Hip Hops: Long ago and far away in Slovakia
My family traces its lineage to the British Isles, Germany and Scandinavia, but to this very day I’m unclear as to whether the post-pagan Christian preferences of my ancestors ran toward Catholic or Protestant...
Hip Hops: How does George Orwell’s favorite pub The Moon Under Water look today?
Suddenly it dawns on me that George Orwell's most famous year is celebrating its 40th anniversary, although the book itself was first published in 1949, Of course, it's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
"Orwell’s fear, incubated during the...
Hip Hops: Liteweights ascendent, or the Empire of the Wet Air (1975 – 2024)
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
-- 1 Corinthians 13:11-12
American...
Hip Hops: “Welcome to Nail City,” or beers and pews in Wheeling WV (2001)
A few weeks ago I was asked about the wooden church pews that may or may not still offer seating on the pub side at NABC’s Pizzeria & Public House in New Albany, formerly...
Hip Hops: Beer to go with your Thanksgiving meal … in 2005
Revisiting one's past scribblings can be enlightening or embarrassing. Puzzlement can ensue: what was I trying (and succeeding, or failing) to say?
This act of willful rereading can cross cosmic boundaries and produce the hangover-like...
Hip Hops: A chronicle of what I can remember after 40 years in beer
I try to keep the self-aggrandizement to a bare minimum here at Hip Hops.
(brief pause for a round of beers, a bathroom break, and sustained hilarity)
This being said, and honored only in the breach,...
Hip Hops: With practice, beer knowledge is put into practice
A pedestrian on 57th Street sees a musician getting out of a cab and asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Without pause, the artist replies wearily, “Practice.”
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell...
