Going to a brewery isn’t just a means to an inebriated bus ride home, it’s also a means for me to tip bartenders into talking to me.
Moving to Los Angeles County left me with a sense that I lost something after passing Camp Pendleton on Interstate 5. I left behind a real connection I made with a city and replaced it with smoggy freeways and loneliness. Even if the only notable thing I can say about North County San Diego is that they have good beer and good people serving it, it’s more than I can say about El Monte at this point.
The day-to-day routine at Cal State Long Beach consists of class, student media and home. San Diego at least had boozy pit stops in between with decent beer and a cast of interesting characters behind the bar. Mainstreet in Vista hosts a variety of breweries, some so large they’re borderline-corporatized, others small and unheard of outside of San Diego County. I can write about one of these breweries, but I don’t expect you to come here.
In fact, I don’t want you to even know the brewery’s name, I just want to put the bartenders on my convoluted word stage. When you’re in California, you can find a brewery regardless of what city you’re in. What’s truly valuable are the bartenders that keep you coming back.
The people: Miguel was an eccentric art-school drop-out, personified acid flashback, prévoir of unlicensed pop-culture merchandise — bartender. He figuratively and sometimes it seemed lived at this brewery. Whether he was smoking bowls just outside the backdoor, preaching nihilism at the patrons or hosting trivia, the Miguel archetype was always there.
Lyn was a former ‘90s industrial-goth poet that gracefully grew into her 30s, holding onto her green hair and adopting a motherly persona. Responsible and gregarious, she refused to take anyone’s shit. Like a guardian angel, she only took her eyes off the bar for cigarette and cappuccino runs.
Ron was in the navy, saw the world and then settled on San Diego. A cracked smile was always settled behind his Head and Shoulders with Old Spice scented beard. Like an unconsciously zen monk practicing a moving meditation, he seemingly floated on a cloud of worldly calm from beer tap, to inpatient customer, to dish sink never breaking that aged smile.
When I came back over the break, the familiarity and closeness I thrived off of before was no longer there.
All that we shared was a hello, a beer order and a longing for a subject of conversation.
They were still actors playing the same roles on the same beer stained stage — I wasn’t. I was in a new theatre, in a new city and reading a new script. I may as well have been a stranger. I remember their lines, but my own monologues were lost to me.
On one of the drives over Interstate 5 to or from San Diego, part of me died. Distance and time made me disappear from their hearts and minds. Walking into this place that I once called a home away from home immediately and painfully confronted me with the realization that I was entering a personal past that was long gone; I guess that’s what you call nostalgia. I hate it because I remember and know that I’ll never have that place again.
This is where the column would typically end, but my editor insisted that I construct a more positive outro and she’s probably right.
I saw a new therapist last weekend partially for the sake of getting my head shrunk on this sense of loss, but mostly because I’m generally fucked up. On the myriad talking points she hit was the idea that loss begets change. Maybe I should keep that in mind.