Mild Climate and Good Beer
I've never had a hankering to move to a warm weather area. I'm a Spring and Fall guy: 65 degrees and sunny, that's me. The only warm climate city that has ever appealed to me is San Diego. For some reason, I've always thought that'd be a great place to live.
And now my hunch has been vindicated: It has been selected as the top beer town in America by Men's Journal.
Stone (maker of our number one ale) exemplifies the local approach, with aggressively hopped but completely drinkable brews. The variety of beers across the city is the most eclectic in the country.
Where to Drink: Thirtieth Street in North and South Parks is easily the nation's best beer boulevard. Start with any of former firefighter Pat McIlhenney's range of tap-only ales at the laid-back Hamilton's Tavern (which taps special casks every Friday), then head to the beer-focused Linkery restaurant, which has frequent beer-pairing dinners. For your after party, hit the Toronado. The beer lists at all three are deep, stacked with the freshest local beers and exotic imports.
Beer Culture: The sheer number of breweries (33) blows us away. (It has crept past Portland, which has 29.) Visit almost any of them and you'll find the brewmaster on hand, happy to chat over a pint.
The other top cities: New York, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago.
Check Mate
In my wilder days (pre-marriage), I used to host a checker tournament. About a dozen of us would gather around two tables, each holding a huge checker board. The chips were half glasses of beer. If your man got jumped, you had to drink him. If you got a king, the glass got filled up all the way. If you lost a king, you drank a full glass. The winners would advance through the bracket until the finals. After many hours, the champion was then crowned with much drunken celebration (alas, out of ten years, I never won it, but I finished second three times).
Needless to say, by the semi-finals, it was getting pretty hard to concentrate on the game. I always thought I had a slight advantage because I liked to play chess more than checkers, and chess is a far harder game . . . one that you can't play drunk.
Or so I thought. One grandmaster recently tried:
A leading French chess player turned up drunk and dozed off after just 11 moves in an international tournament in Kolkata, losing the round on technical grounds, domestic media reported Friday.
Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev arrived for Thursday's match against India's Praveen Kumar in such an inebriated state that he could hardly sit in his chair and soon fell asleep, resting his head on the table, Hindustan Times newspaper reported.
