Craig's Surplus

I'm annoyed. Ask me why I'm annoyed. Go ahead. Say "Craig, why are you annoyed?"

...

I'll tell you why I'm annoyed. I was a good boy this week. I planned my shot well in advance. Then, on Thursday, when I was to take my shot, I left my SLR home accidentally. Okay, I thought, not a big deal. My P&S is a pretty nice little kajigger, so let's do that.

So I arrive at my destination, and line up for my shot. And the dude next to me at the bar is freaking out. And he calls the bartender over to warn him that I'm taking pictures of their taps. The bartender doesn't mind, even offers to line them up for me, but by then I'm too weirded out. On top of that, I had my camera in the wrong mode. Sigh.

Anyway, my submission.

I like beer. A *lot*. Every Thursday evening, I spend about 90 minutes at my favorite watering hole, Poor Phil's in Oak Park while Tisha attends piano lessons across the street.

I like Poor Phil's for a number of reasons. The atmosphere is great -- if I ever were to open a bar, I'd want it to look like that. Big wood bar that has stools on three sides, and serves the waitstaff on the fourth. Clientele is generally good, the staff is awesome. They know me there.

Oh, and the beer. Poor Phil's has a surplus of beer. Bottles upon bottles, plus over 30 taps. And every tap has something good (except for one, which you can see in this picture). I thought it would be nice to capture some of the taps to demonstrate this surplus.

From left to right, Smithwicks (Ireland), Metropolitan Brewing's Dynamo Copper Lager (Chicago!), Three Floyds' Gumball Head (Munster, IN), Southern Tier Unearthly (NY), Two Brothers' Hop Juice (Warrenville, Chicago suburb), Original Sin Cider (NY), Goose Island Matilda (Chicago!), Blue Moon (CO), Rogue Dead Guy Ale (OR), Bear Republic IPA (CA), Surly Furious (MN), Hoegaarden (Belgium), Samuel Adams Boston Lager (MA), Miller Lite (Hell), and Bass Ale (UK).

And that's just one section of taps.