The paragraph:

The point about snobbishness is fair. Sure, there are a few people in there with early morning pints. And the clientele does tend to be older. But the reason you notice the older punters is that in some cities Wetherspoon’s are the only pubs where you do see them. When I lived in a part of north London where most pubs sold high-margin craft beer to affluent customers (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing either, unless every pub does it), Spoon’s was also the only pub where the posties, teachers and students drank; and perhaps more tellingly, the only place where you saw people of colour in numbers that reflected their part in the community.

The paragraph:

Despite this, there is a vibrant independent and modern beer scene in the county–if you want a DIPA, you’ll be able to find one. Locals may want cheaper, more trad beers on the whole, but the thousands of visitors coming in from the cities boosted a desire for stronger, weirder beers, which Matt (Clarke) and his peers were only too happy to accommodate. Making both styles ensures locals aren’t priced out of the pub while visitors get the beers they’d expect to see back home.

Locals aren’t priced out. Added for emphasis.

When I wrote about New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival a couple weeks ago, Bill posed a question the the comments: “I have a question about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival – I know there are some jazz and New Orleans – based acts (and maybe more this year than in recent years?), but it always seems to be much more of an “acts you hear on the radio” modern music fest. Were things different back in the 1990s?

My quick answer is about 80 percent of the 5,000 musicians and performers (on 14 stages) will be from Louisiana. That’s a lot more that “some,” and I’m pretty sure more Louisiana musicians than appeared in 1990.

We went for the first time twenty years after the festival began. People we met who had been going for years, told us about how much better it was in years before, smaller, easier to get around, truer to its roots, whatever. We’ve tried our best not to become those people.

Yes, it is different. In 1991 you could camp out maybe five-feet in front of the Ray Ban stage (the largest venue, now called the Festival Stage, but also know as the Fess stage, a nod to Professor Longhair). Now there is very expansive fenced off VIP area in front of it. There are signs of corporate creep to bitch about everywhere. In 1993 I laid on my stomach right in front of the Lagniappe stage (really just a wooden floor laid on top of grass) to shoot a picture of Chris Smither’s feet. They were pounding out acoustic backup as he sang. Something you wouldn’t be able to do today.

Louis Perez, Conrad Lozano and David Hidalgo of the band Los Lobos waiting in line for food (1991).

Last year there was a thread in Jazz Fest Forums that started with complaints about the festival going cashless, including that it meant taxes were no added on top of food prices instead of built in. There was this:

“In 1977, festival co-founder Alison Miner was quoted in the local press as saying that that after attending the 1977 festival (when she was no longer involved) ‘It was as if your only daughter had turned out to be a whore.’

“Why would she say such a thing? Probably the goddam out of town BNAs — acts with no connection to New Orleans like Odetta, Lightnin Hopkins, Ruben Gonzalez, Bobby Blue Bland, Bill Malone, and god forbid, Bonnie Raitt. And while he was local, they pulled out the ultimate BNA in Fats Domino.”

The words that follow are worth your time, and not just if you think craft beer was much better [fill in the blank] years ago. As is the reply: “I’m pretty sure Allison Miner’s objections centered around the growing corporate orientation and with commodification of a culture she saw as pure and good as it was. Both of these trends were merely at the beginning of their journey and far less pronounced than they are today, but she was a sensitive, perceptive, and passionate person who could see the direction things were headed. Maybe she felt betrayed to some degree or that she had been naive (after all she was very young and idealistic when she began) to believe it was ever not the point all along.”

Plus this: “I could see someone in 30 years saying ‘let me get this straight — fest booked the Stones, Crazy Horse, Foo Fighters Jon Batiste and Widespread Panic, plus there were locals like Galactic, Dumpstaphunk, Cleary, Irma, Shorty, George, Zig, the Rads, and you were pissed because … you had to use a credit card????'”

No doubt, the corporate orientation becomes a little more apparent every year. But commodification of the culture? Not when we’ll be standing in line next Thursday, not particularly happy that it always takes longer to get in the first day, because Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars (definitely a product of New Orleans) is first up on a stage about as far from where we enter as possible and Mason Trail (grandson of zydeco great Boozoo Chavis) is on one nearby.

Not when you can still join a parade (such as at the top) weaving around the fairgrounds. Not when you choose from scores of food vendors offering Boudin, Cochon de Lait Po-Boy, Crawfish Monica, Fried Oyster Po-Boy, Muffuletta, Fried Alligator with homemade pepper jelly, sweet potato pie (which we bought from Mr. Williams in 1991 and now buy from his grandchildren), pork debris and grits, white chocolate bread pudding . . . and so on. All true to the roots.

The paragraph:

How can a working journalist afford to buy a bar? “It’s not a fun story,” (Dave) Zirin told me. “My mom passed away and left me a small summer place. I could have kept it and had a place in the summer, or I could have sold it and had a retirement fund, or I could have sold it and bought a bar. I bought a bar.”

The paragraph:

Politics and business practices aside, there are also those who are baffled by the reverence in which the beer itself is held. It is, the critics say, a classic example of the boring brown bitter everyone was so fed up with about 20 years ago. Now, we happen to disagree, and consistently find cask Bass to be a subtle, interesting beer not far removed from Harvey’s Best in terms of character. But that’s all very subjective, of course.

I’d really like you to read the final paragraph as well. So, what the heck, start at the top and work your way down.