GOING FULL BOOMER: WHAT IT IS

Full boomer is not a goal to achieve, it is a scene to avoid.

How do I know this? Evidence, I have evidence, and it’s not something I read, or saw on TV.

I tested the waters at my local tap house recently.

This is the experiment:

I parked my car at 4:30 in the afternoon, a half hour past the start of happy hour. But not just any happy hour.

If the goal of enjoying beer is responsible drinking, then my favorite place covers the bases.

The most important base to cover is good beer. Bad beer at any price is still bad beer no matter where you find it.

So, I park the car and walk in to a sparsely populated room. One guy sat on the barstool he always sits on. I asked if he was winning in the gambling room. He ignored me.

A young lady sat at a table, the same woman who scolded the man on his favorite stool about talking to kids the wrong way; it was a moment that stood out in civility and manners.

Going full boomer, I thanked her for her service loud enough for the guy to hear. That’s a passive-aggressive way of supporting the environment, or making a drunk guy angry.

Another man sat at the bar, his back against the wall with his legs stretched out over two more bar stools. He was a three stool man.

I was in there with a purpose, and the purpose was filling up a growler. What’s a growler? For my European readers who’ve yet to experience the beauty of drinking beer while the bartender fills up a huge jug, a growler is the take-home part of beer drinking.

I was meeting people at home who also like a good beer, so my hospitality gene kicked in. It’s also a good excuse to go out for a beer on the side.

My beer of choice is the house brew, a balanced IPA that’s not trying to load a pound of hops into a pint glass. It’s my favorite drink, and the happy hour special is $3 a pint. Since I’m in the mug-club, my pint measures twenty-two ounces.

Quality beer at a discount is worth driving an extra mile, or half mile if I was counting. I like to think it’s a carbon-neutral decision, what a full boomer thinks of as a step in saving earth.

While I’m there, traffic picked up. Customers came in to sample beers. I recommended my favorite to strangers.

I asked the guy in three chairs what he recommended for my growler, asked the guys behind the bar for their opinion.

Who doesn’t like trying new beer?

Three chairs called his favorite, the bartenders called theirs, I weighed my options: the hazy IPA with citrus, or house beer?

The house opinion was I couldn’t go wrong, and they were right. But it was also a chance to go full boomer on sketchy beer history.

Before I was born in the mid-50’s, good beer was rare. PBR and Bud and Hamms weren’t much to look forward to. Neither was the local Blitz and Oly.

Things turned around with the first hoppy beer, followed by a malty beer. Both of them came from Washington State. Soon after they arrived, micro-brewing took off and the hoppy beer recipe changed names.

No one cares about history much, beer history even less, but I’m a history guy. One topic led to another and before I knew it I was giving life lessons.

The point of going full boomer is having an audience. A trapped audience is even better. Three stools was a good guy and pretended to listen until someone sat next to him and he was clear to ignore my jewels of wisdom.

Before that happened, I had covered marriage, children, money, education, work, and the big life questions. The listener may have glazed over.

I asked the room one more time about the best growler beer. One guy said, “We already told you.”

“Tell me again,” I said, and ignored his answer.

Hazy IPA with citrus won the debate. I unloaded a full boomer bag of information young people hate boomers for, and my work was finished.

There’s a secret to both listening to boomers, and being a talking boomer. What is the secret?

Timing. Know when enough is enough.