Most years I repeat this column, only tidying the changed dates. This year, my long overdue return to Vienna is underway, and as a bonus is includes May Day, taking place yet again on a Friday in 2026. Granted, I’m a late bloomer and a slow learner, but give me 39 years and I can accomplish almost any task. Just think; next year there’ll be new photos.
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Today is May 1, or May Day, which in Europe is a traditional festival marking the beginning of summer. In addition, in a great many locales worldwide, May Day is known as International Workers’ Day.
Saturday, May 2 marks the 152nd running of the Kentucky Derby, which I need not explain, to be followed almost immediately on Tuesday by Cinco de Mayo (the 5th), and with it the opportunity to call out sick from work, again, as Monday’s absence is a given, gingerly treating one’s weeks-long Derby Festival hangover with huevos rancheros and multiple micheladas (beer and tomato juice), all the while regretting those accumulated bourbon stains and cigar burns from days before, although not pretending to care a jot about the subtleties of Mexican history.
In short, give me a break.
These are hard times for a contrarian like me, or maybe these days, I’m a “beer-trarian.” As a card-carrying, public transit-supportive pinko Europhile since the early 1980s, naturally I favor celebrating May Day and usually do, quietly at home, under the dictum that it’s best not to feed the (Derby Festival party) animals. They’ll become exhausted eventually, and then we can go back to accomplishing things.
I’ve viewed a race at “the track” exactly twice my whole life, and we have so many excellent Mexican/Latin American restaurants nearby that devoting just one day each year to sampling their bounty is hardly enough.
Too bad that ubiquitous Mexican corn lagers are so uniformly disappointing, but fortunately Israel Landin keeps Negra Modelo and better yet, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on the premises of Delicias de Mexico, down the street from where I live.
Today’s digression is about May Day, and it has little direct connection to beer, even if more than a few were consumed at the time in Vienna,...Read more
