Michael F. Rizzo

Clearly one of those labor of love-type books that's mostly very local journalism and reporting, in this instance focused on a controversial piece of public art installed in Buffalo in the mid-1980s. The artist seems to have lied to the city about what all was involved in the piece, but on the other hand the city doesn't seem to have asked any questions or understood what message the art was trying to communicate until after it was put in. There's a lot of back-and-forth about legal cases, local politics, the artist's personal business, and how he was not particularly popular with other Buffalo artists. Billie Lawless, the artist in question, more or less got chased out of Buffalo after a hostile response by the mayor's office, only to wind up in Cleveland. Then he successfully displayed the piece in Chicago with nowhere near as much chaos and disorder as happened in Buffalo, which is amusing.

I'm not quite old enough to remember the start of the arguments over what did or didn't constitute public obscenity or indecency in public art in the 1980s, but it seems like this kerfuffle was one of the inciting incidents to what would happen later with issues like Tipper Gore getting mad at loud music, or public whining about controversial art pieces from the 1990s that weren't made by Lawless.… (altro)

Ask someone in the Northwest to name a Washington beer and they might suggest Redhook Ale. Old-timers might add Rainier, Olympia, or even Heidelberg. True aficionados could surely compile a long list of microbrews that have enlivened the brewery and brewpub scene during the last two decades. They likely tasted many of them!

Michael Rizzo takes the “name a Washington beer” game to a whole other level. Washington Beer mentions hundreds of beers, brewers, and breweries that poured from our taps since territorial days — from Dayton and Walla Walla to Ellensburg, Langley, and Ballard.

Word of warning: Rizzo’s book is not a narrative. You might find it difficult to read cover to cover. It is more of a timeline in paragraph form. The author throws a dizzying number of names, facts, and dates your way. One sentence does not necessarily relate to the next and the text seldom carries the story of any one brewer more than a paragraph before abruptly moving on to the next chronological fact. Emil Sick (of Rainier Beer fame), for example, appears in this staccato form 15 times over a 30 page span. You can learn his story but you have to work for it.

You’ll also learn more about the industry ups and downs than the brewing process itself. If you want to zero in on a particular era, then find the appropriate chapter and browse your way through the surprising diversity of beer-making efforts from all across the Evergreen State. You will discover brands you never knew and cities you never associated with brewing. The last chapter with new brands and products from late 2015, is remarkably up-to-date for a book.

There’s a modest index. It lists brewers and brands mostly; it’s not very good with locations. After reading or skimming through the book, we used the index more for browsing beer names (e.g. Charging Hippo, GastroPod) than for reference.

Shelf Appeal: There is probably a narrow audience of people interested in historical brewery facts. They will enjoy thumbing through this book to see what trivia captivates them. Readers curious to learn about former breweries in their towns might also make discoveries with some effort.

-- I wrote this review for the Books section of the Washington state website: http://www.WA-List.com… (altro)