It usually surprises people to learn that I’ve lived in Floyd County, Indiana my entire life, and in New Albany since the early 1990s. Europe may be my spirit continent, and I visit there regularly, but I live here.
By all accounts a chunk of Southern Indiana (SoIN) is counted as being part of the Louisville metropolitan area, whether defined geographically, governmentally or culturally. I can get mighty cranky when Louisvillians choose to forget this fact, primarily because no one living in Kentucky has a leg to stand on when it comes to superiority complexes.
In my view as a lifelong resident of Indiana, our being the less populated zone of the wider metro area means that SoIN is in the prefect position to complement Louisville. We’re the same in most respects, and have our own interior worlds, but we bring a slightly different perspective to the metro in a wider sense.
This remains my belief, one that I’ve tried to act upon throughout my career in beer. To be sure, during the early years at NABC we always were proud to see Kentucky license plates in the parking lot, but at the same time we stayed cognizant that the bulk of our daily trade came from SoIN residents. You welcome someone who comes occasionally from a distance, but you make sure you retain the folks who stop by your joint three times a week.
There were times when I was approached with proposals and job offers in Louisville. While these opportunities might have proven profitable, they never tempted me in the least. When I started stocking imported beers at Scoreboard Liquors in the early 1980s, they moved well, and the people who bought them were from SoIN, by and large. The same goes for the drafts at Rich O’s, and for the beers I brought to Pints&union.
Isn’t this applicable evidence that SoIN is capable of acknowledging excellence?
It’s true that Guinness and Sierra Nevada are not local beers. However, my goal from the start was to sell these beers locally, by which I mean that my fundamental aim was to make my own neighborhood safe for better beer — for my life’s work. I wanted my neighbors to get it, and if someone from afar was dumbfounded and delighted that such a beer list could be found in a place like New Albany, all the better.
Concurrently, I had far less interest in Louisville; to...Read more
