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 perfect 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 what became 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 me, that was always someone else’s job, not mine.
It’s only fair that I acknowledge my share of issues with New Albany … as a state of mind, which I always hoped to modify, and with certain individuals considering themselves to comprise a ruling elite. Smaller cities can be like that, and my city can be a tough place to love sometimes.
But as an Indiana locale folded into a primarily Kentuckian metro area, New Albany has been a good place to live and work. I’ve done as much as anyone to popularize the term “New Albanian,” and for 40 years I’ve trusted New Albanians to be good friends, colleagues and customers.
In terms of the latter, I’ve relied on them to fairly assess me and my “product line” (as it were), and to be sounding boards. I’ve tried my best to provide value, such that the fans don’t regret spending their hard-earned cash with us, because in the service sector, loyalty is a two-way street.
Yes, I’ve failed from time to time, sometimes quietly and other times with operatic grandiosity. Especially when failing, I’ve always endeavored to look into the mirror, and become better; whether failure or success, it’s been a local phenomenon for me. The idea of a third space is central to my being.
I’m trying to explain why yesterday’s announcement that Pints&union will move to the Highlands later this year, while not exactly a surprise, strikes me as awful, and all I’ve felt like doing since hearing the news on Thursday is to apologize to the regulars and everyone who has come to regard Pints&union as their space in New Albany.
Obviously I can’t apologize on behalf of Joe Phillips. But I can apologize for my part in recommending the whole Pints&union notion to SoIN, and to so many of you, when now it will pull up stakes and migrate to Louisville, to become just another “craft cocktail” place in the big city rather than a genuine haven here.
I hate losing to the big city, don’t you know. It matters more here.
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As it happens, I’ve been an Oakland A’s fan since 1971, and yesterday was the last home game in Oakland, which the team is forsaking in route to a new home in Las Vegas, via temporary residency in Sacramento. The A’s won, which is nice, I guess, although scant consolation for the team abandoning Oakland.
The move comes at the whim of John Fisher, who is widely considered to be one of the worst owners in all of professional sports, and whose cowardly flight from the East Bay is viewed just as widely as a crass betrayal of his loyal fan base. In fact, when Fisher has bothered to say or write anything at all, he has maligned the level of fan support, which in fact he has played a central role in suppressing, distressing, and depressing by means of his own serial incompetence.
Consequently numerous onlookers have warned future fans in Las Vegas that yes, while the city WILL get a baseball team moved there, Fisher will remain the owner of this team, and will still be one of the worst owners in all of sports, and Vegas gets HIM, too. Does anyone really believe he’ll improve as an owner?
Not that I’m suggesting an analogy between Oakland-to-Vegas and Pints-to-Louisville, or anything crass (and strikingly resonant) like that.
It’s just that the timing, and an aura of relocation/dislocation-times-two, made me extremely sad. And angry, too. Here’s an excerpt from Michael L. Jones’s coverage at Louisville Business First.
(Pints&union owner Joe) Phillips explained: “I’ve wanted that specific building for about 16 years. We used to always say, ‘If we could have any building in Louisville for Pints & Union, it would be Cumberland. We just never thought it would be a possibility.”
Cumberland Brews, which opened in 2000, closed in October 2019. Against the Grain announced it was taking over the spot soon after. Phillips said it was Against the Grain co-owner Sam Cruz who told him that the space was available.
“I just saw Sam Cruz. He comes to Pints & Union, and then he told me the story (about the closing),” Phillips added. “It was kind of an accident. One thing like to another with the space. We weren’t necessarily looking, but sometimes these things happen.”
Contrary to urban legend, I wasn’t ever an owner at Pints&union, just a beer guy being paid a salary and earning every damn penny of it by creating a great beer list that sold well to a local audience.
However, having been right there on the ground floor when Pints&union began, allow me to supplement the preceding by noting that Joe often fantasized about other buildings in Louisville, and complained about residents of SoIN (specifically, the New Albanians) being utterly incapable of grasping the Haute Craft Louisville Standard of food and drink he was offering them at Pints&union.
That’s a crock. What I find sad, infuriating and even funny about this is that these same befuddled and presumably clueless SoIN customers completely grasped the standard of beer I was offering them, which accounted for a huge and profitable slice of our gross sales.
It’s almost as if I spent all those years doing business in SoIN, paying attention to SoIN.
Maybe this explains in part why I lost my job in November. Maybe Joe will feel better among his own in Louisville. And, maybe this move will happen but maybe it won’t; in the case of the A’s, the proposed stadium in Vegas is already behind schedule, and the first shovel of dirt has yet to be turned. Unless Joe has an investor, it’s likely that under-capitalization will yet again rear its ugly head.
All I can say is that the mirror on my wall tells me this: Never betray, forsake or sell out your loyal SoIN fan base to move to Louisville, where the saturation of trendy “craft” concepts was the inspiration for locating Pints&union in New Albany in the first place. Rather, get better at what you do, and thank the damn regulars as often as possible.
Of course, what Joe Phillips (Pints) or John Fisher (A’s) thinks is anyone’s guess. But speaking for myself, I feel terribly for the Pints&union regulars, and I feel somehow responsible for enthusiastically midwifing this wonderful establishment only to see its New Albany tenure end in such a stupid, tawdry and plainly self-serving way.
I’m very sorry it’s happening like this, everyone. I wish I could do something to change it. I can direct a quality beer program, but a psychiatrist I’m not.
Next: There comes a time when pleas, petitions and (dare I say it) prayers mean far less than a conclusion Occam undoubtedly would suggest: Just get out, and don’t come back no more. Simple and eloquent, and the sooner, the better.
Speaking of epitaphs, a wonderful song called “Get Out and Stay Out”
