Beer-er My God to Thee

Where was I?

Ah, this:

After years of squabbling over unpaid bills, the Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority today announced it had reached a settlement with Lawrenceville-based Iron City Brewing LLC.
The total value of the settlement is $750,000, above the $400,000 figure the authority originally agreed to, but below the $1 million sought by city councilman Patrick Dowd, a member of the PWSA board, whose district includes the now mostly vacated 148-year-old brewery in Lawrenceville now proposed for redevelopment.

As part of the settlement, PWSA will retain the rights to "Piss Water", previously reserved for Iron City and will be allowed to dump the beer directly into the toilets, in order to eliminate the middle man.

I also heard from a leak that the whiz kids over at Iron City Brewing will be allowed to pass water bills onto new owners of the building.

And now a Nutritional Interlude...

Oh dammit:

Penn Brewery has closed.

Jack Isherwood, managing principal of Birchmere Capital that owns the North Side business, confirmed in an e-mail that the restaurant "is closed indefinitely while future options are being evaluated," but he declined to elaborate.

Could this get any worse?

Oh double dammit!

Country singer Toby Keith is bringing his popular restaurant chain to SouthSide Works.

Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill is expected to open on the riverfront next to Hofbrauhaus in late 2010, the Soffer Organization announced today.

Surely it couldn't get any worse than this!

Oh crap:

The 15,000-square-foot restaurant will feature live music, HDTV monitors for watching sporting events and Southern-style cooking, including its signature fried bologna sandwich and deep-fried Twinkees.

Oh for fuck's sake! It's like we're trading in a hand crafted, fine mahogany chest for a vending machine sandwich from Wal*Mart.

Now where am I going to get my monthly strudel fix?

Scheiße!

Two Minutes Hate

Please include in your daily Two Minutes Hate State Senator Jim Ferlo:

The city of Pittsburgh's development arm plans to get back in the business of backing beer, after the Urban Redevelopment Authority board voted today to lend $300,000 to an investor looking to buy Penn Brewing Co. and return its brewing and bottling operations to the base of Troy Hill...

Because the transfer of the building isn't final, URA board member Jim Ferlo, a state senator from Highland Park, voted against the loan. The other four board members voted for it.

Why does Jim Ferlo hate beer?

Ben Franklin once said that "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Obviously, by voting against this loan, Jim Ferlo doesn't want us to be happy and is thwarting the will of God. People that are thwarting the will of God are in league with the Devil.

Ergo, Jim Ferlo wants you to be unhappy and go to hell.

Remember that on election day: a vote for Jim Ferlo means that you want to burn in hell for all eternity.

A Bureaucrat's Aside Re: Beer

Is it just me, or do both a Cambridge police officer and a Harvard professor have better taste in beer than the President of the United States?

Couldn't Ambassador Rooney hook the guy up with some Iron City* or something? I mean, they have cases of it just lying around in Lawrenceville.

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*Not that I'm insinuating that Iron City is "good beer".

A Bureaucrat's Aside Re: Beer

You know, I'm probably going to get my Yinzer Card revoked for saying this, but I don't really mind Iron City moving out of Pittsburgh. If nothing else, the average quality of the City brewed beers will increase by at least 1000%.

Of course, it will rob locals of an easy opportunity to simulate sex in a canoe.

Belgians to Acquire Anheuser-Busch; Belgian Government Resigns En Masse

(BBC Newswire) Brussels, Belgium - Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme is tendering his government's resignation to the king after the recent move by Belgian firm InBev to buy U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch.

King Albert II will have to decide whether to accept his resignation.

Mr. Leterme had assumed office with an agenda to devolve governmental powers to the regions and maintain the "purity of essence" of Belgian Beer.

The governmental coalition which put the Prime Minister into office has fractured into the Dutch speaking socialist of the North who believe that the move by InBev is a move to solidify the country as the world leader in fermented beverages, and the French speaking Wallonians who think that drinking Budweiser "is like having sex in a canoe."

While the announcement by InBev that they do not plan on changing Budweiser or Bud Light has placated most Americans, riots have broken out in Brussels and several dozen City blocks remain ablaze at this hour.

The riots are the worst beer related violence in the Country since the Hefeweizen Putsch of 1854, which resulted in the execution of the King of Beers.