After filling up on many of the culinary delicacies offered at this year's crop of state fairs, you may be interested in something a little more refined. That's where the Seafood, Jazz & Brew Festival on Hilton Head Island comes in. This year, the festival takes place on the evening of Friday, September 12 and runs through the next afternoon.
As you relax near the water at Shelter Cove Community Park on Friday, you'll enjoy some jazz while feasting on some of the best local seafood specialties the island has to offer. (Spots to try include Ocean Grille, CQ's and Antonios.) Admission to the evening's events is $50 per person, and you should act quickly as last year sold out.
Come Saturday afternoon the action's at Shelter Cove Harbour. There will be a home brew contest here, and $10 will get you four "tasting tokens." For the extra thirsty, you'll be able to buy two additional tokens for just a buck.
You know the drill when it comes to packing for the beach: chairs, towels, sunscreen, trashy magazines and some adult beverages. Well, not so fast. Come this Labor Day weekend, Silver Strand Beach, the last public beach to allow alcohol in San Diego County, is cutting us off.
Apparently, drinking has been causing some unwanted behaviors, including a stabbing over Fourth of July weekend.
But there is a silver lining. Although alcohol is banned on the beach, the campsites at the state park will have the taps flowing, as there are no current plans to ban alcohol for the campers. And if you're really sneaky, you can always go the plastic cup route!
You still have two months to plan your visit to Durham, North Carolina for the 2008 World Beer Festival. Presented by All About Beer magazine, the festival is celebrating its 13th year in the Tarheel State. The event takes place on October 4 at the much upgraded home of the Durham Bulls, The Durham Athletic Park. So after one too many, you can live your dream of being a professional ballplayer, even if you're only in the minor leagues.
There are two sessions for the festival, one in the afternoon (for dorks) and one in the evening (for the cool kids). Each guest will receive a commemorative tasting glass and then will mosey around the festival grounds to enjoy sample pours from more than 150 breweries from around the world. Live music on the main stage along with many food vendors will help you relieve your beer munchies without missing a beat.
Tickets for the festival start at $40 and go on sale on August 20. They go quickly, so if you're planning a visit to the festival, set the alarm on your new iPhone. If you want a classier experience, pony up for the $75 VIP tickets: They grant you access to some extra beer selections and complimentary food.
There's an important championship coming up in Australia this Sunday July 12: the Darwin Beer Can Regatta. In a way that only Aussies could, contestants need to collect a lot of empty beer cans and then use them to build some kind of boat to take part in the race.
The Beer Can Regatta has been running in Darwin since 1975 and they've had up to 30 boats at once taking part. This year the racing festivities kick off at 10 am on Mindil Beach in Darwin and if your boat doesn't end up being able to float, there's actually a land race too--to find out which team can carry their boating failure along the beach the fastest.
We just hope that those beer-can boats that do float are crocodile-proof.
Although this 3-day weekend of live music and great microbrews from the southwest and beyond is not technically at the resort, the town of Telluride, Colorado wouldn't be much more than a tumbleweed museum and billy goat hang out without the mountain destination.
You can expect lots of great blues and roots bands at the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival starting September 12, including Canned Heat, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, G. Love and Special Sauce and Gov't Mule. The list of brewers is 56 strong and will include heavy hitters and little-knowns alike from as far way as Georgia. Big names to look for include Sierra Nevada, Moab Brewery and Santa Fe Brewing Company.
There are lots of hotel options available in town and there is camping available for $40. Entrance to the festival can be purchased day-to-day or you can go for the full monty for $155. Birkenstocks, patchouli and dreadlocks will not get you any discounts either, hippies!
If you're anything like us, you usually forget Father's Day until the reminder call from Mom on Sunday morning. Since you surely didn't get around to planning that golf trip to St. Andrew's or the Alaska fishing expedition, here are some Father's Day trips you can actually pull off at the last minute.
For the Jazzhead: The JVC Jazz Festival kicks off in New York on Sunday. Please your dad by declaring a newfound appreciation for Herbie Hancock. (He doesn't have to know you're going for Mos Def.)
Beer lovers who missed out on the world's biggest pub crawl in Australia last weekend can take heart: You just need a ticket to Copenhagen for September.
The European Beer Festival 2008 will take place in the Danish capital September 12-14. The PR people say it's for "discriminating beer connoisseurs" but we're sure you don't have to belong to the toffee-nosed beer-sniffing set to enjoy a beer festival.
This one sounds particularly fun because it will be held in part of the Carlsberg breweries--very recently vacated as production is moving to another site. That means beer fest visitors can see some of the more private parts of the brewery, including the horse stables. Entry tickets include your first two beers and a detailed beer guide, if you want the low down on all the ale you're swilling.
Australians love a good pub crawl--any excuse for a beer, and if you have to move between pubs to get the next round, then it's practically like playing sport. Over the weekend, the small Queensland city of Maryborough organized some particularly good pub crawling: It earned them a world record.
More than 3,000 people visited visited ten different pubs, and it looks like this will get the town into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Ten pubs in a night is a pretty big night out even by Australian standards, and we're not sure how we'd feel the next day after a marathon pub crawl like this. But in the pursuit of a world record, sometimes you've just got to make sacrifices.
0 Comments - Add Yours
by kjb
