Slinging Beers During HB2
In 2016, when the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (better known as HB2) was signed into law in NC, I was slinging beers as a craft beer tour guide in Charlotte. Did most people know I was trans? For fucking what? It was a game of Follow the Beer and I was their leader, slushing them around in the 14 passenger company van as we went around Uptown Charlotte.
I got into brewing beer right after top surgery in November 2015. A mentor in college introduced me to craft beer soon after my 21st birthday and I’d been hooked ever since. So getting to Charlotte when the Big Brewery Boom was happening right in front of me was exciting and I didn’t even know it yet. Charlotte was beating out Ashville for craft beer capital of NC. Brewing also allowed me to do something with my hands in a way that I really couldn’t wearing a binder all day. I mean I could have, but I would have passed out too. Boiling wort in the middle of summer is bad enough with just a tank top on.
I’d never second thought using the restroom until HB2 happened. How could you? Working in any craft beer industry or adjacent meant drinking beer was on the resume along with your top 3. Also it makes you pee alot, so brewery bathrooms have a lot of traffic. And for the most part, no one is looking anyway. Who wants to be the creeper in the restroom looking people in the eye as they relieve themselves? Makes me shudder just thinking about it.
As a craft beer tour guide, there are a few perks:
- Free beer- This is obvious.But I’m talking new releases, samples, “This stack of beers fell off the pallet and here are the ones that didn’t bust” beers.
- Tips- People tip heavy the more inebriated they get. It’s like the dopemaine of being nice continues their happy buzzed state. I didn’t complain.
- Street cred with bartenders- If there is nothing else you get from this piece, get this: be fucking nice to the bartenders. They are literally the gatekeepers to what you want. Just like a jeweler, they can hook you up with what’s in the back, or you can get the picked over shit out front.
My tours always stuck out. Imagine: a Black dude leading a bunch of white people around Uptown Charlotte with beer, and shocker, they were listening! When I met up with the participants at the pick up spot for whatever session, it was apparent who hadn’t caught my name as their tour guide for the day. Some would think I was just driving them to the start of the tour. So many, “How long you been doing this?” and “How’d you get a job like this?” and “What you know about beer?” (which honestly happened once, but who goes to the barber and asks them “What you know about doing hair?” The short: a lot muthafucka!)
Like I said before, I’d started brewing beer before I started doing tours. It’s one, if not the only reason I was hired in the first place. Like a lot of people, I had dreams of opening a brewery. Breweries invite a certain kind of community vibe. A lot of them let you bring your kids (which I’m still not a fan), and your dog (which I am a fan). Small events can bring people together if for nothing else a good beer and shared time with friends. The only other place that does this is church, with less alcohol, of course.
I could tip over the edge of being a beer snob. I can tell when tap lines were dirty from how the draft tasted (if it taste buttery, send it back). Appreciating the hop profiles of the emerging “Juice IPA”. Citra, Galaxy, and Mosaic hop profiles jumped from the nose into the mouthfeel. Crazy, mad-scientist beers like Maple Bacon, Unicorn’s Milk, and Baby Jesus were always on my lips as the next buy. Along with brewing equipment and beer, the tour guide job kept me from putting my partner (then girlfriend) and my sister who was living with us out of the poor house.
Tours consist of a lot of talking. Presenting facts next to industrial sized fermentors or explaining the brewing process with Group 2 that night is just part of it. If you aren’t talking to bartenders about the 12 tasting glasses and pitchers you need (“I promise, the glasses are right under the counter next to the register”), you are talking to the people that paid you to take them around town so they could make an event out of getting drunk and avoiding an Uber. And through these tours and random conversations with people I would normally have no contact with, my confidence built. It didn’t matter what they were talking about, but the fact that I could respond freely without doubts was liberating. Not only was I giving tours, but I was driving around a large city, with tips in my pocket and a van full of inebriated individuals.
After HB2, I second thought any public restroom excursions. Not because I was afraid of getting beat up by some white dudes in the bathroom (which I should have been more cautious about) but didn’t want my reputation as a craft beer Sherpa to be overshadowed by the politics of HB2 and being trans. My identity is not up for debate. Just like your career, or your church, or your cult. My identity is not up for debate until I say it is, and even then it is, it’s one-sided because I’m also the judge and jury of my identity as well. But others make it a debate to reaffirm themselves. They are the normal ones with questions or ridicule for the mentally infirm.
Don’t Be Mean to People was a saison beer that Mystery and Ponysaurus Brewing did as a collaboration to stand up against HB2. Did I proclaim my queer as I bought a 4 pack at my local bottle shop? For what? Do you go up to a bar and tell people you are Catholic? Or that you have four toes on your left foot? No I didn’t, and was even more irritated that no one was talking about how HB2 gave NC the executive right to determine minimum wages. All that was overshadowed by talks of bathroom police and carrying around your birth certificate (umm, walking papers much? Sounds very antebellum in the worst ways).