic restaurant. Busboys & Poets, with two locations in DC & one in Shirlington, has Peak Organic on draft.

Drink Locally. Look for beers that were brewed in your area instead of trucked or shipped over long distances requiring large amounts of fossil fuel. Local Options: Dogfish Head, Yuengling, Old Dominion.

Drink Where It's Brewed. Cut your beer's carbon footprint even further by drinking at places that brew their own beer on-site. Local Options: Shenandoah Brewing, Capitol City Brewing, Rock Bottom.

Drink Draft: If all else fails, go with what's on tap. Most bars & restaurants don't recycle, so if you're drinking out of a bottle, it will likely end up in a landfill. But kegs & pint glasses can be reused hundreds or thousands of times.  

For a more detailed rundown, check out my 2009 St. Patrick's Day post. And as always, read Chris O'Brien's Beer Activist blog.

I'm Like a Chocoholic, But For Booze

The Green Miles ... your number one Google search result for beer craving:

Why Nationals Park Left The Green Miles Warmed and Chilled

I've already blogged about how the new Nationals Park is a green diamond. When I made my first visit last weekend, what I noticed most was how much of an impact the new stadium's green features had on the fan experience.

None.

The green roof, the water filtration system, the drink cups made from corn ... as a fan, I would never have guessed I was in a LEED-certified building.

But one burning question remained. What about the beer?

Last spring, I blogged about how the Washington Nationals struck out my beer craving at RFK Stadium, offering warm beer that was hard to buy in a wasteful process.

So at the beer stand, The Green Miles got all misty-eyed when he saw this:
That monolith is a refrigerator, a quantum leap over RFK's comically deficient ice chests. My beer was almost too cold. I did not complain.

As I finished my Bud Light, I looked for the vaunted recycling bins:

Aluminum on one side, plastic on the other. Heartwarming.

Of course, beyond the bin, there's another huge environmental challenge - the polluted Anacostia River. Think someday we'll have a river walk with bars and restaurants overlooking a clean waterway?

Weekend Update: I'm Not Here, Lookin' for Trouble ...

... I'm just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle.

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday, and having lived for a few years as a kid in Carol Stream, IL, I'll be wearing my Walter Payton jersey and rooting for Da Bears. Realistically, they have very little chance of beating the Colts, but rooting for the underdog has never stopped me before. The NFL is making an effort to reduce the Super Bowl's environmental impact by planting 3,000 native trees in Florida. As one climate scientist says, "It's probably a nice thing to do, but planting trees is not a quantitative solution to the real problem."

* The Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse is hosting its Biannual TPS Report Managers Meeting, aka the Office Space Movie Festival.

* Speaking of drafthouses, The Green Girlfriend and I stopped by Shenandoah Brewing Company in Alexandria last night. Not many local breweries in the DC area, especially since the downfall of Foggy Bottom Beer. But we tasted ten different beers and I came home with a mix case of Old Rag Mountain Ale and Mountain Beast Ale -- brews as strong as their names.

* Speaking of downfalls, the Washington Post has more details on the demise of Backfence.

* Am I the only one who thinks Arlington County Board members deserve to be paid more than $14.77 an hour? If you believe the board members themselves that it's a full time job, that's what their $30,723 annual salary works out to on an hourly basis.

* Interesting article on the tug-of-war between parents of young children and young professionals as they battle for time on the dwindling number of places to play in Arlington.