Chico Soroptimist Microbeer Fest

Upon advice from a friend who's been to this beer fest a time or two, we showed up an hour early at 1:00 pm to the Elk's lodge on Manzanita Ave (aka Bruce Rd) across from the fire station at upper Bidwell. For the hour we had to stand in line we were treated to a visual montage of boobs, bellies and more boobs. Chris was right when he noted that apparently the dress code was "fancy whore". Way too much cleavage and clothes that were two sizes too small. Hawt! And another little known fact is that when you're dressed like a "fancy whore" or a "super douche" (as my friend dubbed the college guys) you have an overwhelming need to use the f-bomb every other word. Not only do you look classy, but you sound classy, too. It was just a different crowd than we expected. We thought there'd be older people like our home brewing neighbor, Doug. Professional hippies, per se. But it was definitely heavy on the college students. Anyway, after waiting in line for an hour we got to go in, grab a full size glass off the table and head straight for the brewery booths. Some were inside and some where outside on the grass. We had a sample beer poured in our glasses and grabbed a plate of snacks (sandwich wedges from Great Harvest, hot wings from Johnnies, and sausage bites from Sierra Nevada) and went and sat on the back porch.
The way it worked was that you drank your sample and then picked any other of the 45 breweries for another sample. You could have as many as you wanted and same with the food. It was all covered by the $40 tickets. We grabbed a map of the booths and as we tried different samples we wrote down the name of the brew and rated it 1-5 because Lord knows we'd never remember what we had where and what it was called.
Chris' favorite was Hop Stoopid by Lagunitas which was a beer he'd just tried for the first time this week from Mom. He loved it and was excited to see it was one of the brews Lagunitas brought with them. After my first horrid Porter by Avery (a brewery our neighbor Doug was pouring for) I stuck to iced tea from Bidwell Perk and then I discovered the addictingly delicious world of ciders. Chris had brought back a Black Currant cider from Fox Barrel Cider which I thought was very tasty. Like a fruity wine cooler, but with the alcohol strength of wine. I immediately when in search of the two cider vendors and tried a pear one which I rated a perfect "5" and a raspberry which came in a close "4".

While there I also ran in to some friends from work. Amy and her friend Libby came and hung out with us for the last hour or so.
We stayed until closing at 6:00 pm. We both really enjoyed it and experienced more then we can wrap our little brains around. The highlights of the afternoon were:

• The group of kids standing behind us in line outside telling each other how much weed they smoked before coming.
  
• The "woman" who was peeing in the urinal next to Chris in the bathroom. Tall "lady" with a strapless dress and lots of makeup and big hair.
  
• The gal who looked at Chris and told him that was the best looking sausage she'd ever seen (he was holding a hot dog from the bbq booth) to which he replied, 'thanks, I work out'.
  
• The lesbians making out on the grass in front of our lawn chairs.
  
• The stinky hippies "dancing" in front of the band stage. Dancing with the spirit of mother earth, or something.
• The drunk guy who was running around his table yelling duck, duck, goose and tripped on my chair which sent him flying to the ground, but he didn't drop a ounce of beer!
  
• The girl with a mohawk.
• All that plaid!!
  

We really did enjoy it though and already have plans to go back next year. We'll need to shop for sharper outfits, but we're up to the challenge!