Janet and I love going to the Toronado on Wednesday nights for two reasons.

1. Ian is on shift.
2. If we get there before 9pm, Kirsten is on shift, and we never have a chance to talk to her because she works on nights when we don’t go to the bar.
3. It’s filled with locals and regulars
4. Few, if any, tourists… translation, it’s relatively empty.

However, the peace and quiet that we were looking forward was not to be found. Why you might ask? Simple. Last night was one of those “theme nights” at the bar.

Let me explain… every few weeks, David has a special night at the Toronado. Usually this means that a new beer is being released, or is being introduced to the bar (like the Hoegaarden night a few months back.) Sometimes Dave features a four or five beers from one of his favorite breweries (like Stone Brewing, Full Sail or Lagunitas). Then he has his mega-festivals: the Belgian Beer Festival, the Barleywine Festival, the Winter Beer Week and Oktoberfest. The largest of the events is probably the Belgian Beer Festival, where people pay $65 a head to spend 8 hours learning about the intricacies (as well as drinking) 30 different Belgian Beers while eating a 6 course meal.

However, the Belgian Beer Festival is only open to 100 people and most of the beers featured at the Belgian Beer Festival run out that night, so the teeming beer-geek masses have to settle for the 46 other beers available at the Toronado.

But this year, there was a slight snag in shipping when they put together the Belgian Beer Festival. A number of kegs got mis-shipped (or held up in customs)… and didn’t arrive until after the night of the Beer Festival. So yesterday Dave held the Remnants of the Belgian Beer Festival Night.

This meant that by 5:30pm, the place was wall-to-wall beer geeks with their little beer-books over analyzing every little freaking nuance of the 6 Belgian beers that they had on tap. Still, it didn’t matter that much because Janet, Carlos, Peg (the chef) and I grabbed some space at the corner where we wouldn’t be that bothered. Funny, that’s exactly what we did at the real Belgian Beer Festival.

Janet wisely stuck to her Guinness last night, but I decided to throw myself into the Belgian Beers. Well, not entirely… I started off with a German Aventinus Doppelweisenbock, then quickly moved to a Kasteel Brown, following it with a Cantillon Iris (the equivalent of a single malt lambic beer) and finishing the night off with a sweet La Chouffe. Carlos also bounced around the Belgian map, having a De Konick Ale, a Kasteel Brown and a Cantillon Iris before leaving for the East Bay. Peg, who had the last Hoegaarden before they blew the keg, stuck with Aventinus.

Throughout the night, a number of regulars stopped by… Steve the Bar Back stopped in for a Maximus and a La Chouffe and Shawn (a friend mentioned on the links page) stopped in to say hi. Todd, Tad, Crab, Ted, Ratchet the Dog and Kenny Ray (all regulars) were there too, but we didn’t get a chance to really talk. Oh well.

Back to the beer… since we got such good seats at the bar, we decided that instead of going out for dinner, we’d just bring food into the bar. We ended up having sausage sandwiches… then Janet had some of Jeff’s potato salad and I went out to grab a chicken sandwich from Hahn’s Hibachi. While I was gone picking up the chicken sandwich, a bunch of beer-geeks from Belgium sidled up to the space next to my chair. It seems that one of the Belgians had ordered a Cantillon Iris on handpump and was unhappy with his choice.

Iris is a very strong, sweaty (as Carlos would call it) beer… and since it was on handpump, it was flat and warm… just like a good Lambic should be. Any beer-geek of a Belgian should know that. But this guy just kept going and going and going… getting to the point where he was really starting to piss me off. So halfway through my chicken sandwich, I put it down and lit into the Belgian. He was whining in French. I was growling in English. Within a few seconds, he backed down and just bought another beer. Chalk up one to the locals.

Anyway, by 9:45, the crowd finally got to us and Janet and I left for home. Then began the dreaded “Recovery from Belgian Beer served at the Remnants of the Belgian Beer Festival.”

Oy.

Friday night, after dinner at Hahn’s Hibachi with Janet and Carlos, we went out to the Toronado for a quick beer. Jennifer, Dave’s (the owner) girlfriend was behind the bar, and she served up our first round… which Carlos and I wanted to be a Prohibition from Speakeasy Brewery… but she told us that the keg was blown and that there wasn’t another keg available. So I ended up ordering a Lagunitas Maximus, as did Carlos. Janet had a Guinness. Carlos left at 9pm, and Johnny and Kirsten came in to relieve Jennifer. We decided to stay for another round of the same, and we headed home early.

Saturday Afternoon, after dropping off the new door-hangers at Rosamunde (I do their graphics work), we popped in to the Toronado just to see who was on shift. Ian was there… so we said “Hi” and told him that we’d be back later that night.

Saturday Night, around 11 pm. Oy, what a crowd.

We got in around 11 pm and were greeted with a three-deep at the bar yuppie crowd. So, Janet and I spent most of the night standing next to (and talking to) Tad the bouncer. Over the next few hours, I would drink massive quantities of Prohibition Ale (I guess they did have a second keg hidden back there) and Janet would drink an equal amount of Hoegaarden White while we talked to Jim, Todd, James, and a whole host of other regulars that were hanging out with us over in “Regular’s Corner.” By 1am, the crowd thinned and we got our usual seats at the bar.

Janet and I kept on drinking Hoegaarden and Prohibition Ale (respectively) as we sat at the bar talking to Ian and Johnny (the Bartenders). The night went on and on and on….

Sunday, 7 am. We go to sleep.

Sunday, 7 pm. Since Ian told us that he was working the 4-9 shift at the Toronado this Sunday, we decided to stop in for a quick beer before going to grab dinner. It ended up that we spent about two hours before deciding to go home and get takeout.

Janet ordered up a Guinness, but they were out (horror of horrors!) so she decided to get a Beamish, which as you know from previous entries is just a roastier tasting stout… not as easy to drink as Guinness, but still very drinkable. I decided to go for a Lagunator, which Ian delivered to me in a half-liter Spaten beehive mug.

We planned on leaving at 8, but then the Simpsons came on. Ian killed the jukebox and cranked up the TV and the whole bar quieted down to watch the show. The Simpsons is certainly more fun when you watch it with 50 other barflies.

We left a little after 9pm… not that we didn’t want to talk to Kirsten, the 9-2 bartender… but we were just plain tuckered out from all of the last few days’ worth of drinking.

All I can say is this: My liver. My poor, poor liver.

Long weekends mean that we can go out more and stay out later…and also lose our memories, evidently. As I sit here trying to remember the past three days, I’m realizing that Friday night is a tad fuzzy. Who was on shift at the bar? When did we leave? What did we say when we left? Who did we say it to? Ahh, I give up. Saturday, now that I remember. When we walked in, Tad pointed out our two 1-inch-by-1-inch squares of space that were left for us to stand in. Though I wanted a Guinness (of course), I settled for a Hoegaarden, simply because I was in no position to wait for a 7-minute pour, since at this point I couldn’t even see the bar. Though there were several hundred people standing in front of the bar, Ian, god bless him, still offered to do an Underberg with us (though it was kind of a “long-distance” Underberg). He also bent the rules and gave us our non-Anderson Valley beers in big Anderson Valley glasses (which have handles) since we were standing. Though crowds of people from outside the neighborhood tend to be annoying to the nth degree, it was fun standing over by Tad and the other regulars who were banished to the corner, listening to Tad tell us his stories about all the people he had kicked out of the bar that evening. Tad also dared us to go over to a male yuppie who was sipping Framboise from a flute-type glass and say, “Hey, isn’t that a girl’s drink?” A little while later, Todd walked in with two Safeway bags: in one was some Lloyd’s Ribs, in the other, two boxes of Cap’n Crunch (“They were two for one!” said Todd.)

We planned on stopping by on Sunday evening for one beer and to visit with Ian. Of course, one beer with Ian is never just one beer…we ended up staying for almost 2 hours! A little before 8:00 a bunch of local-type people came in, including a little Jack Russell Terrier named Rachet, who liked to eat coasters. He ate quite a number of coasters while waiting for the Simpsons to start, then everybody got quiet and watched TV, laughing at all the right places. How much fun is it to watch the Simpsons with a barful of people want to watch it as much as you do? A lot, I say, especially when you get to control the remote. I love that place.