BARTing to SF Beer Week, an update

First, the Beer By BART update.  We added sixteen New beer destinations to the Beer By BART home page since last beer week.  Even though this is a personal, non-sponsored, non-commercial list, we are finding that after coming up with the fifty-odd super-obvious candidates for visiting and telling your out of town friends about, it is getting harder to decide which additional places to include or exclude from the long list. We now list about 90 destinations not far off BART (or off major MUNI lines in SF).  And there could be more, to be honest.  When we started this site nine years ago with about 20 entries, we were actively considering any place that included IPAs on tap and kept the beer serving lines clean.

We have loved doing this project.  It started us doing freelance writing for Celebrator Beer News, and other outlets.  We have met people, helped people with vacations and pub crawls, gotten into wonderful converations about the growth of the wonderful community, the creative industry and the growing market segment… and are they the same? Sometimes?  What an adventure the rebirth of good beer as turned out to be for California and especially for the people in the BART counties.  Thank you for subscribing (here or at FB or Twitter) and encouraging us! 

Next, about Beer Week.  OK, Gail here. I’m a football hater, so don’t listen to me about that, but it is seriously disruptive in a negative sense to have to move SFBW from February, as the beer goddesses and spirits intended, up into January.  Like, um, today!   But it had to be.  If you doubted, look at the traffic disruptions the Superbowl will cause starting tomorrow. Not after beer week, but on the first Saturday.

Here’s the official page for MUNI stop changes  They say it could get worse, “With set-up and take-down, transportation impacts may extend from January 23 – February 12, with these dates subject to change.” Some sites are saying to avoid Embaradero BART Station until February 12th.  I hope that’s ridiculous, but you may want to change from BART onto MUNI at Mongomery Station instead.

Looking backwards, in 2009 our blogging about the first SF Beer Week was mainly about getting a lovely seat at the Barleywine Fest, now part of craft beer history. Here’s to all the new, exciting traditions we’ll be looking to repeat next year.

The pleasure of tasting with friends endures. Happy SFBW 2016.  See you around the bay!