There is no empirical evidence to back this up, but surely there are more independent coffee shops per capita on Main Street than in any other neighbourhood in Vancouver.
Why the need to consume so much high-octane caffeine? Perhaps it is to recover from/prepare for an evening of enjoying all the craft beer thats available within walking distance.
My guess is that were a social part of town, says Chris Bjerrisgaard of Portland Craft, one of several restaurants catering to craft beer aficionados with three micro-breweries slated to follow suit within the next few months.
We want to go out and not hide in our apartments, and we want to drink locally produced products, Bjerrisgaard says.
People are treating beer like food now; you dont want to just go to McDonalds, says Graham With, who is brewing the 2013 collaboration beer for Vancouver Craft Beer Week at nearby Parallel 49 Brewing Company.
Main Streets beer culture is making Mount Pleasant a destination for people who either already know their craft beers and want to seek out their favourites, or those who are just beginning their quest for artisanal alternatives to the major breweries.
There are two ironies at play here. One is that Mount Pleasant is Vancouvers original brewery district. In its natural form, Mount Pleasant was full of creeks housing sturgeon, flounder, sole, perch and smelt, says the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant website. Down its centre ran one of Vancouvers largest salmon and trout creeks, with a ravine up to 40 feet deep down parts of the hill.
This creek, which now runs under the pavement in a pipe, provided such an easily accessible source of water that it soon became known as Brewery Creek (a much more appealing name than Tea Swamp Park up the hill.)
Today, says Anthony Norfolk of Heritage Vancouver, perhaps the only tangible reminder of this bygone era is the hop vines climbing over the back fence of the Western Front property.
The second irony, Bjerrisgaard says, is that the city makes it hard for craft beer pubs to open. There are few liquor-primary licences available, and most are downtown. Portland Craft had to become a restaurant if it wanted to focus on selling craft beers. (Portland Craft has become the darling of several American craft breweries. It is already among the breweries top three customers on the West Coast, giving a more favourable twist on what it means to live on the Wet Coast.)
Weve just created the best opportunity to use [Portland Craft] as a local, he says.
The Whip was the first place in the neighbourhood to buy craft beer by the cask, whetting peoples thirst for creative and seasonal beers.
It also helps that Main Street is a neighbourhood where people live where they work and play. Tough drinking and driving penalties arent a worry when you can walk home from your favourite pub.
But theres more to craft beers than their taste. Drinking beer, by its very nature, is a very social activity or should be!
Drop by a craft beer establishment and youre more likely to get to know your neighbour, Bjerrisgaard says.
We have a long table and no TVs for a reason, he says. People will actually talk to one another. One, if youre a craft beer lover, you can break the ice with a conversation about beer. Two, when youre drinking beer, your inhibitions get let down and you start talking about things aside from beer and the next thing you know, youll make new friends.
Everything old will become new again when three micro-breweries open in the area: 33 Acres, Brassneck Brewery and Main Street Brewery, a partnership between Nigel Pike, who co-owns Cascade Room, Habit, Union and El Camino, and Cameron Forsyth, owner of Portland Craft. The Mark James Group will launch a mid-sized Red Truck Brewery on Great Northern Way this year, too.
Conrad Gmoser was the award-winning brewmaster at Steamworks (which is opening a large brewery just on the other side of the Burnaby boundary) before he left to launch Brassneck Brewery with Nigel Springthorpe, one of the owners of the Alibi Room, a mecca for craft beer drinkers.
Nigels been wanting to do this for a long time and the time was right, Gmoser said at the launch of the 2013 collaboration beer at Parallel 49. Building permit allowing, theyre hoping to open their doors at Main and 6th in June. Theyll start with six beers but hope to get up to 12.
In the meantime, theyll concentrate on refillable growler bottlers. The model is a little bit like a gelato shop you try this, you try that, and decide what you want to go with. You can have a conversation about it, Gmoser says. Continuing the gelato analogy, he adds that even if youre coming in for vanilla, you can taste some crazy beer youve never heard of before.
Apart from the ready source of customers The whole street is all about food and drink and people hanging out Gmoser says that what also makes Main Street appealing to breweries is the availability of proper zoning. He envisions a brewery crawl once everyone gets up and running.
