Beer Blogging Outsourced

I didn't have much to say about Seven closing even though the owner, Bill George, specifically cited the smoking ban and the Power and Light as reasons for its closing. I never, not once, desired to go to Seven and won't miss it, but it's not my favorite thing to see a local place go by the wayside. What I did find interesting was this little nugget in the great Charles Ferruza's writeup of the closing:
"And because Seven is located in a historic building," George added, "we couldn't add an outdoor deck or patio to accommodate smokers. That was hard, because we had built up a very steady nightclub clientele."

This is an angle I hadn't thought of, historic businesses in historic buildings actually have a bigger burden because of the smoking ban. While new businesses and strip mall bars are given a very significant advantage in drawing in the smokers, the lifeblood of a bar's business, the older bars in established historical buildings just have to hope for the best. So what we'll get over the next 10 years is soulless new development and the shuttering of many street level restaurants and bars in the urban core. But, people who don't visit the urban core get to save a few bucks on dry cleaning, so I guess we'll take the good with the bad.

As I mentioned I had no desire to go to Seven because I'm not a club type person. Apparently neither is JJS in KCK, but that didn't stop him from going to Mint at Martini Corner. When I read the following passage all I could think of was the scene in "Fever Pitch" where Jimmy Fallon's friends had to dance for Yankee tickets (and not be subjected to Royals games):
I reached the infrequently-visited intersection of “buzzed enough” and “wide freaking awake enough”, and the dancing began. It started innocuously enough, but quickly spiraled into bigger movements until I was pretty much covering the entire expanse of the raised seating area we were in. I wasn’t being a total spaz (hey, I can move a little when called upon), but I certainly wasn’t dancing seriously by any stretch of the imagination.
Read the whole thing.

Finally, Beer Girl posts a Boulevard/Flying Saucer PSA about a Boulevard tasting event at the Flying Saucer on Monday March 9.
The event will be hosted by Steven Pauwels, brewmaster at Boulevard. Five beers from Boulevard’s Smokestack Series will be paired with specially selected artisan cheeses and a dessert. Featured pairings include the Long Strange Tripel with a St. André Tripel Crème; the Smokestack Saison with a Great Pyrenees Goat with green peppercorns; the Double-Wide I.P.A. with Blue Stilton; the Smokestack Imperial Stout as a stand-alone feature; the Sixth Glass Quadrupel with chocolate truffles; and one special “mystery” beer from Boulevard.
It might be worth it for the special "mystery" beer. I won't be going because I'm going to have a big beer drinking weekend right before the event. I can't go three days in a row.

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