Epilogue

Yesterday it was a balmy 75 when I took this picture
Ah, the beach. You know in this day and age you have a lot of choices what your background image is going to be? You choose your desktop, you choose your gmail theme, you choose your feed reader theme. You have all the choices in the world to customize the tools you use in life. You can choose the walk in the woods, the mountains, an African safari, etc.. I’ve always chosen the beach picture.

You all know, I grew up in Wichita. Kansas City for me was a dream. I was drawn here. I came up 4 or 5 times a year all the time I was growing up. I always saw KC as the big city, the place I would live, the place I would love. And things worked out that way. I’m one of the few people to ever move here twice, one time pretty successful, one time not. But, there’s always been the nagging feeling about wanting to be a part of that beach picture.



My life has changed dramatically in KC. I met my wife. I conceived 3 children. I got an MBA. I met a lot of people. I’ve had a good time writing things on this here beer blog and somehow, someway have a bit of a following. I’m not sure why I’ve gotten the opportunity to do some of the things I’ve gotten to do over the past 4 years, but it’s been a great time. In these times you get to see where everyone you went to high school with ended up. For me, many stayed in Wichita, many ended up here in KC, but I’ve always been intrigued by the ones who ended up somewhere random, like Bismarck, ND, Phoenix, AZ, Seattle, Pittsburgh, wherever. How did they get there? It’s strange to me. And now it’s me that’s going somewhere random.

 I love KC, I love its character, I love that I can discern qualities about people and places based on where they’re located in the city. I love knowing all the neighborhoods, well, the neighborhoods south of the river, north of the river is a mystery. I love that we have a great hometown brewery. I love that we have plenty of great local beer. I even love when people from Lawrence try to make believe they’re part of Kansas City. 

Despite all of that, I’ve known for several months now, that Kansas City was not going to be my home much longer. And then the beach presented itself and things fell into place and now I sit in my soon to be empty living room thinking about being on the beach in just over 2 weeks. I have many things to find out about my new home; where are the beer bars, where’s the best liquor stores, what’s the best local beer? These are all things I know about Kansas City, these are all things I’m going to find out about my new home, Virginia Beach. As an aside, I do know where I can pick up 5 bottles of Lagunitas Brown Shugga’, a little place called Grape and Gourmet a mere 7 minutes from my new house.

Things around the KC Beer Blog are going to stay pretty much the same except I won’t be writing here regularly anymore. I’ve lined up a couple of people to hopefully continue the sorts of things you’re used to reading here. They’ll introduce themselves in the next couple of days. As for me, I don’t know that I’ll start the Virginia Beach Beer Blog or Hampton Roads Beer Blog (Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Newport News and Hampton make up Hampton Roads, it’s about the same population as Kansas City), though I suspect that won’t be happening. I do know that I have to have a creative outlet where I can write the stupid things you’re used to reading from me.

I’m going to keep the Twitter name @bullevard, if you follow me for beer news, you’ll probably want to unfollow, it won’t hurt my feelings. My Facebook name has changed to my real name and made private. Bull’s Hits, my Tumblr blog, will remain as is and will probably see the bulk of any writing I do over the next couple of months.

As for you, the dear reader, thank you. Thank you for clicking through here for the past 4 and a half years. Thank you for being respectful and never letting the comments section turn into a place of personal attacks and other trash. Thank you for making me feel like my opinion mattered and humoring me when thoughts that were in my head didn’t necessarily translate into the written word. Thank you for putting up with my biases. Thank you for telling me of a post you really enjoyed. I never claimed to be an expert, I never claimed to be the most knowledgeable beer guy, but you guys made me feel like a valuable beerizen of Kansas City.

This is a gigantic move for me, Stella and the kids will still be in Kansas City until the new year, most of my stuff will still be in Kansas City until then as well. I’ll pretty much have a couple of weeks of clothes, a couple cast iron pans, some Lagunitas Mason Jars, an air bed and a 4 bedroom house 10 minutes from the beach. I’ll spend December biking to work, maybe take in a tasting or 2 at the little brewery between my work and house, trying out the gas station barbecue restaurant by my work and enjoying the 50 degree weather.

As an aside KCMO, it goes a real long way when you’re moving across the country to be able to tell your family that your kids will be going to a top 10 school district. It really does set a parent’s mind at ease. No one who has moved to KC in the past 30 years has had that peace of mind, you may want to work on that. I’ll always have great thoughts about Kansas City, I’m going to miss the hell out of the barbecue and I’m probably going to salivate over many a Boulevard release that I won’t have access to (let’s get working on VA distribution, Boulevard). But, Virginia does have many more beers distributed to it than either Missouri or Kansas, so I'll have some beersploring to do.

I won’t be back enough and when I am back I won’t have enough time. But, I know, these KC years have been the best of my life, I hope my Virginia Beach years will be even better, but I’ll always look back fondly on these last 10 years. This blog is a part of that and I’ll miss it. And guys, I missed a couple of posts last week because of moving plans and all that. Smokehouse BBQ in Zona Rosa has an expanded tap list, check it out. Sam Adams has 4 new bombers out, they're pretty limited and my already be gone. I was really excited about them when I found out about them a couple of months ago. Frambozen's out in stores, hopefully it will be easy to find again. Also a couple of new Lips of Faith beers have hit the shelves, look for them.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned. And if you ever find yourself headed to Virginia Beach, drop me a line.

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