This woman can't hold her booze

If you watch cable news, then you've probably already seen this video of a woman cheating death -- drunkenly falling six-plus feet onto the tracks of a subway train in Boston. If you haven't seen it, click away:


She's identified as 26-year-old Sophia Hartdegen of Cambridge.

She said she had four 22-ounce beers before her fall around 10:30 p.m. last Friday. Not bad, I guess. Her LinkedIn page says her job is as a Neuroprotective Research Coordinator. I'm not sure what that means, but perhaps she studies the effect of alcohol on brain cells.

Autumn blues

Now that I've fully enjoyed New England's five weeks of summer, I can start to look forward to the spoils of fall. And with each fall comes a wild card for the Red Sox, fantasy football, and my favorite brew of the year Sam Adams Octoberfest.

It's been available for about two weeks in Boston (and I even spotted it in late August in Reno, Nev., of all places). I've been able to enjoy it a couple times now -- twice out and once yesterday at a Labor Day weekend barbecue.

Oddly, Sam October might be the only beer I find superior in a bottle, as opposed to draught. Draft Octoberfest has an oily feel and an overpowering nose, but in the bottle it's just right.

Boozehound!

President Obama and some friends are going to have beers tonight at the White House. The friends are actually enemies -- Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police officer who arrested him at his house, Jim Crowley.

The idea here is a well-worn one: that alcohol solves all our problems.

The exact beer list is a closely guarded secret, though there's talk of Bud Light, Blue Moon, and maybe Amstel.

If the president invited me to his house for a beer, I'd go with a Sam Adams Utopia. Sam Adams because it's distinctly American. Utopia because it's freaking expensive.

Several loyal readers flagged this one for me.

At the risk of turning this into European week on the NaturalBlog, here's a story about a study by Britain's Department of Health about drinking.

It found that people in the media drank more than those in any other profession, consuming the equivalent of more than four bottles of wine or more than 19 pints of beer a week, which is bragable. Media folks are also most likely to report feeling pressured to drink by colleagues.

According to the study, the next highest professional category (IT workers) trails widely. Service-sector workers and finance people come in third and fourth.

This must just be a British thing, because I'm a member of the liberal media (just the regular liberal media, not the liberal media elite), and I don't know any U.S. journalists who drink.

Appreciation: Bar Snacks

I'm writing today to praise something that's grown too rare in the bars I frequent: free snacks. Specifically I'm writing about the little panoply of pretzels, cheese crunches and wasabi peanuts that grace bars everywhere -- a trail mix for those on the trail to inebriation.

If you know a spot that does a good bar snack, put it in the comments because I need to know.

Enjoy yourselves tonight

In a sign of how creepily invasive Facebook has become, there's an application that tracks what people are writing on other people's pages. Search for a word, and you get a graph that shows how often it's appearing by day.

Just for kicks, let's take a look at how often "hangover" appears:


Each weekend, with one big spike tomorrow. Classic.

IPA vs Pale Ale

Beers known as IPAs, or India pale ales, have really exploded in popularity in the last 18 months or so. One of the owners of a favorite haunt told me almost with remorse that more than a third of his taps were IPAs.

In the race to make IPAs distinctive, brewers have really blown the top off the beer. The hoppiness that is the hallmark of IPAs has exploded and alcohol content is way up.

I've been a fan of IPAs for a while, which is why it pains me to say that I'm enjoying them less the bigger they get. I think I'm drifting to pale ales, which aren't so overdone.

If you're a brewer and you're reading this, dial back your IPAs.

What might have been

I've always thought that everybody has one good invention in them, and if they can figure out how to market it then they can hit it big.

I had my good idea when I was about eight. For an elementary school class we had to create and build an invention. From Legos, I made a mock-up of a video camera that also took still pictures. This was 1986, so I was sort of ahead of the game.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to this invention, which I have fallen in love with:

The Silver Bullet claims another

The president of Iowa Central Community College, Robert Paxton, has resigned. Why? I could explain, but it's easier to show you.


That's him on the top left, manning the tap to the Coors Light minikeg.

I don't think I'm alone in my outrage here. The only beer that should be consumed from a minikeg is Heineken. End of story.

This week in booze

Don't you always mean to plan something for World Cocktail Week, but just never get around to it? Happens to me every year. Probably because I'm too busy enjoying cocktails. In a celebration's sted, I'll pass along this drunken news.

An Australian man driving near Alice Springs, known for its chicken, was cited for failing to properly buckle in a five-year-old passenger. The little kid was crawling around on the car's floor. In a seat where the child might have been belted, there was a 30-pack of beer that was secured by a seatbelt. I have been unable to find out what kind of beer.

$9.15 for Sam Light?

I was doing some Easter shopping yesterday afternoon at my neighborhood liquor store, and I was dismayed to see how expensive beer prices have become. I spent $19.75 for 12 beers -- a sixer of Sam Light (based in Boston, but bottled all the way in Cincinnati) and a sixer of Long Trail (brewed in Vermont).

Apparently it has to do with a worldwide shortage of hops, and increased transportation costs.

Whatever the reason, I'm afraid to even ask -- Is a $10 six pack around the corner? What is this, New York?

Holiday Cocktail

You can also season with a dash of vermouth.

What happened, Castlebar?

There was this nice dive bar in Brighton where I used to drink Bud Lights and play darts back when that was what I used to do. It was named Castlebar, though some people called it the "Black Lung Lounge," for even after the state banned smoking in bars, there still seemed to be a haze that lingered beneath the drop ceiling.

The typical Friday night clientele was paint-spattered, drunk and often singing Irish songs over the strains of the juke box.

But because the neighborhood is increasingly full of people like me, the bar decided to upgrade. I lament the passing.

The two tiny, tinny 13-inch TVs are gone, replaced by half a dozen flat screen HD panels. The taps are new. There's a Big Buck Hunter video game in place of the second dart board.

The saddest part of the whole thing is the drink special I noticed with a friend of mine earlier this month: The Pumpkintini.

We asked the bartender, maybe incredulously, "You sell a lot of those?"

"I could sell a Eat-Shit-and-Die-tini, if I put it up on that board."

Guess you can take the dive out of the bar, but not the bartender.

Advantage, Washington

While Mrs. N-B and I failed in our quest to drive both ends of Interstate 90 on the same day, our trip to Seattle did allow us to complete a tastier feat: tours of both Red Hook Breweries in Woodinville, Wash., and Portsmouth, N.H. in the space of about two weeks. We hit the Washington brewery last month and the Portsmouth on yesterday.

And while the tours were substantially the same ($1 for five five-ounce samples), I have to say I preferred our tour in Washigton.

Two reasons for that. First, in Washington the beer drinking was mixed in with the tour, while in New Hampshire the drinking was all at the end. Second, though the New Hampshire tour guide was entertaining, he relied on jokes about his ex-wife to carry the load of his humor; our Washington guide was just all-around funny.

Plus, he was willing to lambaste the ridiculous new marketing campaign for Red Hook's repackaged "Long Hammer" IPA, which reads in part:

Everything great that was ever built required a long hammer. A trusty tool used by ordinary men to make extraordinary things. Transcontinental train tracks. Impossible pipelines. Soaring skyscraper. Long Hammer IPA puts this bold spirit in a bottle.

Ugh. Fortunately the beverage itself isn't as heavy handed as the advertising. Beer hasn't come so close to making me barf in a several years.

Two things I know a little about collide

As I watched Manny fly out in his only All Star at-bat last night, I enjoyed a nice glass of the red wine that bears his name (and visage), Manny Being Merlot.

The wine, which raises money for charity, is made from Chilean grapes and is imported through a Massachusetts wine distributor. Mrs. N-B picked it up for $12. My expectations were very low, and I'm pleased to say Manny exceeded them.

I was struck immediately by the wine's strong nose, or smell. I picked up on ripe fruit flavors almost immediately after opening the bottle. After swirling a small tasting sample, I also detected some pepper and cherry. Mrs. N-B said there was cassis in there, too, but I don't know what cassis tastes like.

Right off the bat, I was most impressed with the wine's color. It lightened just a bit at the top of the glass, indicating it had been aged slightly. A good sign.

Satisfied with sight and smell, I moved to taste. Very dry initially, Manny opened up a bit, but there was some sourness on the finish. Not surprisingly, the slugger tasted meaty and would probably go well with a steak. Mrs. N-B noted that the taste was very alcoholy, a good observation given the wine's high 13.5% alcohol content.

I thought Manny would pair well with some chocolate, but I'm disappointed to report the chocolate only exacerbated the sour. This undercuts what Tampa Bay Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon once said about Manny.

In all, I say it's a buy. Worth $12 for a bottle, not worth $160M over eight years.

Tales from Baltimore: Sketchiest Bar Ever

If you ever find yourself near Pigtown in Baltimore, Md., you'll be missing out if you don't seek out the Harbor Way Inn, which is without a doubt the best dive bar in which I've ever had a drink.

How sketchy is it? The bartender, whose name is Spooky, told a story that concluded with "He looked just like the first robber that my dad shot." This was after we discussed the Garfield presidency, but before she described a ghostly apparition she'd once seen as a chiaroscuro on her bedroom door.

The best part of the visit was probably the bill, not because it heralded a depature, but because it was only $11 for five beers, four National Bohemians (the other Natty B.) and one delicious 17-ounce Lithuanian brew, chosen on Spooky's recommendation.

Kiwis, unite!

With summer unofficially upon us, I am ready to declare this the Summer of Sauvignon Blanc.

This is the first time I have designated an official drink of a season since Shiraz as named the official beverage of summer 2003, following close on the heels of Slurpees as the official beverage of each season in 2002.

The early front-runner for the official label of the Summer of Sauvignon Blanc is St. Supery, though all comers are welcome and will be tried in turn.

Your Sav Blanc suggestions are welcome.

Drinking habits of the super wealthy and powerful

If you're anything like me, you stay up nights wondering what sort of alcoholic beverages are found in the liquor cabinets of readers of The Economist. Fortunately, alert reader K-Don sent me this chart, which answers my burning questions.

Believe it or not, my drinking habits generally fit the magazine's profile, even if my age, income and education do not. One question, though: Whither limoncello?

Enjoy other demographic graphics here.

Say it ain't so, Hoff

You may have seen a drunk David Hasselhoff wolfing down some food on a video that's circulating on the Internet. I come not to bury the Hoff, but to support him. But for the grace of God there go I, which is to say I'm glad nobody had a video camera at our annual Kentucky Derby party this weekend.

A lot of people say, "Hey, N-B, what's the secret to a good Kentucky Derby party?"

The answer? This much booze:

As Yogi Berra said, that place is so crowded nobody goes there anymore

Those of you who know me can imagine how excited I must've been when I found out that one of my favorite bars, The Publick House in Brookline (Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen Tripel IPA on draught!), had begun to host one of my favorite pasttimes, bar trivia.

I thought it would be like peanut butter meeting chocolate for the first time, but what ensued on a recent Sunday was downright awful. The bar was far too crowded despite a recent expansion, and it was as though the surly waitstaff had never handled a crowd. The trivia jockey looked lost.

The vibe was just all wrong. A bar that was my favorite because it felt like someone's home had pulled in its welcome mat. It was like trivia night was being run by Germans, but without the efficiency and only half the charm.

It was so bad, my friends and I just got up and left our table, which I think is unprecedented.

Maybe the place has become a victim of its own success. But whatever the reason, I'm torn about whether I even want to go back to the place. What's a beer snob to do?