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Friday Night Beer Blog [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-31
Hi beer lovers! Big thanks to 3CM for covering last week!
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Since my beer news is from The Valley, I think this is the right song.
he’s a Valley Boy and there is no cure… my youngest sister wouldn’t like me to mention how old she is, but she can still sound like a 17-yr old Val.
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SFGate recently surprised me with a story about a place I visited several times in my youth, the Busch Gardens theme park, which was next to the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys CA, in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles.
It was almost as though a higher-up at Anheuser-Busch had brought his family to Disneyland and thought, “This would be perfect if I could just sit and have a beer.” And so, in 1966, it happened: The beer company constructed a family theme park in Van Nuys, California. Just like Walt Disney’s vision for Disneyland — a place where kids and adults could have fun together — Busch Gardens offered rides, shows and entertainment in a beautiful environment. But there were two main differences: both admission to the park and the Anheuser-Busch beer they served inside were totally free. “There was an area where parents could go and taste the beer, and then the kids would run around the park,” Tommy Gelinas, a lifelong San Fernando Valley resident and founder of the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys (originally located in Chatsworth), told SFGATE via phone. Growing up, Gelinas and his family lived in Sepulveda (now North Hills), close enough to Busch Gardens that they would visit most weekends in the summer and monthly in the winter. “It was always a joke that why the parents loved it so much is that they could get drunk and let the kids run around.”
I grew up in the Valley, and Busch Gardens was the nearest significant attraction. I was probably there the first time with Cub Scouts, and it was totally like the story says, the parents drank and let us run around. It didn’t have a Disney level of entertainment; what I remember was the brewery tour on a monorail above the huge tanks, and a boat ride, and the bird show. The admission price went up over the years but the beer was always free, and the gardens were a beautiful surprise in an industrial area next to the freeway.
Busch Gardens was done in by California’s thirst; the park closed in 1979 so that the brewery could expand, and it’s still there right next to hwy 405, turning delicious California Aqueduct water into Budweiser and Bud Light.
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Shit, this is late.
the Parabolita pictured above was dessert a few days ago, it’s sweet, rich, and delicious, and as black as stout should be. That’s the same Firestone logo glass I’ve pictured before, can you tell? I’m drinking SN Celebration Ale now.
What are you drinking? Anyone brewing?
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[1] Url:
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