Philly Beer Week celebrates its third birthday starting next Friday, June 3, with over 200 venues devoted to showcasing the newest and best beers the world has to offer. In preparation for the upcoming festivities, Executive Director Don “Joe Sixpack” Russell spoke to Street on the fest’s success and the drinking habits of everyone from the founding fathers to your fellow Penn students.
Street: What was the idea behind Philly Beer Week, and how did it come to fruition?
Don Russell: It was really started in 2008 and it’s evolved quite a bit since then. It actually began with planning in 2007 as a way to extend or promote the Philly beer scene. In the wake of the collapse of “The Book and the Cook,” which was an event that had been going on in Philadelphia for a number of years involving famous cookbook authors coming to the city to promote their books and do beer dinners at various restaurants, most of the restaurants involved in it were very eager to continue something along those lines, and those of us in the beer community wanted to produce something that was beer–oriented. So we basically came up with the idea of extending the idea of this “Book and the Cook” event, focusing only on beer and beer–related events. […] The whole idea was to celebrate Philly’s beer scene in sort of an organized way, that would involve all the facets of the bars and the restaurants, the brewers and the distributors, and the festivals, and everybody else that does something beer–oriented.
STREET: What is it that makes Philadelphia “America’s Best Beer Drinking–City?”
DR: We have a tradition that’s unmatched in Philly for beer. We have been brewing beer in Philadelphia since the days of William Penn, and it was Philadelphia beer that was what the founding fathers were drinking as they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and we’ve always had a great beer scene here as far as tradition is concerned. The other thing that really plays into it though is that there is no city in America that has the diversity of the beer scene that Philadelphia does. In the beer world there are certain types of beers and various regions have beers that they drink that are their types of beer. […] Here in Philadelphia, we’ll basically drink anything. We drink local beers, we drink west coast beers — there’s no other city in America that has the Belgian beer scene that we have here. So we have this amazing diversity of beer styles so that any beer lover can find something that he or she is going to enjoy. And another thing that really plays into it is the bar scene. This year we have over 200 venues participating in beer week and I will match that against any city of any size in the world.
STREET: Favorite Philly Bar?
DR: Whichever one’s closest and has a parking space in front of it.
STREET: Blarney’s or Smokes?
DR: I’m a traditionalist, and Smokey Joe’s has been around for a little bit longer. I like them both. I will say that there’s something about that old traditional look of Smokey Joe’s that I’ve known since I was a college student. I didn’t go to Penn, but I did drink there in my college days, so it’s got a lot of tradition going for it.
STREET: Were you surprised at the success of Philly Beer Week after its first year?
DR: I’m a little bit surprised about how big it’s grown in Philadelphia. […] But one of the things I’m proudest about is that when we founded Philly Beer Week, we didn’t have any idea how we were going to do this. We were basically — and we’re still — making it up as we go along. But the thing that’s really been striking to me is that immediately we got a lot of notice nationwide from other cities who copied us immediately. And I guess it’s sort of flattering to be copied like that, but I think that in some ways what’s interesting is that we’ve sort of changed the way that beer is being presented now in many cities. […] For years, brewers had basically presented their beers by doing festivals — one–day events in big halls with hundreds of people. And this is sort of a new step in allowing them to reach their audience. That never existed before we did this. I’m really happy about that. I’m surprised — I’m also proud that Philly came up with an idea that’s been copied by that many people.
