Oktoberfest - Tempe style

Traveling on Phoenix's glorious light rail train it took us about 15 minutes to arrive at Tempe's version of Oktoberfest. I'm not much of a beer drinker, but "beers of the world" sounded like it might have some potential. Well, it turns out that "beers of the world" really only pertained to beers of the Budweiser world. I'm pretty sure the only non-Bud, remotely world beer, was Red Stripe, a Jamaican lager.

We started off our consumption with a pleasantly disgruntle server who gave us both souvenir cups and beers for the price of one beer without the souvenir cup (14 ticket purchase for only 5 tickets, sweet!) In true carnival style we also enjoyed funnel cake, a soft pretzel, cheesy curly fries and of course, a braut with sourkraut. Delicious. Sure it probably required an iron-man's worth of exercise to even come close to burning that many calories, but hell, ya gotta live your life.

In addition to tasty eats, the fiesta included carnival games and rides, two stages with constant live entertainment and a polka stage, that unfortunately we never saw come to life. These types of events always provide such great people watching opportunities, for better of for worse. As the evening went on I noticed we were far outnumbered by "jorts" (jean shorts). A few times, I even felt as if my simple jean skirt was getting the hairy eye from various jort wearers. Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to fashion lately but I would like to hope that the jean skirt still, even if only marginally, trumps the jort.

Another surprising sight was the number of couples, noticeably younger than us, with one if not two kids. I think its great when people take their kids out to various social/cultural events, but perhaps when you take your children to these events you shouldn't both get trashed. Or, just maybe, you should consider their tiny, delicate ear drums when you sit front row of live performance that are far too loud for adult ear drums. Lets get a little responsibility here people and for one second think about the little person you thoughtlessly put in this situation.

Overall our Oktoberfest was a pretty fun experience, and we will surely return again next year. Danke schoen Budweiser for your hosting of Oktoberfest Tempe 2009.