"Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder"- Kinky Friedman

March 14, 2018

"Beauty is in the Eye of the Beer Holder"- Kinky Friedman 

Spoon 



Tampa



Tampa is ground zero for the continuously exploding craft beer scene in Florida. The boom shows no sign of abating and the week that I happen to be visiting the area for the Grand Prix coincides with the annual craft beer week that features a week-long series of beer related events and activities related to craft beer. It is always a good time to be in the area. The main event is the annual Hunahpu’s Day Beer Festival hosted by Tampa’s own Cigar City Brewing.

 





The once a year annual huge festival in celebration of craft beer is held as the culmination of craft beer week and now in its ninth year, it continues to grow and get bigger and better. Already recognized as one of the top 10 beer festivals in the USA, the festival is the only place to get the rare and highly desirable Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout beer, which is released one day a year, Hunahpu’s Day. People come from all across the country to get the beer and attend the festival. There was a contingency from Key West  on hand including my friends Brian and Ammie, who may be the biggest fans of good beer that I know.

 

Michael and Brian



The festival features craft breweries from across the nation, many of them offering up their own rarest brews. The festival has grown massively over the past few years and over 300 breweries were represented this year. The opening of the festival is always fun as it features a mad dash of participants, a majority of whom are rotund and bearded white males which makes it pretty fun to watch

 




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In addition to the massive amount of quality beer there are also a plethora of food trucks to keep attendees full and happy (and hopefully less drunk). Two of my favorite breweries from my home state of Indiana were represented, Three Floyd’s Brewery and Sun King were serving up yummy rare beers including one of my all-time favorite brews, Zombie Dust. There were amazingly good beers at every turn and unlike some previous years, short lines and seemingly more availability for all.

Three Floyd's

Sun King

Courtney, Chris, Erica, Chris, Michael and Livi

After the beer festival, I went to rest for a bit before hitting the second big festival of the weekend, the Gasparilla Music Festival which was held again this year at Curtis Hixson Park in downtown Tampa on the riverfront. Once again friends from Key West were in attendance as my friends Chris, Livi and Courtney were joined by former Key West residents Chris and Erica who now live in St. Pete. The music festival is fantastic in that it is small, manageable and VIP tickets are very reasonable and provide up close viewing at all the stages and a private bar and restrooms.

Warpaint









The line-up this year was not my favorite, but whoever picks the bands does an amazing job as they are always diverse, interesting and good. This year my favorite band that played was the first one that I saw on the main stage, Warpaint. I was only vaguely familiar with this all female, synth-rock band from LA but they put on a great live show. They were the perfect way to start. Next up was a smaller side stage where rapper Chali 2na and Naughty Professor played an excellent show of free-flowing hip hop. Chali 2na formerly of the band Jurassic 5 was excellent, but what made it all the more interesting is that he was rapping over a horn section, which I had never seen before, but worked really well.

Chali 2na 



Spoon 





The Roots

The opening night of the festival closed with two more amazing performers, Spoon, the indie rock darlings from Austin and the Roots, Philly’s hip hop legends fronted by Questlove. Two totally different styles and bands that were each excellent in their live performances. The crowd seemed to love them both and though I am not huge fans of either band, they were both really enjoyable as was the festival in general.

The Roots

Father John Misty

Hard Working Americans



Todd Snider

Sunday evening, after attending the Indy Car Grand Prix, I headed back to the festival where I caught the final three acts of the evening, The Hard Working Americans, the SPAM Allstars and Father John Misty. I was really looking forward to seeing the Hard Working Americans, a band fronted by one of my favorite singer/ songwriters of all time, Todd Snider. Sadly I did not really enjoy their set at all. Todd seemed somehow off, certainly not his normal self and he really did not appear to be well, thin and drawn out. The sound was still good, but I could not get past just how off Snider seemed.

 





The SPAM Allstars are frequent visitors to Key West and they put on their usual high energy set and the crowd seemed really into it, but once again, I was a little let down by their show. I was hoping that Father John Misty would salvage the evening and he was the best of the three, but perhaps I was already too bummed out by the others to really appreciate his performance and the entire evening was something of a disappointment. Thankfully the excellence of the Saturday performers helped make the overall experience still a very positive one and it is always great to just hang out with friends

Father John Misty 



Silent Disco