Bottoms Up

If you think all Oakland is drugs and mayhem, you ought to have been at Dimond Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard Saturday afternoon for the Dimond  District Oktoberfest.

The Dimond Improvement Association, a mix of local merchants who have stores along MacArthur and nearby Fruitvale Avenue and residents, staged a first-rate, block-long, urban street fair. There were lots of food booths, crafts, you name it.

And, at the corner of Dimond and MacArthur,  there was an honest-to-goodness beer tent, festooned with Spatan and Hofbrauhaus Oktoberfest flags. Perhaps a thousand people filed through, filling 8 oz. pint glasses with a variety of craft beers and one German beer from Hofbrauhaus.

There are Oktoberfests going on this month all across the U. S. , most sponsored by the big brewers and serving the usual blah lager. The Dimond fest was totally different, no blah lager here (Well Hofbrauhaus export lager’s, the version we get here in the U.S. is nothing to write home about):

• Brewery Trumer, Trumer Pils
• Pacific Coast Brewing – Grey Whale Ale,  Blue Whale Ale, Columbus IPA
• Linden Street Brewery: Black Lager
• Drakes Brewing, Drake’s IPA
• Triple Rock: Triple Rock IPA
• Pyramid Berkeley, Pyramid Hefeweizen

Sure beat the hell out of  Bud Light.  Best news is the association’s really enthused about the event and they’re already planning for next year. Can’t wait.

Photos: That’s Babette Murphy, bottom photo, hoisting a pint of Pyramid Hefeweizen.

Julie Johnson, who handles publicity for the association, notes there are lots of photos of the event posted on Flickr.