Big-Ass Beers & the American Way

You don't get much more American than this Tennessee native

You don’t get much more American than this TN native

I love America. Goddammit, I really do. And I love that I come from the same country as the blues, baseball, Patti Smith, candy corn, and the Double IPA. I love the Jumbotron cam and I love Spencer Tunick (nsfw). I love Dolly Parton’s…hair. At the same time there’s this over-sized American pride makes me really uncomfortable; the kind I associate with monster truck rallies, super-sized grease fests, and SUVs the size of my living room.

Why is it then that the same bigger-is-better attitude I roll my eyes at is precisely why I like American beers so damn much? Because please, throw an obscene amount of hops in my beer — I’ll take two.

The state is conveniently shaped

Brunch!

This contradiction was evident on Sunday, July 3rd at 11:30 in the morning, when I found myself in the Nashville’s Farmers’ Market with two flights of Tennessee beers sitting in neat rows on boards the shape of their state. I had suffered a panicked moment of almost-Millennial FOMO and had to try all of the beers. Of course, I didn’t drink them all by myself; my ever-eager, ever-thirsty father was across the table from me, ready to take whatever I handed him. Some families go worship God together every week; me and Pops, we share a sacred brew of our own. Continue reading

East Nashville’s Resident Apothacary Wizards

On a recent visit to Nashville, my brother introduced me to High Garden, an “old fashioned apothecary herb and tea shop,” in the proto-gentrifying neighborhood called East Nashville.  The location felt appropriate to me because this is the kind of store that in New York would detonate like a bomb in Williamsburg or play the beckoning outpost empty warehouses in Bushwick.  But High Garden is not in Brooklyn.  It is far too charmingly humble and reasonably priced to be so.  When I walk into the shop, I want to buy everything.

High Garden is a bit like something out of The Shire or else from a hard-pack crossroads where friars and maidens going this way chew the fat with knights and knaves going that way.  I love the place, and not just because I’m at least 1/3 a hippie. High Garden is kind of magic.  Glass jars containing herbs and teas both familiar and obscure cover the back wall floor to ceiling.  Need lung wort, yarrow, or kava kava?  Not sure at all what ashwaghandra, milk thistle, or catuaba bark are for?  Well, you’re in luck because owner Leah Larabell not only sells them but thoroughly knows this stuff like the back of her hand.  She’s a trained counselor specializing in teens and adolescents, but this—the ages-old wisdom of which plant is good for which of our ailments—is obviously a passion.

Present Leah with any number of symptoms and she’ll ask a few questions, cross to her jars, and mix together in a silver bowl on a wooden table teas and herbs to address your needs.  I told her, for example, that I sleep like hell, am frequently anxious or angry, and just might be prone to the occasional delusion about the fabric of the world (though maybe you’re the delusional one, buddy) and the woman nodded, went to her jars, got to work.  While this went on, her husband and co-owner Joel spooned gourmet tea blends into tea bags and poured me a milk-steamed Oolong and orange drink that was a crackerjack transposition of a creamsickle into beverage form. Continue reading