A hot
summer day is, for many, ideal for enjoying beer outside, but the string of mid
90s scorchers these past few days, the mercury even climbing to 99 one day, has
been a bit much. Even the Captain Lawrence patio’s considerable charms—the
Adirondack chairs, grub off the Village Dog grill, the spacious tables—weren’t
quite enough to draw visitors, plural, on a breezeless late-afternoon when the
mercury hit 95.
Richard Zeman is the lone man on the patio.
Richard is from Manhattan, and teaches in the cell biology department at nearby
New York Medical College. He’s an early arrival for a gathering of professors
and students, and says the chair, besides being comfy, enables him to see his
friends arrive from the various parking lots.
“I’m
trying to figure out where people are, where they’re coming from,” he says. “I
can wait for them from this vantage point.”
Richard
sips a Pale Ale (“Great. Real crisp. A bite to it. Cold--it just seems right.”).
He says he’s holding up OK in the heat, despite the black jeans and long-sleeve
shirt.
A fellow
professor sneaks up from behind.
“It’s 90
degrees! The beer is inside!” thunders Richard’s pal. “What part of this are we
not getting?”
Richard
smiles and takes a cool sip. His friend shakes his head and ventures inside.
In fact,
there is one other man sitting outside: Rob
Cooper, unflappable grillmaster for the Village Dog purveyor of tasty bar
grub. He sits on a beach chair with its own canopy, envisioning cooler climes.
“I feel terrible for him,” says Dennis
the doorman, nestled in the 76 degree-tasting room’s cool embrace.
Rob
speaks of the food stand’s “Bermuda Triangle”—standing between the fryer,
barbecue and cart, each giving off its own blast of fiery hell. “Plus, you’ve
got the sun overhead,” he says. “And beer doesn’t help.”
What
does? A few quick breaks inside, says Rob.
Indeed,
the AC is humming. The Beatles’ “Carry That Weight” is on. A new brew, Monkey
Madness, is a Belgian-style golden ale brewed with mango puree. There is some of
the piney A.L.S. Pale Ale left, and the sweet and malty St. Vincent’s Quad. Aaron at the bar says the Sun Block, Kolsch
and Liquid Gold are particularly popular when the weather gets sultry.
Walter Firkins of Valhalla has popped in after
a movie for one of those Liquid Golds, extending his time in conditioned air a
little longer. Ellie Kassner has
made the trip across the river with her “best friends”—that would be mom Avis and dad Eric. Ellie is a “beertender” at Defiant Brewing Company in Pearl
River. She says beer works well on a day like this.
“You
need to hydrate,” she says with a smile and a Pale Ale. “You need to even more
on a day like this.”
The
Kassner clan seems particularly adept at finding positives out of less than
positive situations. Eric, quaffing the Liquid Gold, is holding up just fine in
the heat wave. “I can’t say it affects me,” he says. “This is a fun way to get
your mind off the weather.”
For
Avis, who enjoys a cool Kolsch, this kind of weather gets her out of an onerous
chore. “When it’s this hot, I have someone else cook dinner,” she says--meaning
Rob Cooper’s stay under that cooling canopy may not be for long.
Richard
Zeman has finally found his way inside. (“I enjoyed the seat, but this is where
the gathering is now,” he says.) But a few burly men have taken to the bocce
court, even if their throws are a bit languorous in the summer stifle. “We were
in Kansas for a month and a half, and it was 106 and humid every day,” says Greg Theophall of Mount Vernon. “Here,
it’s nothing.”
He cools
off with the popular Liquid Gold, while bud Matt Joe of Hartsdale has the Monkey Madness. Greg turns a bit
philosophical when discussing the weather: summer is finite, he notes, and not
to be wasted. “I’m not gonna let the heat sacrifice my time outside,” he says.
Indeed,
the cool weather, and all of its respective pastimes, will be here before we know
it. For some, that’s not soon enough
.
“I wish
it was snowing,” says Eric Kassner, “and we could all go skiing this weekend.”
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